Meteor of Doom
(6 Episodes total)

 
Act I
   
The Setting: June 11, 1936. Cross Plains, Texas
  King's Daughters Hospital (click for map)
 

Escaping the Zygon ship, Arthur and Woan take Stan back to the Tardis, only to find that Stan has regenerated into a newer, taller, prettier (by human standards) form. Still mentally unstable, Stan picked out a wardrobe and continued on bravely.

Scouting the area, Woan and Arthur discovered the Tardis had landed inside a four patient ward inside a mysteriously silent hospital. It was the middle of the night, and beds were unkempt and empty! Outside the window and several miles away arose a eerie green haze from the corn field of a nearby farm. Arthur quickly locked the door to avoid detection while they assessed the situation. They rushed back into the Tardis when they heard the door they had just locked rattling and being forced open!

It was the nurse. She cried out: "Mr Carter? Mr. Carter?" in vain and began looking around the room for the presumed patient. She was bewildered to see an ornate Japanese magician's cabinet between two of the beds, but when the patient failed to answer her calling, she left the room. Creeping out from their hiding place inside the Tardis, the crew began to investigate. Using his bio-scanner, Stan very quickly discovered that the mysterious Mr. Carter hadn't actually disappeared, but remained immobile and invisible in his bed and only his bio-scanner could detect him. As the bio-sanner passed over the area, a faint residue of a green glow would follow the scan as it followed the trace of a body. Arthur quickly assertained from his chart that Randolph Carter had been admitted two days ago with symptoms of paralysis.
As Stan went to leave the room to investigate further, the door slammed into him as the nurse returned. "Are you the Doctor?", she asked. "The new doctor? To look after Mrs. Howard? You came very quickly. We just called for someone this morning." Stan introduces himself as a visiting physician and Woan and Arthur as his students.
The nurse introduces herself as Nurse Betty and that Mr. Carter was simply one of the victims who had arrived in the last 48 hours with the same illness as Jane Howard. Jane had been inflicted with this strange coma after a glowing green meteor crashed at the Howard farm in the predescribed 48 hours. She further explains that patients disappearing were a normal occurence with this disease, where they would get ill, fall into a death-like coma, and within 6 hours, completely disappear. Abruptly, she explains that it is customary for visiting physicians to sign in and meet with Administrator Johnston before attending patients, even recently disappeared patients, and to follow her to the Administrator's office.
   
As they walk the corridors of King's Daughters hospital, Arthur hears snarled whispering coming from a locked cell from the nearest single ward. It is one of the inmates, a former doctor who went insane several weeks ago. It is revealed that this hospital is a police hospital for the criminally insane where the inamtes are held and either remain, are sent on to jail, or are executed after trial. The nearest cell contained one of the physicians from the hospital and a professor of psychology from the University of Texas, a psychiatrist named Dr. Eugene Walter Fudman. Eugene was found several weeks ago in the basement of that very building in the boiler room, covered in blood and standing triumphantly after brutally murdering, dismembering and eating several "coloured people" he found at a nearby circus. He claimed "the book" told him to do it. Sheriff B.J. Johnston committed him immediately.

Upon meeting the Administrator, Richard Johnston, Stan introduces himself. Immediately, Johnston is dismayed, claiming this horrific mysterious book has been chanting the name Stanislaw and calling for help since the meteor landed in Bob Howard's farm not 2 miles hence. Having a book screaming at you was incredible! The book, still screaming and actively driving people mad, was locked in a safe in the morgue in the basement. The administrator beckoned the crew on to the basement to reveal "the book".

As they enter the old-style chain link pulley elevator, Arthur felt something hard pressing against his shoulder. A quick bio-scan revealed there to be an invisible zombie in the elevator with them!

   

Inside the locked safe, drenched in a pool of blood, was a large book (1' x 1' x 0.5') composed of pieces of flesh, skin, and the eyes and mouths from a variety of people. Eyes and mouths were skirting back and forth, moaning and frothing. The book was tightly held together by a gold ribbon and a clasp in the shape of a small skull. The ebony face immediately began to chant:

"Stanislaw! Free me! I'm in such pain! You trapped me here to die! Have mercy! Free me, Stanislaw...", and continued to repeat.

They immediately tried to question the book, to little avail. Something was trapped within the pages of this horrific tome, and Stan caused it!

Attempting to contact it mentally, the book flew open before Stan for all to see. Quickly, Stan was reduced to a shadow of himself as all his psychic energy was drained!

 

Two of the open pages of this terrible book made everyone see the most horrific
display of cruelty one person could commit to another, as they themselves interpreted it:

Richard Johnston doubled over, vomitting blood and convulsing in unspeakable horror. Woan quickly discovered the pages, gross as they were, were merely a reflection of one's own mental horror. The book had hundreds of tightly bound pages of PSYCHIC PAPER and that the images they saw came from their own minds, including the pool of blood from the safe.
 
From the book arose a naked saracen man, shouting "I'M FREE!" Stan recognized the figure: it was an old professor from Gallifrey calling himself Al Azif. Stan had remembered the story that on Gallifrey, Al Azif had tried to overthrow and murder the high council of Time Lords in a coup using his emmense psychic powers. He had since been banished to Earth, "Gallifrey's great penal colony". Al Azif had presumed Stan, being on earth, had been banished as well and that they should team up and get off the planet so Al Azif could resume the revenge against the high council. When Stan claimed he lost his Tardis in an adventure with the Daleks, Al Azif mentally scanned the time lord and his companions and discovered they were lying. Their Tardis lay a mere floor away. With a wave of his hand, Stan, Woan and Arthur found themselves locked in a mental paralysis as Al Azif strode nakedly and confidently from the room.
Free of the paralysis, Stan and his companions rushed off to secure the Tardis from Al Azif. But standing between them and the elevator were three invisible zombies! The invisibility quickly wore off and the zombies became green glowing shambling figures, hands outstretched, menacingly. Woan quickly dispatched them with his quarterstaff.

Arriving at the elevator, they were greeted by Robert Howard, the reknown author of the Conan series of fantasy books. He immediately pleaded with Stan to see his mother and hopefully cure her of this strange disease. Stan agreed, albeit after demanding they regroup inside the Tardis to erect a force field to protect against Al Azif.

Robert was amazed at the sight of the Tardis and began to make note hurriedly! Stan claimed it was mere trickery and mirrors.

Gaining his futuristic weaponry from the Tardis, Arthur fired upon all four zombies they encountered rushing down the hall to the intensive care unit. The first zombie was incinerated instantly! Arthur had forgotten to set his blaster to "stun".
   

Entering the intensive care ward, Stan examined the comatose body of Jane Howard. Her old weathered skin was replaced with an scary black undertone, with a green aura rising from her eyes and around her body. Upon Stan saying "We should leave", Jane Howard's eyes opened and in an otherworldly voice, she screeched "Yes, leave Time Lord! Leave while you can!".

Moments lately, Arthur felt overcome by a paralysis, yet one vastly different from the one Al Azif had incurred. He quickly shook it off.

Deciding it prudent to investigate the crashsite, Robert Howard eagerly rushed them over in his studebaker to the Howard Farm. It was revealed that about 100 feet from the farmhouse was a green glowing meteor about the 100' in diameter, creating a burned out (and popcorn filled) crater in the middle of the Howards' corn field. Going for a closer lok at the meteor, Stan was blocked by green glowing cows, infected by the same disease.
Desciding to rush back to the hospital instead, Stan, Woan and Arthur found their way blocked by Robert E. Howard himself! Pleading with the cows and the meteor area in general, Howard begged: "I did what you asked! I brought everyone in town to you like you asked! Please! I just want you to free my mother! I don't know what I'd do without her!"
 
Stan quickly convinced Robert that he, Stan, would be better equipped to help out Jane Howard and to drive them back to the hospital so they could treat her within the medical bay of the Tardis. Howard agreed. It was at this point that Arthur succumbed to the illness and was paralysed, presumably from the proximity to the meteor. They rushed back to the hospital (which was oddly, devoid of zombies), grabbed the comatose Jane Howard and carried her (occasionally spitting and screaming a possessed blue murder) and Arthur to the Tardis. They were placed in stasis in the medical bay, with Stan and Woan pressed to find a cure.....
Act II

Stan and Woan quickly discover a cure for the alien disease. They concoct a chemical cure that would reduce the seratonin levels of the victim and test it on Jane Howard. It works! However, Jane Howard died on the medical bay table from lack of brain activity. They administer the cure to Arthur and he awakens, free of the illness.

Entering out into the hallway, (using Stan's bioscanner for detection) they find three invisible zombies attempting to enter Eugene Walter Fudman's cell. It is at this point that Fudman, who for some odd reason can see the invisible zombies, tries to barter a homemade bomb he claims to have made and deposited in the basement for his release. Stan ignores him. Instead, they capture one invisible zombie and one that had just became viisble and green and glowing.

Testing the cure, they find the invisible turned back to normal, the green one died.

They surmise that when the disease enters its third stage when the body glows green, the brain activity reduces to zero. The human dies, and the alien disease takes over the body, animating the corpse. Kept in restraints, the crew questions the alien.

It reveals that it is a member of the Issyac, a sentient disease from a doomed planet, Talos VII. After infecting a visiting freighter, the Issyac were expelled when the freighter crew self-destructed their ship. They instead collected themselves inside of an asteriod in an air pocket and drifted aimlessly in space, until landing on earth. The alien attempted to cajol Stan into believing they are refugees, then that they conquest was legitimate for their survival, and then stands its ground stating that as a disease, they can't exit their infected like a switch. Stan then negotiates a fair trade: if they leave the earth, he would transport them to an uninhabitated planet where he would try and find a race of people who could live a symbiotic life with.

It was understood that the humans that were in the final stage were already dead, murdered by the Issyac; and that Stan would be killing the Issyac in the half-infected people. It seemed a fair trade to the disease for the promise of a fresh plane tot propegate to They agree to the deal.

The crew herds the Issyac onto their Tardis, pilots it to an uncharted empty planet, and deposits the diseased beings. After 24 hours, they fly off to the World Fair on the Moon in the year 2300.

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