No Man's Land (audio story)

No Man's Land
Doctor:	Seventh Doctor
Companion(s):	Ace, Hex
Main enemy:	Brook, Wood
Main setting:	Charnage Hospital, France, 1917
Key crew
Publisher:	Big Finish Productions
Writer:	Martin Day
Director:	John Ainsworth
Producer:	Gary Russell, Jason Haigh-Ellery, Nicholas Briggs
Music:	Simon Robinson
Sound:	Simon Robinson
Cover by:	Simon Holub
Release details
Number of parts:	4
Release number:	89
Release date:	November 2006
Format:	2 CDs Download
Production code:	7W/E
ISBN:	ISBN 978-1-84435-178-7 (physical) ISBN 978-1-78575-248-3 (digital)
Main Range
← Previous	Memory Lane
Next →	Year of the Pig
Production order
← Previous	The Gathering
Next →	Spring

No Man's Land was the eighty-ninth story in Big Finish's monthly range. It was written by Martin Day and featured Sylvester McCoy as the Seventh Doctor, Sophie Aldred as Ace and Philip Olivier as Hex.

Publisher's summary

It is 1917 and the Doctor, Hex and Ace find themselves in a military hospital in northern France. But the terrifying, relentless brutality of the Great War that wages only a few miles away is the least of their concerns.

The travellers become metaphysical detectives when the Doctor receives orders to investigate a murder. A murder that has yet to be committed...

Who will be the victim? Who will be the murderer? What is the real purpose of the Hate Room? Can the Doctor solve the mystery before the simmering hate and anger at Charnage Hospital erupts in to a frenzy of violence?

Plot

to be added

Cast

• The Doctor - Sylvester McCoy
• Ace - Sophie Aldred
• Hex - Philip Olivier
• Lieutenant-Colonel Brook - Michael Cochrane
• Sergeant Wood - Rob Dixon
• Captain Dudgeon - Rupert Wickham
• Private Taylor - Oliver Mellor
• Lance-Corporal Burridge - Ian Hayles
• Private Dixon - Michael Adams

Crew

• Cover Art - Simon Holub
• Director - John Ainsworth
• Music and Sound Design - Simon Robinson
• Producers - Gary Russell, Jason Haigh-Ellery and Nicholas Briggs
• Script Editor - Alan Barnes
• Writer - Martin Day

Worldbuilding

Individuals

• Ace studied the war poets at school, specifically Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon.
• Hex tells Ace that his mother's full name was Cassandra Elizabeth Schofield.

Organisations

• The Forge is theorised to be the agency behind the experiments.

Time travel

• The Doctor refers the 1993 comedy film Groundhog Day in order to describe the effects of a time loop.

Gallery

• 

  Original cover art

• 

  Textless cover art

• 

  Illustrated preview by Martin Geraghty from DWM 376

Notes

• An illustrated preview, illustrated by Martin Geraghty appeared in DWM 376.
• This audio drama was recorded on 29 and 30 July 2006 at the Moat Studios.
• The idea of the Doctor and Ace visiting WWI is similar to the unmade serial A School for Glory.
• This story is set between Survival and the 1996 TV Movie.
• This story is a "pure historical" featuring no science fiction elements apart from the presence of the Doctor, Ace, Hex and the TARDIS.

Continuity

• Ace and Hex mention their recent visit to Ireland in September 1649. (AUDIO: The Settling)
• Ace refers to seeing her mother Audrey as a baby in Maiden's Point in 1943 (TV: The Curse of Fenric) and meeting her younger brother Liam McShane in San Antonio on Ibiza on 14 May 1997. (AUDIO: The Rapture)
• Hex tells Ace that his mother's name was Cassandra Elizabeth Schofield. Unbeknownst to him, the Sixth Doctor and his former companion Evelyn Smythe had met her on two occasions, in 2001 and November 2004. They witnessed her death at the hands of Nimrod on the latter occasion. (AUDIO: Project: Twilight, Project: Lazarus) He left his only photograph of her in his flat in Shoreditch in 2021 before departing with the Doctor and Ace in the TARDIS. (AUDIO: The Harvest)
• During his sixth incarnation, the Doctor first learned of the existence of the Forge in London in 1999. (AUDIO: Project: Twilight) He and Evelyn later visited its alpha facility in Dartmoor in November 2004. (AUDIO: Project: Lazarus) The Doctor, Ace and Hex would later visit to its beta facility in London in April and May 2025. (AUDIO: Project: Destiny) Subsequently, an older version of the Seventh Doctor visited the Forge's alpha facility once again in 2008, shortly before its destruction. (AUDIO: Project: Lazarus)
• Hex's involvement in the Charnage Hospital incident would later be included in the Forge's files concerning him, which were contained in its beta facility in 2025. (AUDIO: Project: Destiny)
• During his eighth incarnation, the Doctor would visit another World War I era French military hospital shortly after the deaths of his companion Lucie Miller and his great-grandson Alex Campbell. It was there that he met his new companion Molly O'Sullivan, an Irish Voluntary Aid Detachment nursing assistant. (AUDIO: The Great War)
• The Second Doctor, Jamie McCrimmon and Zoe Heriot once visited a fake version of World War I, 1917. (TV: The War Games)
• The Fourth Doctor has dealt with another experiment focused on helping traumatised soldiers return to the front, although in this case the experiment was hijacked by an alien intelligence. (AUDIO: Shellshock)

External links

• Official No Man's Land page at bigfinish.com
• No Man's Land at the Doctor Who Reference Guide
• DisContinuity for No Man's Land at Tetrapyriarbus - The DisContinuity Guide