A very different kind of story that does its own thing, but also shows just how flexible this Doctor can be.

Our party lands on small comet in the far future. Soon they meet up with a crew of human Space Marines, who are on a training mission. However, when these marines come across the corpses of their sworn enemies, this training mission might be more difficult than they first expected.

This story is way grimmer than the other stories up till now. Death is common. The space marines are battered and wounded before the story even starts. Blood, corpses and body horror fill the entire book with barely a hopeful sentence to break the tension.

And yet, this still works as a Doctor Who story. Why? Because the Doctor and his companions are written perfectly. They feel completely in character. These comparatively innocent characters are dropped in the darkness, but that doesn’t mean they act like different people. The Doctor is still tired, but holding on. Every line Ben says feels like him. And, while a little worse off than the other two, Polly still feels like her kind and hopeful self.

It really is a matter of balance. Constant darkness rules this book, but the Doctor, Ben and Polly are like a little light that won’t be dimmed. You know they will do what they always do: Save the day. And they even manage to spread a little bit of that hope to their fellow travellers.

The Space marines are well defined characters in their own right. The story starts us off before the mission, so we get plenty of time to see them interact with each other. We know what bonds are between them. So when the horrors take place, we know they take it personally.

Don’t get me wrong, they’re not all good friends, but they have a dynamic between them that works for the mission. Some trust each other blindly, some are loyal to their commander, some are outsiders. They take this dynamic with them on their mission. During all the tension we see walls between them break down, while other walls raise up. It’s very well done.

But, while all the characters work, I can’t say the same for the main plot. It is plenty strong, but it sometimes feels like things don’t land as hard as they should. For example, the main mystery. Shortly after arriving, our combined group finds the bodies of 10 leaders from an opposing faction in a glass prison. Yet throughout the story, some bodies disappear from behind the glass. The story really tries to build up the tension with these disappearances, but I never felt like it mattered all that much. It never had a direct influence on the character’s chances of survival, so I wasn’t worried.

The eventual revelations about their escape didn’t work for me either. It is some technobabble about time glass that I don’t really care for. The body horror was already in full swing at this point and that had more of my attention. And while one influences the other, the techno-babbly explanation never really made overall plan around these bodies all that clear, which was a bit of a bummer.

But overall, it all still works because of the cast. The individual story beats are strong, just not always properly interwoven. Finishing this book feels like finally letting go of a breath you took weeks ago. Which is a compliment! All the tension is built brilliantly and I can forgive the stumbles it had at the end. Well worth your time.