Signs of Life (comic story)

Summary
In Liverpool 1963, the Doctor has taken Martha to watch the Beatles, who are just starting out, even though he tells her he’s more of a Stones fan, the Living Stones of Thurakzima 7, silicon life forms. The Doctor hates spoilers, thinks that life would be no fun if you knew the future all the time. Something is bombing the area with positively charged ions. Using the sonic screwdriver, the Doctor deduces someone is using a biometric matter transfusion field, used for interstellar teleportation. The field contracts and makes Martha vanish. The Doctor dashes to the TARDIS hoping to track her via the disruptions in space-time since it is a long-range beam. He intercepts the beam and gets Martha back into the TARDIS. The beam came from Gelezen, a planet from which no one ever returns. Thousands of years ago the Gelezen adopted an isolationist police and the planet is surrounded by a time field. What is known about them is a very few facts and rumor. The race there seem to be a clone race. Some people say they used human DNA as a template for their entire species. They forcibly extract the deoxyribonucleic acids from humans and transfused them into their own clones. They are DNA vampires. The TARDIS shields are overridden, the beam breaks through and Martha vanishes again!

Clone surgeons of Gelezen have used a long-range teleport beam to snatch Martha from the TARDIS. Martha wonders if where she is is Halloween in Holby City. Dr Skelpa introduces himself. He tells her his race is dying after centuries of living in isolation, cut off by a time field. Dr Skelpa claims to know the Doctor. Martha fights off the aliens. The Doctor has tried temporal feedback, space time side step, emergency stop…but the TARDIS cannot get through the time field. Martha grabs a chair and smashes it into the ancient time field machine. The TARDIS appears and the Doctor exits, joking about how he has always told Martha about going on ahead of him and how the aliens look like a sorry bunch with the genetic blues. The Doctor tells Skelpa that the title of Doctor has to be earned, as a good friend of his once told him. He warns that if they have harmed Martha in any way there will be reprisals. A well pitched sonic pulse could shatter every instrument. Skelpa tells him their genetic template is in a state of decay. Martha’s DNA will allow them to live forever…because she is a time traveler. Martha tells Skelpa the Doctor does not do revenge, he will help them. Every time the aliens use the teleport beam in time, it causes havoc in the time vortex (and Martha’s stomach). Human DNA is not made to withstand constant recloning inside a time field. The Doctor uses his own DNA: it is intelligent and adaptable. It can replicate the human gene matrix as a self-regenerating DNA in the aliens’ machine. The Doctor experiences some pain and hopes he will get a cup of tea for this. The Doctor tells them if they didn’t live in self-imposed isolation, they could have had this a long time ago. The aliens will no longer need to have constant gene replenishment. In the TARDIS, the Doctor tells Martha that sometimes it is the monsters that need saving.

Characters

 * Tenth Doctor
 * Martha Jones

Original print details

 * Publication with page count and closing captions


 * 1) DWA Issue 36 (6 pages)
 * 2) DWA Issue 37 (6 pages)

Continuity
to be added

Timeline

 * This story takes place after DWAM: The Last Soldier
 * This story takes place before DWAM: Shipwreck!