Autopia (comic story)

Autopia was a one-shot Tenth Doctor comic story from IDW Publishing.

Publisher's summary
An All-American creative team tackles the celebrated Doctor in this special standalone tale. An adventure where the Tenth Doctor and his companion arrive on a utopian planet where robots do all the manual labour. But things aren't quite what they seem...

Summary
The Doctor and Donna Noble breach a global forcefield to visit the planet Autopia, a human colony world whose inhabitants isolated themselves from the rest of the universe and turned their world into an automated utopia (hence the name) so that they could spend their lives in meditation. The Doctor is interested in what became of the Chronos Mission, a five-person team that previously visited the planet and were never heard from again.

The Doctor and Donna find that Autopia is a beautiful paradise but the human inhabitants have stagnated. They spend all their lives contemplating past works of literature, art, and mathematics while their robot slaves do everything physical. What's more, the Autopians sentence the travellers to be executed, as they did with the Chronos Mission. The travellers convince the robot assigned to carry out the sentence, named "Sam" by Donna, not to go through with it, and to let the Doctor upgrade him and all the other robots to full sentience.

The freed robots plan to kill their former masters, but the Doctor makes them realise that this would mean they were no better than the Autopians. Both groups wonder what they should do with their lives now. Donna hits upon the idea of making idyllic Autopia open to the rest of the universe as a spa world, with the robots in charge and the Autopians as concierges. The Doctor thinks this is a genius idea. The story ends with Donna, the Doctor, and Sam reclining in chairs in the Autopian countryside.

Characters

 * Tenth Doctor
 * Donna Noble
 * Sam
 * Ixtalia

Continuity

 * The Tenth Doctor explains to Donna that the cats on Earth are of alien origin and are actually sentient, though she does not believe him. (PROSE: The Legacy of Gallifrey)

Cover Gallery
Autopia