Don't Step on the Grass (comic story)

Don't Step on the Grass
Doctor:	Tenth Doctor
Companion(s):	Matthew Finnegan, Emily Winter
Featuring:	Martha
Main enemy:	The Advocate, Lau'Tan, Enochai
Main setting:	Greenwich, 2009
Key crew
Publisher:	IDW Publishing
Writer:	Tony Lee
Artist:	Blair D. Shedd
Release details
Printed in:	Doctor Who (2009) #9-12
Release date:	17 March - 29 June 2010
Format:	American comic book - four issues
Doctor Who (2009)
← Previous	Tesseract
Next →	Final Sacrifice

Don't Step on the Grass was the four part story arc begun in Doctor Who (2009) #9. It was the first story in the series to be set on modern Earth, and featured the return of newly-married Martha Jones, Captain Magambo and UNIT.

Summary

When the Doctor is called back to modern-day London by Martha Jones and UNIT, the last thing he expects are the Enochian Angels of Elizabethan magician John Dee, the secret underground library of Greenwich Park, and an army of angry living trees!

Plot

The Doctor is summoned to Greenwich Park by Martha and Captain Magambo who claimed that the trees were moving, three people were ingested by them and the trunks were marked with Enochian symbols, a language invented by mathematician and magician John Dee to converse with angels. The Doctor realises the "angels" were trapped beneath the observatory for four hundred years, but emerged through the trees in the park. While he sends Martha and Matthew to investigate Crane's house, the Doctor, Emily and gardener Mr Crane head into the passages beneath the park to communicate with the "angels", in actual fact aliens waiting in suspended animation for the Doctor to come and take them home. With a UNIT soldier, Martha and Matthew search Mr Crane's house. Matthew discovers a sketch of the Advocate, but the soldier takes it from him, urging caution in his dealings with the Doctor. The soldier is really the Gizou in disguise. Martha, meanwhile, discovers an alien dossier on the Doctor and realises he has been set up. Believing the Enochai's story, the Doctor sets them free, but it was a trick. John Dee had trapped them, but they are now free to take over all of the trees and claim the Earth.

The Enochia realise the Doctor didn't remove the forcefield trapping it and order Crane to shoot Emily. The Doctor and Emily escape but plunge down a hidden shaft into an ancient cavern where they discover a stripped down colony ship containing thousands of Enochians in stasis. A holographic projection of John Dee informs them that the Enochians were energy beings who planned conquest. Emily escapes to the surface but Crane catches the Doctor and the Enochian orders his imprisonment. The Advocate arrives and opens the stasis pods, releasing the Enochia. The trees drive UNIT back, but the situation becomes even worse as the Enochia flood out of the ground.

The angels trapp Central London in a forcefield. A battle with UNIT begins, leaving UNIT seriously outgunned. The Doctor speaks to one of the angels and realises it is the Gizou in disguise. The Gizou reveals that the whole scheme is a set-up. The Advocate appears to Martha and the trapped humans and proposes a way of ending the crisis, by striking at the Enochian ship. Crane, who overhears the Gizou, rescues the Doctor. Martha, meanwhile, escapes the bunker, finds Emily and, with the help of the Knights Arboretum, a select group of gardeners of which Crane was once a member, is reunited with the Doctor. Returning to the bunker, the Doctor confronts the Advocate, but Magambo refuses to allow him time to develop an alternative solution to the Enochia threat and insists on following the Advocate's plan. She arrests the Doctor.

With the help of the Knights Arboretum, Martha and Emily rescue the Doctor. Mr Crane, meanwhile, has returned to the ship on a suicide mission to destroy it. The Doctor arrives and launches the ship into space, which draws all the energy creatures up with it. The Advocate's bomb is no longer needed, but the countdown is accidentally started. Mr Crane spots it in the nick of time, but if he raises his finger from the button, the ship will explode. The Doctor cannot do anything to save him so escapes using a pair of angel wings. The Advocate uses Crane's death to finally destroy Matthew's faith in the Doctor and Matthew elects to instead travel with the Advocate.

Characters

• Tenth Doctor
• Matthew Finnegan
• Emily Winter
• Martha Jones
• Erisa Magambo
• The Advocate
• Crane

References

• Brian Green is British Prime Minister. He was preceded by Aubrey Fairchild.
• The Doctor suspects the tree creatures to be Krynoids, but is proven wrong when the Krynoid rockets fail to kill them.
• When the Doctor finds a spaceship trapped deep under Greenwich Park, he says it must have slipped through the Rift.

Notes

• This story was originally solicited as a two-parter in December 2009. By January 2010, the story was described to retailers as a four-parter.
• Distribution problems plagued the first part of this story, and it was unusually not released across the United States on the same day. Readers on the east coast were not able to purchase Doctor Who (2009) until 24 March 2010. Readers in the midwest and west got it on its intended release date, 17 March 2010.
• The Doctor says he "played Hamlet a little while back". David Tennant played Hamlet in a 2008 Royal Shakespeare Company production.
• This story was reprinted in the IDW graphic novel Tesseract.

Continuity

• The Doctor inquires as to whether his phone will work deep underground, and a UNIT soldier assures him it will, as it's on "the Neon network," created by Joshua Naismith. The soldier goes on to mention how Naismith's book was "life-altering." (TV: The End of Time)
• The Doctor says he had a hand in the establishment of the Black Archive, and sends Martha there. (TV: Enemy of the Bane, The Day of the Doctor)
• The Doctor initially works under the suspicion that the trees are Krynoids. (TV: The Seeds of Doom)
• The Doctor reveals he's still angry with Martha for nearly engaging the Osterhagen Project. (TV: Journey's End)
• The Doctor again employs the phrase "spit-spot" as a means of encouraging people to spring into action. (TV: The Wedding of Sarah Jane Smith)
• The Doctor references his and Martha's trip to visit William Shakespeare. (TV: The Shakespeare Code)
• Martha says she expected the Doctor to avoid modern Earth because of Donna Noble's recent memory wipe. (TV: Journey's End)
• Magambo obeys the Doctor's express wishes and doesn't salute him. (TV: Planet of the Dead)
• The Advocate escaped the Time War when Davros was saved by Dalek Caan, appearing as stardust in the Medusa Cascade. (TV: The Stolen Earth)
• The Advocate says that when the Doctor activated the Moment using the Great Key, the Doctor time-locked the Last Great Time War. (COMIC: The Forgotten)
• A UNIT soldier calls for "five rounds rapid" to be fired into the Enochai Angel, as the Brigadier once did. (TV: The Dæmons)
• Several characters ask Martha if it's "Martha Jones" or "Martha Smith" now, and the Doctor says she should go back to Mickey, after which she calls him and asks if he needs help with the Sontaran problem. (TV: The End of Time)
• Martha notes that Matthew is suffering from "tin dog syndrome". (TV: School Reunion)

Cover gallery

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  Doctor Who (2009)
  Issue 9 (Cover A)

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  Issue 9 (Cover B)

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  Issue 10 (Cover A)

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  Issue 11 (Cover A)

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  Issue 12 (Cover A)