The Monoliths of Mars (8 Episodes)

When we last left our brave adventurers, they had just narrowly escaped the clutches of the Time Lords by sending Lee Liu's Time Cabinet into the time/space continuum as a distraction. Lee Liu went ballistic. Once he discovered his Organ couldn't be
retrieved, he stormed off farther into the Tardis, demanding retribution. Shortly thereafter, Natasha noticed that Lee Liu was leaving behind traces of physical composition, possibly due from his travelling in the Time Cabinet.

Rushing off to Lee Liu's room to find out what might be happening to him, Stan noticed Lee Liu had, in his rush out of the console room, been ripping out equipment from various Roundels. Arriving at his room, it had become apparent that Lee Liu had planned to use major parts from the Tardis to fashion a primitive version of his Pipe Organ. It had also become apparent that Lee Liu was suffering from serious temporal psychosis and physical degradation because of it.

Meanwhile, the Tardis had landed on Mars, approximately 65,000,000 B.C. To everyone's shock, at that time, Mars had a breathable atmosphere and look to be lush and green, not unlike Earth. . Mars on the whole appeared to be a post-apocalyptic world on the mend, with litterings of futuristic equipment totally ignored by most of the inhabitants. On the scanner, a group of 10' tall Blue Centaurs armed with spears were in the middle of a firefight with Yellow Half Men/Half Spiders (armed with rayguns). Mad banging could be heard outside of the Tardis.

Meanwhile, the crew had managed to subdue Lee Liu and place him in Stasis, never to be heard of again.

Leaving the Tardis to turn it upright (it had flipped on its side from the fight outside), only to see Centaurs laid wasted and dead around the scene. The crew were then captured and escorted to the city of Vikram by a further group of Blue Centaurs, to be embraced and welcomed by Eksis, the black skinned mute leader of the Centaurs. It was revealed that the Princess Paramanthea was the source of the firefight, whisked away by the mysterious Spiders, a race not seen in Vikram for 300 years.

Adapting their quarters and rebuilding it into a functioning stellar cartography lab, it was mused that Paramanthea would have been taken to the Monoliths of Dread, the historic place where the Spiders were to have come from. Enlisting Eksis' help and taking a disused flying car from the wreckage inside Vikram, the crew went off to the Monoliths to rescue the Princess....

....With fierce winds and rain driving the flying car away from the area, the crew were force to land on the outskirts of the Monoliths of Dread. A large blue globe atop the central stone complex shot out lightning and rained down into the land. Wherever the lightning hit, the ground would instantly freeze. Bravely, our adventurers skulked between the Crop Circle-like Monoliths to enter the central complex.. Halfway through their journey, they discovered a frozen Wizard of Yash and Paramanthea dragged along on a stone slab by several spiders. Following the spiders into the central complex, Stan learned that the Monoliths were a disused Water Processing plant from the pre-apocalyptic age. The plant's function had gone awry and was being used to transform elements from the ground into lightning and rain from the Globe.

.... After a firefight with some Spider Soldiers, the group happened upon the main control room with. Mulkul, the deranged despot at the helm of the controls he had fashioned into a primitive throne. It was revealed that Mulkul had tried to destroy life on Mars twice before: Once 300 Years Ago but was defeated by the Wizards of Yash, once 1000 Years Ago, defeated by nuclear weapons. Mulkul claimed it was for the greater good and that the world was frought with horrible mutations and by flooding the world and plunging it into an ice age, Mars would be remade in his own image, with his slave Paramanthea as his concubine.

....After an intense battle, Natasha killed Mulkul with his laser pistol. George dispatched some of the soldiers with a gun he had taken from one of the guards, though the weapon was too unwieldy and tended to knock the mathematician unconscious with the recoil. With George firing on the console and Stan causing the console to overload and fire back on itself, it was decided that escaping the Monoliths with Paramanthea and rescuing the village of Vikram would be the most prudent measure.

....Repairing the jarred flying car after a lghtning hit, the crew left back towards the Tardis. Though deftly dodging several lightning strikes, George lost control of piloting the craft and drove it into the ground from a dizzying height.

Whilst Natasha was struck unconscious, George was sent crashing through the windshield and broke his neck, killing him instantly. To save his own life at the crash, Stan triggered a regeneration. Quickly entering the Tardis with Paramanthea and an unconscious Natasha, the new Stan re-assembled the navigation circuits using parts from the remote control device he had gained from his previous incarnation (in The Five Stans). Setting the co-ordinates for the centre of Vikram to save the people of Mars and relocate them to another planet, the new Stan flipped the switch.....

.....and landed on Earth, July 1998.

This adventure rated a 5 on our Joe's Character Death Rating