Line #12 Recap/BigFinishDoctorWho089NoMansLand


1	The Seventh Doctor, Ace and Hex are found unconscious on a UsefulNotes/WorldWarI battlefield in France (in what would become [[Recap/BigFinishDoctorWhoNEDASDarkEyesE1TheGreatWar a continuing feature in the Doctor's life]]). They end up at a military hospital. By a stroke of tremendous luck, a letter arrives from high-up telling the commanding officers that team TARDIS is a ragtag bunch of military detectives. Their job: to investigate a murder that will be committed later that day.
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3	The hospital, full of wounded soldiers, does things not quite by the book. For one, there's a place called the "hate room", where soldiers can work on their aggression skills and patriotism. The group soon befriends a young soldier named Taylor, who spends much of his time type-writing letters home to his girlfriend. (His handwriting is atrocious). Hex, who's trying to keep a cool head, offends a local character named Wood with how uncomfortable he is around soldiers. Hex' first instinct is to tend to the wounded and to speak up about how horrifying and inhumane war is. Wood, who doesn't have the slightest patience for "cowardice", drags Hex into the hate room, unceremoniously ties him to a chair, clamps down his tongue and starts giving him a few hours of ElectricTorture. By the time the Doctor finds his companion, Hex has been drugged with EasyAmnesia and wonders what on earth happened to him.
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5	The Doctor soon realises that the letter about him was subconsciously written by Taylor, who's also going around stabbing and shooting people in his sleep. It's obvious to team TARDIS that the hospital is manipulating the wounded soldiers using rudimentary Freudian theory. The brainwashed soldiers are made into traumatised shells of men who'd do anything for their country. Also, Taylor tells Ace that he was wounded at a terrible battle against some German soldiers -- and, as he waited for help to arrive, surrounded by corpses, he saw an ''angel''.
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7	While Ace and Hex go off to investigate the site of the battle, Wood (the Doctor's primary subject) is murdered. His higher-up, Brook, instantly blames the Doctor and organises a firing squad out of the traumatised soldiers for a very quick execution. The Doctor escapes on a motorbike, joins up with Ace and Hex, and realises that Brook's experiment went further than anyone had suspected: there were never any German soldiers to begin with, and the entire massacre was just British soldiers brainwashed into killing each other. Taylor now has to live with having killed Wood while sleepwalking, and Hex begs to be taken back to the TARDIS, or any place where there isn't a war going on. The Doctor tells him that [[ForeShadowing death is always a tragedy]], but he shouldn't see it as a waste of life... because life is never wasted as long as it was lived honestly. All's well that ends well, except the Doctor very glumly reveals that the entire thing was engineered by... [[Recap/BigFinishDoctorWho023ProjectTwilight the]] [[Recap/BigFinishDoctorWho045ProjectLazarus Forge]].
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9	!!Tropes:
10	* AngryGuardDog:
11	--> "I didn't know they had guard dogs!"
12	* AssholeVictim: Wood and later, Brooke.
13	* BrainwashingForTheGreaterGood
14	* TheBusCameBack: The Forge is back after years of absence.
15	* CallBack: Hex remembers [[Recap/BigFinishDoctorWho082TheSettling Ireland]] very bitterly, and has a brief conversation with Ace about [[Recap/BigFinishDoctorWho045ProjectLazarus his mom, Cassie]].
16	** The Doctor and Taylor discuss the classic philosophical problem of killing one innocent child to save thousands. Seven's moral inability to do just that has long been a particularly morbid RunningGag in Creator/BigFinish.
17	** Ace mentions not having seen angels... Well not like the ones [[Recap/BigFinishDoctorWho036TheRapture Captain Dudgeon has seen]].
18	* TheChewToy: By this time, the writers were joking amongst themselves who could torture poor Hex the hardest.
19	* ColdBloodedTorture
20	* DeadlyGas
21	* DontCallMeSir: Sergeant Wood has issues with the higher ups, who don't know about the hardships the Tommies in the fields go through.
22	* ForeShadowing: Plenty of it for Hex' final episodes.
23	* GoneHorriblyright
24	* HoistByHisOwnPetard: See the second entry for AssholeVictim.
25	* IAmNotAGun
26	* IDidWhatIHadToDo
27	* JumpingOffTheSlipperySlope: Hex muses that if there's brainwashing in WW I, how does it stop people from being alike to the Cybermen?
28	* MaybeMagicMaybeMundane
29	* NeverWakeUpASleepwalker: Subverted.
30	* OfficerAndAGentleman: The Lieutenant-Colonel Brook and Captain Dudgeon are very polite. [It's an act for Lieutenant-Brook.
31	* OminousMessageFromTheFuture
32	* TheReveal: The final lines of the episode reveal that the entire experiment was done by the Forge.
33	* SecretTestOfCharacter: Brooke replaced all the soldiers' rifles with blanks for the PublicExecution.
34	* ScienceMarchesOn: The Doctor says all of his "[[BizarreAlienSenses six senses]]" are in working order. Though commonly believed that humans only have five (touch, taste, sight, hearing and smell) they have at least two more: equilibrium and of time (passing).
35	* ShellShockedVeteran: Captain Dudgeon had a near death experience, and the sole survivor of a platoon.
36	* SherlockScan: Hex manages to deduce they are on Earth, before his time, by the wallpaper. This is [[HandWave Handwaved]] by him saying he "knows wallpaper".
37	* ShoutOut: The Doctor mentions GroundogDay.
38	* TheManBehindTheMan: The Forge.
39	* TitleDrop

Context Recap / BigFinishDoctorWho089NoMansLand