No Man's Land

Main Range #89

Released: November 2006

Listened: 12/20/20

This is another grim story, set in France in 1917, mostly at a military hospital where the commander is trying out some unusual psychological techniques to ensure that the soldiers are mentally ready to return to combat. Unusually, the TARDIS crew are expected, and have orders waiting for them instructing them to inspect the hospital and investigate a murder that hasn’t happened yet. With this setup, it combines the grimness of a true historical during war-time with the existential creepiness that’s common to this run of stories. As a murder mystery, it’s a bit of a slog, really. There’s a lot of concern about brainwashed soldiers, and even about Hex, when the techniques are used on him, that mostly comes to nothing. And the ending is just a bit too neat, with a narrative trick allowing the main characters to keep their hands clean. The Doctor keeps mentioning that these techniques are too advanced for the time period, and after it’s all over, he suggests the Forge is involved, but none of that comes up during the story proper. It’s just another grim, spooky story.