Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night (comic story)

Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night was an Doctor Who Magazine comic strip featuring the Eleventh Doctor and Amy Pond.

Summary
Amy dons a nurse’s outfit as she and the Doctor investigate a series of mysterious disappearances at an old folks’ home. But what lurks in the laundry closet? And who are the faceless children who come visiting after dark?

Plot
Hawkshaw Manor Nursing Home, 2011. Arthur, a resident, is watched by a faceless young boy in the night. In the morning, Amy, his new nurse, visits him with a cup of tea. She remarks that the children outside are a bit loud, but Arthur enjoys hearing their laughter and games, as nobody at the home has and visitors; he lost his wife to cancer in 1988. Sister Frost, another nurse, interrupts, and takes Amy to the room of Margaret Webster, who passed away in her sleep the night before. However, she is nowhere to be seen…

Meanwhile, the Doctor questions Miss Bruce, who is in charge of the home. He asks her about disappearing bodies vanishing in the night.

Sister Frost tells Amy to collect the belongings of Margaret. As Frost leaves, Amy sees a picture of Margaret as a young girl. She turns around to see the girl watching her.

The Doctor accuses Miss Bruce of arranging with the undertakers to bury empty coffins, knowing this because he was there when they were dug up eight hundred years in the future. He also realises that she must have been deliberately only taking in residents with no friends or relatives. When he asks her about the children outside, she says there are no children. The Doctor decides to talk to the residents.

Amy follows young Margaret, but is stopped by Sister Frost. Amy claims to have been searching for the laundry closet. Despite it being directly next to it, Frost says she is in the wrong and of the building, and leads Amy away.

The Doctor shows Arthur the TARDIS, and asks him about the boy with no face. Arthur is scared for his life, as another resident saw the boy and died the next night. He reassures him and asks about the children, who only recently started going to the home. He notices that they have odd clothes, and have no mobile phones or iPods, just a bat and ball. He asks one of them who they are and why they’re there, and he tells him that if grown-ups find out they’ll put a stop to their games. Young Margaret tells Arthur not to worry, as he’ll be coming to play with them very soon… Amy arrives and tells the Doctor about the girl that the nurses can’t see, and the Doctor realises that someone is using a perception filter, and there is alien technology hidden somewhere nobody will notice. Amy realises that it’s in the invisible laundry closet.

The Doctor, Amy and Arthur break into the laundry closet to find a vast chamber that looks like some sort of nest. Sister Frost emerges from the shadows, and reveals that she is in fact a large insect-like robot. She says they are a threat to the surrogates and must be eliminated. As the robot shoots at them, Arthur collapses and dies, only for the faceless boy to appear and absorb his consciousness. Now with a face, the boy tells the robot to stop, as the Doctor and Amy are his friends. The Doctor asks the robot about its function, and it tells him it is a vorlax regeneration drone that creates clones that absorb people’s consciousness at the moment of death. It was compromised by enemy fire, and its teleport drive malfunctioned, causing it to arrive at the nursing home and activate its camouflage. The Doctor repairs the teleport and programs it with a new destination: An uninhabited garden world where it can’t cause any trouble. The Doctor, Amy and Arthur then give the other residents a choice: Be made young like Arthur and start a new life on another planet, or stay at the home, as they are.

A news reporter talks about the mysterious disappearances at the nursing home; That morning, the nurses discovered that every single resident had inexplicably vanished during the night. Miss Bruce was arrested, but the police investigation was called off, as the resident’s lottery syndicate was the winner of the euro-jackpot, and they have all emigrated to New Zealand. In reality, they have moved to a new planet, and Sister Frost continues to look after the children.

Characters

 * Eleventh Doctor
 * Amy Pond
 * Arthur
 * Margaret Webster
 * Bruce
 * Vorlax

Continuity

 * Margaret is shown being absorbed by the TARDIS in the background. This is then dealt with in Apotheosis and The Child of Time.