Don't Step on the Grass (comic story)

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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

Solicitation summary for part one:

"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!"

Characters

References

  • When the Doctor explains why he answered Martha's superphone call, he says he'd never ignore the phone call of a woman in trouble — or man, or penguin. This likely refers to Frobisher.
  • The Doctor says he "played Hamlet a little while back". This is a fourth-wall-breaking in-joke for fans of David Tennant, who will know he played Hamlet in a 2008 Royal Shakespeare Company production, due to there being no regular series of Doctor Who in 2009.
  • Martha and a UNIT officer find some documents from the in-universe website, whoisdoctorwho.com.
  • A UNIT soldier calls for "five rounds rapid" to be fired into the Enochai Angel. This recalls the Brigadier's famous line from The Dæmons.
  • Brian Green is British Prime Minister. He was preceded by Harriet Jones.
  • 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.[1] By January 2010, the story was described to retailers as a four-parter.[2]
  • According to the website of artist Blair D. Shedd, 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.[3]

Continuity

  • The Doctor says he gets bored with repeats. He later echoes these sentiments in DW: The Big Bang, saying that he hates repeats.
  • 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 (shown in The End of Time as being called "Fighting the Future") was "life-altering."
  • The Doctor says he had a hand in the establishment of the Black Archive, and sends Martha there. (SJA: Enemy of the Bane)
  • The Doctor reveals he's still angry with Martha for nearly engaging the Osterhagen Project. (DW: Journey's End)
  • The Doctor again employs the phrase "spit-spot" as a means of encouraging people to spring into action. (SJA: The Wedding of Sarah Jane Smith)
  • Martha says Matthew, who is feeling like the least valuable companion, is suffering from "tin dog syndrome". Since she wasn't present during the events of DW: School Reunion, this may be further indication that she is married to Mickey Smith — the original sufferer of "tin dog syndrome" — at the time of this story. Furthermore, Captain Erisa Magambo often refers to Martha as "Mrs Smith", which must be her married name by now.
  • The Doctor references his and Martha's trip to visit William Shakespeare. (DW: The Shakespeare Code)
  • Martha says she expected the Doctor to avoid modern Earth because of Donna Noble's recent memory wipe. (DW: Journey's End) How, exactly, Martha knows of Donna's fate is not made clear.
  • This story establishes that the incident with the Osterhagen key made Martha leave UNIT. She appears in this story as a an explicit "freelancer" who is back with UNIT only on a temporary basis — and only as a favour to her friend, Malcolm Taylor. Thus the story appears to have been written with knowledge of Martha's fate in The End of Time.
  • Magambo obeys the Doctor's express wishes in Planet of the Dead and fails to salute him when they first meet.
  • The Doctor seems unaware of the events of TW: Children of Earth, but Martha makes an oblique reference to them, both with her dialogue and her body language. Children would in fact be quite a recent event, as Day One makes reference to the fact that Martha was on her honeymoon, and Tesseract establishes she's recently returned from it.
  • The Advocate escaped the Time War by following Davros when he was saved by Dalek Caan (DW: 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. (IDW: The Forgotten)

Cover Gallery

  • Doctor Who (2009) Issue 9 (Cover A)

    Doctor Who (2009)
    Issue 9 (Cover A)

  • Issue 9 (Cover B)

    Issue 9 (Cover B)

  • Issue 10 (Cover A)

    Issue 10 (Cover A)

  • Issue 11 (Cover A)

    Issue 11 (Cover A)

  • Issue 12 (Cover A)

    Issue 12 (Cover A)

Timeline

Reprint

Reprinted in the IDW graphic novel Tesseract.

References

  1. ↑ IDW's March 2010 solicitations
  2. ↑ IDW's April 2010 solicitations
  3. ↑ Shedd, Blair D. "Doctor Who - WEST COAST ONLY". Personal web site. 17 March 2010.
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