Big Finish Doctor Who/Recap/004 The Land of the Dead

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


The TARDIS, on the trail of an energy reading it seems unable to analyze, materializes in Alaska. Investigating the readings, they're soon attacked by a monster and find shelter at an unusual museum being constructed by millionaire Shaun Brett as a monument to his late father. With the monsters roaming the snowy landscape outside and other dangers lurking inside the building, the Doctor, Nyssa, Brett, his interior designer Monica Lewis and employees, the misanthropic Gaborik and half-American, half-Inuit Tulung, are running out of time.


Tropes used in The Land of the Dead include:
  • Big Labyrinthine Building: Brett's museum, which has rooms constructed from bone, ice, wood and other materials representing the land, as well as a room filled with seawater, wildlife and transplanted Alaskan coastline.
  • Body Horror: The presence of the Permians causes the local wildlife to twist, merge and deform, becoming grotesque hybrids striking out in fear and confusion. The Permians also eat people by stripping the flesh from their skeletons via energy field.
  • Crusty Caretaker: Gaborik.
  • Disappeared Dad: The conflict between Brett and Tulung hinges on which of their fathers sacrificed himself to save the other many years ago; all we know is that they're both dead.
  • Dug Too Deep: Gaborik (and eventually Brett and Tulung) thinks the Permians are the spirits of the dead risen up for vengeance for the destruction of the land by Brett's crew, but it's actually just this.
  • Eldritch Abomination: The Permians, who predate the dinosaurs by 30 million years, according to the Doctor.
  • Jerkass: Brett. He constantly baits Gaborik and Tulung into arguing with him, isn't that much nicer to the Doctor and Nyssa, and even planned to display Tulung's father's bones to the public upon opening the building, this last being what finally inspires Tulung to beat the crap out of him.
  • Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Monica is abrasive and impatient, but she sympathizes with Tulung.
  • Sanity Slippage: An effect of the energy field generated by the Permians.
  • Taking You with Me: Brett tries this on the Permians. It doesn't get all of them.
  • You Are Who You Eat: The Permian leader starts to take on a more humanoid appearance after it eats Gaborik.
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