The Soul Garden (comic story)

The Soul Garden
Doctor:	Twelfth Doctor
Companion(s):	Bill
Featuring:	Zoom, Coleridge
Main enemy:	Sythorr
Main setting:	The Garden
Key crew
Publisher:	Panini Comics
Editor:	Tom Spilsbury & Peter Ware
Writer:	Scott Gray
Penciller:	Martin Geraghty
Inker:	David A Roach
Colourist:	James Offredi
Letterer:	Roger Langridge
Release details
Number of parts:	3
Printed in:	DWM 512 - 514
Release date:	4 May - 29 June 2017
Cover date:	June - August 2017
Reprinted in:	The Phantom Piper
Format:	Comic
DWM comic stories
← Previous	Doorway to Hell
Next →	The Parliament of Fear

The Soul Garden was a comic published in Doctor Who Magazine in 2017. It was notably the first story in the magazine to feature Bill Potts as a travelling companion to the Twelfth Doctor, as well as Bill's overall first appearance in comic books, and the first multi-part story to feature Bill.

Summary

Part one

The Twelfth Doctor and Bill Potts land on Titan in a specific location at a specific time, which allows them to see a perfect view of Saturn, Bill's favourite planet. Using the moon's low gravity to their advantage, the two swim through the air away from the TARDIS. Unexpectedly, the atmosphere is disrupted as a land-ship thrashes by, causing Bill and the Doctor to lose control.

Rescued by the ship, the ship's first mate Sandi Costello introduces the ship as the Beagle. The Doctor soon discovers the voyage's funder, Rudy Zoom, a figure that he had met on a previous adventure. Travelling to the bridge, the group meets the bickering leaders of the group: captain Bernard O'Neill and the psychic Lady Takashi.

Lady Takashi seeks to explore Titan because she had sensed an alien presence on the planet in a deep sleep. Shocked that an entire expedition has been funded because of a woman's dream, the Doctor joins the team. The Beagle begins sailing on the liquid methane river, and after several hours, they discover a hidden cavern.

Inside the cavern mouth, they discover a domed off area, and inside the dome they find a garden with proper atmosphere corrections, as well as heat and gravity alterations. The Doctor heads to the centre of the garden, where he finds two dead trees - the only dead things in the whole location.

The team are suddenly attacked by a robot called the Keeper which views them as foreign elements to be weeded out. The group scatters, and by the time that the Doctor has deactivated the robot with his sonic screwdriver, Bill has been knocked out by one of the plants. Suddenly grabbed by several tentacles, the group finds themselves face-to-face with a group of living plant creatures, who intend to consume the humans.

Part Two

to be added

Part Three

to be added

Characters

• Twelfth Doctor
• Bill Potts
• Rudy Zoom
• Samuel Taylor Coleridge
• Takashi
• Sandi Costello
• Oksanna
• Sythorr
• Bernard O'Neill
• Keeper

Worldbuilding

• Saturn is Bill's favourite planet.
• Titan is a moon of Saturn, and is usually surrounded by methane clouds. Every few thousand years, if one is situated in the right spot, Saturn can barely be seen from the moon.
• Titan's atmosphere is 50% denser than Earth's, but its gravity is only 14% as strong. This allows people present on the planet to swim through the air.
• The Doctor and Bill's "swim" is disrupted by the passing of a ship known as the Beagle, and they are brought on-board. The ship is two weeks out of Shackleton Spaceport. The ship has been mapping the continent of Xanadu after Lady Takashi had a premonition in a dream of a friendly alien consciousness calling from the moon.
• The Beagle executes a Buoyancy Conversion, turning the land cruiser into a water vehicle. The rivers of Titan are filled not with water, but with pure liquid methane.
• Sandi Costello continuously curses in the name of Ra.
• The Doctor and Bill take off their atmospheric density jackets, as the Garden is too warm for them. Rudy suggests that they should have invested in a Zoomsuit, which can keep them "warmer than Mercury or cooler than Miles Davis."
• Upon investigating the Garden, the Doctor discovers that the only thing dead inside the dome is the two trees directly in its centre. These are actually the tree-shaped horns of Sythorr, the progenitor of the Haluu inside the dome.

Notes

Original print details

(Publication with page count and closing captions)

1. DWM 512 (12 pages) Next: The Dreamspace!
2. DWM 513 (12 pages) Next: Death of a Dreamer!
3. DWM 514 (12 pages) Next: The Parliament of Fear

Continuity

• Bill and the Doctor wear the atmospheric density jackets the First Doctor and Ian Chesterton had previously worn on Vortis, which the Doctor insists that they are more efficient and comfortable than any space suit. The . (TV: The Web Planet)
• The Doctor claims that the jackets are built out of an atmospheric converter. (TV: The Poison Sky)
• While gliding on the low-gravity Titan, Bill gleefully notes that travelling with the Doctor isn't always "sea monsters in the Thames and killer Emoji robots." (TV: Thin Ice, Smile)
• The Doctor tells Bill he has met Rudy Zoom before. (COMIC: The Eye of Torment)
• Under her atmospheric density jacket, Bill wears the same shirt that she had previously on the human colony planet with the Emojibots. (TV: Smile)
• Bill once again mentions Doctor Strange. (PROSE: The Shining Man)