The Monthly Adventures #89 - "No Man's Land" by Martin Day

We’ve seen our fair share of World War Two stories in Doctor Who, from chess matches with Fenric to escapades with gas mask zombies. Yet somehow, World War One is often missed. There’s something about the mud-caked misery of the Great War that seems ripe for story telling and yet it’s bigger, deadlier brother seems to always hog the spotlight. Because of this, the plot to No Man’s Land initially intrigued me, with shady experiments going down in a world war one hospital, but upon listening to it, I found my expectations matched in some places but utterly missed in others.

Rescued from the middle of No Man’s Land, the Doctor, Ace and Hex are transported to an army hospital, where they find they are to investigate a murder - one that hasn’t happened yet. A grisly product of time travel? Or something far more human?

(CONTAINS SPOILERS)

When I think of the First World War as a setting, I think trenches, I think misery, I think tension, I think despair. Whilst No Man’s Land doesn’t quite manage a few of those points, I think it for the most part manages to capture the atmosphere of the time period well, the mildewed halls of the old army hospital vivid in my head. The scenes actually set in the titular No Man’s Land are also incredibly tense and even somewhat surreal, what with the fact we never actually see the enemy, only the death they cause. Superficially, this audio succeeds.

But of course, my main concern is always going to be story and if an audio can’t get that right, it’s usually going to lose my favour. The blurb instantly grabbed me; I adore the idea of “investigating a murder that hasn’t happened yet” and I was really looking forward to a timey-wimey murder mystery, á la The Chimes of Midnight. What I got wasn’t that but I can confidently say the mystery had me intrigued for at least the first half. I think there could’ve been bits and pieces it could've tightened up and I wasn’t exactly on the edge of my seat, but it kept the plot moving and kept me interested, which is all it needed to do.

And to carry any good mystery, you have to have a good cast. I am happy to say that No Man’s Land has an especially strong group of characters leading it, from the sympathetic Taylor to the brutish Sergeant Wood. Our main antagonist, the duplicitous Brooks, also excels and I think Michael Cochrane’s performance captures the descent from disarmingly amicable to full on crazy super well. As for our main cast, we get good performances out of everybody but I don’t love how Ace and Hex are written here. Hex gets sort of brainwashed pretty early on in the story but literally the only thing that comes of it is him and Ace bickering like it’s the JNT era.

Finally, something that really stood out to me in No Man’s Land was the use of theming and imagery. The basic plot boils down to a rogue army captain brainwashing troopers into becoming perfect soldiers by ridding them of feelings of regret or cowardice, but only succeeding in turning them into raging psychopaths. It’s a pretty simple anti-war message but it’s done fantastically, and I love scenes like Taylor describing how he couldn’t bring himself to kill a German soldier when he had the chance or the final conversation between our surviving characters. The criticisms of the concepts of cowardice that killed so many during this war is excellently explored and for all of the problems I think plague this script, Day really excelled when it came to the subtext.

But like I said, I have some problems. First and foremost, this story just really does not interest me. I don’t know how else to put this, but especially once the initial mystery wraps up halfway through, I found the story to thoroughly uninvest me. It moves along incredibly slowly and the fact that this is only two hours long is astounding because it felt like so much more. The biggest detractor is tension because for whatever reason, at no point did I feel particularly worried about what was going to happen. It’s a slow burn story applied to a script that really needed a little more action or compelling build up. When the soldiers finally lose it in the final part and kill Brooks, that should feel like an explosion the whole story’s been building up to. Instead, it sort of just happens and I feel absolutely nothing in the way of pay off.

It also doesn’t help that the script keeps doing too many things at once. Some of the plot lines don’t go anywhere; I’ve already mentioned how Hex’s brainwashing is entirely incidental but there’s also stuff like the insane private they meet at the very end immediately losing it or Sergeant Wood dying halfway through. Even that central mystery feels like a copout. Turns out, there’s no kind of time travel involved, Taylor just heard the Doctor, Ace and Hex’s names when they arrived in No Man’s Land, and then in his sleep wrote the army summons naming them and the murder they were trying to investigate was his subconscious feeling that he would kill somebody. It’s unbelievably contrived and an absolute let down after the descent mystery that preceded it. Not to mention, once Taylor actually kills Woods, that whole plot line is mostly dropped, no true consequences come out of Taylor’s crime.

No Man’s Land is by no means a bad story, it has a great number of strengths and some really strong thematic elements. It’s just that its script is kind of weak. The story doesn’t grab me but there’s definitely a lot to love here and I feel like with a little more focus in certain areas, this could’ve been a whole lot better. As it stands, it’s yet another story that ends up being just fine.

6/10

Pros:

+ Interesting cast

+ Fantastically evocative setting

+ Decent central mystery

+ Well realised themes and imagery

Cons:

- Slow script that fails to invest me

- A lot of plot lines feel like they go nowhere

- Wasn’t particularly tense or exciting