The Garden Rebellion (comic story)

Summary
A trip for the Doctor and Heather to Hyde Park in the future finds it paved over and being used as a car park. Racing to a sudden explosion at the Royal Albert Hall they find panic and chaos. From the explosion and dereliction on the streets they see a band of rebels trying to escape from an army of hissing, highly mobile tripods, each housing a plant in their domed structures and in unison chanting “Monoxise the humans. Monoxise!” Joining the fleeing rebels the Doctor and Heather become separated when the ground falls away and the Doctor falls into an underground group of survivors hiding from the tripods. The Doctor learns that the tripods (“half robot, half garden centre”), are called Gardenizens. The Gardenizens were eco-drones designed to offset the carbon footprint of everyone in Britain. Some were even given individual names by their owners until one day they just turned on people and started rounding them up and taking them to prison camps. The nearest camp and main control centre is in Kew Gardens, and while the Doctor leads a party to release the captives he goes to find out who is leading the Gardenizens. Inside the command centre the Doctor is taken to a beautiful giant plant, a collective super-brain of the eco-drones. Detecting that the Doctor’s biology is different, the command flower explains that because the people have rendered Earth unable to sustain life, plant life has turned against human life, and is no longer willing to sustain it. The Doctor is able to talk to the plant and convinces it that the humans and plants could once again live together. Given a second chance the Gardenizens once more become inactive with the Doctor telling Heather that “talking to plants keeps them happy!”

Characters

 * The Doctor
 * Heather McCrimmon

Original print details (Publication with page count and closing captions)

 * 1) DWA 144 (4 pages) NEXT WEEK! Space goats!

Reprints

 * None to date

Continuity

 * The Doctor is featured wearing his brown suit and brown coat in this strip.
 * A Gardenizen was named Arthur by an 'owner'. This is also the name chosen for the horse ridden by the Tenth Doctor in DW: The Girl in the Fireplace.

Timeline

 * This story takes place after DWA: One Careful Owner
 * This story takes place before DWA: The Goats of Christmas Past