The Doctor and Mary Shelley visit the frontier world of Draxine, where the tenth generation of human settlers have flourished for centuries. Though two great cities were once standing, the city of Garrak fell victim to an insidious cult and was promptly obliterated from the map.
Now, years later when they were all but forgotten, they rear their heads again, and brings along an Army of Death.
Army of Death contains examples of the following tropes:
- Admiring the Abomination: Mary is curious as to how the Doctor could not be reviled to seeing all this death and carnage and the creatures that spawn forth from it.
- Bait-and-Switch Comparison: Mary writes of an other worldly man she loves, someone who just appeared in her life. Percy Shelley.
- Battle in the Center of the Mind: Karnex and Nia in the end.
- Blatant Lies: "This is not an attack, it's a military training exercise."
- Book Ends: The story starts out and ends with Mary Shelley writing in her journal, but where she has some discomfort about the Doctor at first, towards the end she has sussed him out and she writes more positively.
- Call-Back: When Vallan mentions Sherla assassinated former President Garrak and it was broadcast on TV, the Doctor mentioned he once did the very same thing, and was innocent.
- The Doctor gets a couple of Radiation Drugs. (They're also actual drugs this time, gloves)
- The Doctor mentions he once had a hover car with a great license plate.
- The Doctor mentions the Plutonian Tax collectors are among the worst he knows.
- Mary refers to the Cybermen and witches.
- Call-Forward: The Doctor plans to implement his brain into a machine, and someone else takes his place in lieu of him risking his death in the upload. The Doctor even says "There is another way!"
- Came Back Wrong: Karnex.
- The Cavalry: The Hover Sentries, nee, the Flybots come and save the Doctor, Mary and Nia. Only to get a retreat command 30 seconds later, leaving them. They later return in Stronghaven to actually save the Doctor again.
- Deadpan Snarker: The Doctor is on a roll in this story.
- Dem Bones:Bones... Moving bones!?
- Determinator: The Undead will keep going even in form of limbs, or lobbed off skulls towards their goal.
- Distressed Dude: The Doctor tries to fast talk his way out of getting kidnapped by a hover sentry, but is the only one out of four to get taken prisoner.
- Exactly What It Says on the Tin: The Doctor laments how people never get creative with names for devices, like the In-Universe "Hover sentries".
- Fusion Dance: Karnex manages to reform himself using the bodies of many who perished, and asserts his will over the creature.
- He Is Not My Husband: Mary, again, gets mistaken for the Doctor's wife.
- Immune to Bullets: Literally namedropped.
- Infrared Xray Camera: The soldiers are equipped with these, but they obviously can't detect the skeletal warriors because they emit no heat signature.
- Last Villain Stand: The original Karnex and his second in command stand their ground against Dem Bones, which are returning to them. They courteously let the Doctor and companions escape because they weren't the real villains.
- Mind Control: Beyond death.
- Non-Indicative Name: The Doctor claimed this of planet Mayhem. He wasn't right.
- President Evil: President Vallan became President through ... less than savoury means.
- Robo Speak: The Hover Sentries.
- Soiled City on a Hill: Garrak.
- Suicide Attack: Dem Bones have a resonating frequency inside them, and if they lose it, they blow up.
