Mancopolis (comic story)

Mancopolis was the two hundredth and eighth comic strip published in Doctor Who Magazine, beginning on 4 January 2024Doctor Who Magazine 599 on panini.co.uk by Panini Magazines and written by Alan Barnes.
It marked the comic strip debuts of the Fifteenth Doctor and Ruby Sunday, depicting an unspecified point in their travels.
It was notably the first story in any medium to depict Ruby taking a trip in the TARDIS, predating any such trip in televised media.
== Plot ==
=== Part One ===
08:30 am in the city of the north, and in a futuristic high-rise building, a bespectacled man named Gerry pleads with his boss, Mayor Mary Mulberry, to be honest with the public about the collapsing economy. She deflects him, claiming that the early meeting has made him difficult, despite her claiming it to be a breakfast meeting. Upon his admission that he has been in contact with Galactic Central Exchange to send the auditors in on her, Mulberry admits that her Internal Affairs team has intercepted his call and informed her. No longer wanting to work with a "snitch", she has him teleported to a dark chamber where he is attacked by wet, fanged creatures, informing Gerry over their watches that he is the breakfast.
An hour and fifteen minutes later, the Fifteenth Doctor and Ruby Sunday arrive in the TARDIS above Jason Orange Plaza. The Doctor proudly shows her their location: her childhood home city of Manchester in 2424, shocking her. He points to all the skyscrapers named after legendary figures from the city's history and a strange cloud, but Ruby instead notices that they have landed upon a tram track. Realising the danger they are in as a futuristic tram hurtles towards them, they dodge it and it stops just in time, but they are immediately surrounded by the Care Fleet vehicle's masked occupants — the Care Force, who accuse them of being tram raiders and order them to surrender. As they do, a baby faced cloud appears, claiming to be a witness to the Doctor and Ruby having unhappy faces and dares them to try and make the Care Force go away. When they fail to do so, it begins raining on the duo impetuously. Ruby, annoyed, sarcastically states that they are definitely in Manchester.
=== Part Two ===
The twenty million residents of the city all head to work at the Salford Textile Zone to the "hymn[s] of Gracie".
Meanwhile, the Doctor tells Ruby Road smile, pleasing the cloud and it stops raining on them. The Doctor explains how the cloud — a weather orb — works to Ruby and asks #07371 if she wears her helmet because she was unable to smile, the Mayor interrupts her before she can respond by telling her to remove her helmet, communicating via the windows of a nearby tower that doubles as a screen. #07371 reveals her face and name — Zhi — while the Mayor continues talking, incorrectly believing the Doctor and Ruby where the auditors from the Galactic Central Exchange, let in by Gerry before his disposal, which the duo goes along with.
The Mayor orders Zhi to bring the Doctor and Ruby to Mancopolis City Hall; she transports them in the Care Fleet vehicle whilst explaining how the Mayor had saved the city after the 2399 Event, giving the residents jobs, even though since then vacancies had opened. The shuttle comes go a stop outside the window of the Mayor's office, and the duo enter — its constructed from porous glass.
Mayor Mulberry condemns how the Doctor and Ruby distracted her from the arrival of an assault ship sneaked into the city, perceiving their actions as a deliberate diversion. She has the ship destroyed, an action that she understands likely caused the deaths of people below in Ls Lowry Square but shirks responsibility before offering a negotiation; the duo asks for chairs to sit on, before they continue, but the Mayor tells them to transform into their natural form, believing them to be shape-shifting non-humans. Ruby asks the Doctor if the Mayor thinks they are aliens, which offends the Mayor and she transforms into her moth-like true appearance. The Mayor deduces that the Doctor and Ruby are imposters, threatening to dismember one of them whilst the other confesses, so the duo flees into the lift... which is actually the Mayor's teleporter — they find themselves in a dark space, about to be attacked by seemingly giant silkworms!
== Characters ==
* Fifteenth Doctor
* Ruby Sunday
* Mayor Mary Mulberry
* Gerry
* Zhi
* #05932
* #06413
* #07345
* Weather orb
== Worldbuilding ==
* Chairs, according to Ruby, are objects of "basic hospitality".
* The Doctor states to Ruby that the "answer to her question" is that "massive people-eating silkmoths come from massive people-eating silkworms".
=== Food and drink ===
* Gerry was told by Mulberry that they'd have a "breakfast meeting"; she actually intended to feed him to the fanged creatures, having led him to believe that he'd be served something like croissants.
* Mulberry pours herself a cup of coffee.
=== Manchester ===
* Manchester, also known as Mancopolis, is a northern city.
** It is a vast walled city and an independent state, spanning five hundred square miles, from the Wigan Watchpoint in the west and Old Oldham in the east.
** An old motorway sign indicates the former location of the M62 and the M6.
* Mulberry is a trusted figurehead to the public.
* Gerry is Mulberry's deputy.
* Gerry metaphorically claims that the interest on the debt contributing to the economic crash is "stratospheric".
** He also metaphorically claims that there is a "black hole" in the city's finances, which they've crossed the event horizon.
* Internal Affairs detected Gerry's communication with the Galactic Central Exchange, alerting Mulberry. After Gerry's admission, she calls him a whistle-blower.
** The Exchange told Gerry that auditors would be sent to Manchester. The Auditor-General also threatened him with extradition.
* Mulberry's office has a desk, chair and computer. It is also furnished with a framed butterfly and a potted fern.
** It is located around one hundred feet above the ground.
* The TARDIS materialises on the Jason Orange Plaza.
* The buildings are named after "legendary figures" from the city's history. Among them are; Fred Perry, Nana Bonsu, Olive Morris, Frank Sidebottom, Shelagh Delaney, Eric Sykes, Rosetta Tharpe, John Cooper Clarke, Lemn Sissay, George Formby, Les Dawson, Erinma Bell, Pablo Fanque, Tony Wilson, Don Estelle, Gracie Fields, Pete Shelley, LS Lowry, Tommy Cannon, Victoria Wood, Sarah Parker Remond, Albert Finney and Paul Morley.
* The "gleaming towers" are visible from as far away as the Waste-Midlands.
* The Care Forces' vehicle is named Care Fleet.
* According to Ruby, rain is typical in Manchester.
* Mancopolis has barriers; Mulberry suspects that Gerry gave the Doctor and Ruby a particle key which allowed them to bypass the city's barriers.
** The city has a weather field.
* The Doctor expected some of the original buildings to have survived by 2424, but they had concreted over before Mayor Mulberry's construction of the city wall.
* The Mayor gave the residents of the city jobs in the mills and factories that tmanufacture synthi-materials for spacesuits, which are then exported.
** The Doctor likens the employment of people in mills to cotton mills in 1824.
=== The Doctor ===
* The Doctor wears his burnt orange leather trenchcoat.
=== Individuals ===
* Zhi's uses the identifier "#07371".
* Mayor Mulberry is some sort of "lepidopteran", with a digital skin generated by the smartwatch on her wrist.
** The Doctor uses a spin on the idiom "a wolf in sheep's clothing" by referring to her as a "moth in silk clothing."
** The Mayor has large wings, eyes and mandibles in her true form.
** Ruby identifies the Mayor as a silkmoth.
=== Technology ===
* Ruby has never used a teleporter, believing them to only exist in films.
== Notes ==
* This was the first Doctor Who Magazine comic story to feature the Fifteenth Doctor, and the first words spoken by him in his tenure as the incumbent incarnation of the DWM range are: "Yeah, this is it. This is what we want!"
* Similar to before it, the story's title is kept entirely secret until the final page of part one, simply being called "Comic strip" on the issue's spine and contents page.
* Although the story's placement in the Doctor and Ruby's timeline is ambiguous, it is likely shortly after as they're still wearing similar clothes to what they wore in that episode.
* This story — the Fifteenth Doctor's comic debut in DWM — is set four hundred years after its real world publication in 2424, similarly to how — the Fourteenth Doctor's comic debut in DWM — is set three hundred years after its publication in 2323.
=== Production errors ===
to be added
=== Original print details ===
(Publication with page count and closing captions)
* DWM 599: (6 pages): N/A
* DWM 600: (6 pages): Next Issue: Sub-Culture
== Continuity ==
to be added
== Footnotes ==
Category:2024 comic stories
Category:Fifteenth Doctor DWM comic stories
Category:Stories set in Manchester
Category:Sources set in 2424