Series 1 Episode 2: Silence on Mars

Silence on Mars

Mars, 2132

There had been a time when Mars was a hub of activity. Humans had settled on the planet around 50 years ago, and since then it had become a wondrous place. Hundreds of thousands of colonists had settled down on this planet, calling it their new home. It was a place where they had a chance to escape the troubles they had faced on Earth.

But that was no more. Mars was silent.

Nobody knew where everyone who had previously settled on the planet had gone. One day, there were hundreds of thousands of people, and the next day there was nothing. No sign of life. No trace of anything. Everyone had gone.

On Earth, a collection of the most admired scientists the planet had to offer gathered together to figure out what had happened. They realised the extent of the problem that they were in. A large selection of the population had just disappeared without trace, and that shouldn’t have happened. The scientists-led by Professor Jessica Tucker, each exchanged theories of what they thought had happened, but theories weren’t enough. They needed solutions.

Jessica decided the only option was to go to Mars herself. She would maintain regular contact with the Scientists who remained on Earth, and would live the same sort of life as all the other visitors to the Red Planet before her.

One day, Jessica was watering the plants in one of the greenhouses they had set up, but when she tried to leave, the door would not open. She did all she could to release the lock but it was no hope.

Back on Earth, one of the scientists realised they had not communicated with Jessica for a while and opened up the communication channel. When it was turned on, all the scientists heard was a high pitched scream.

Jessica was dead.

The scientists realised that their problem did not have an easy solution. People kept dying, and whatever was killing them was doing it in a way that couldn’t be caught by those trying to stop it. It didn’t matter how many people the Scientists sent up to Mars to try and rectify the problem, because they’d suffer the same fate. The scientists believed that the only option they had was to give up. They couldn’t afford losing any more lives.

A Tsuraxi Time Ship skimmed through the time vortex until it reached its destination. When he left the ship, the Doctor recognised it instantly: It was Mars. The Doctor and his companion Lydia had arrived inside of a colony ship. There was nobody to be seen. Lydia was still stunned that she had travelled through space and time.

“I just cannot believe it”, Lydia remarked, “We’ve just travelled through space and time in that machine and now we’re on Mars.”

“I know.” The Doctor smirked, “You never really get over it.”

Lydia observed her surroundings. “How come humans have spent years working to try and get to Mars, but we’ve just arrived in a second?

“Don’t worry they’ll get there sometime. It looks like this is that time.”

The Doctor and Lydia looked out of the colony ship. It was a beautiful sight.

“So is there any reason why we are here?”, Lydia asked.

“I’ve encountered the Tsuraxi once before, but what they were describing wasn’t then. I’m going to encounter the Tsuraxi again, but I don’t know where and I don’t know when. Oh I’m a poet and I don’t know it!”

Lydia frowned. “How is that even possible? How can they have witnessed this encounter when you haven’t?”

“Because that’s how time works, Lydia. It’s not just a straight line. It’s a wibbly wobbly curly line. The Tsuraxi obviously set the coordinates here for some reason. I need to find out what they want, or indeed wanted.”

“So are there usually people here?”

The Doctor observed the area, “If I’ve got my timings right then there should be, but there’s not any around this area.” He paused for a moment before moving onto another thread of conversation. “You see, it’s not only the Tsuraxi I’m looking for. I travel around the universe in a sort of blue box. It won’t make any sense until you’ve seen it. Well, it probably won’t even make sense to you then. My ship exploded causing me to fall out of it and into your house, but it’s not been destroyed. The coordinates must have reset partway into orbit and now it could be anywhere in space and time. Sadly, there’s no way to find out where. I could find it here, or I may never find it. Until then, I’m stuck with that Tsuraxi time pod.”

The Doctor reached into his pocket and grabbed his sonic screwdriver.

Lydia sighed. “Not that piece of junk again.”

The Doctor snapped, “Piece of junk? Piece of junk? Oh my!”

The Doctor scanned the area for lifeforms, but did not pick up any signals. He continued, “As I said there should be some kind of life here because this base has been built."

“There’s just silence, Doctor. There’s nothing but silence. Surely there’d be something more.”

“You’d think so, but there isn’t. Anyhow Lydia, tell me about your life. You told me you’ve got questions you need answered, but they can wait. What are these questions?”

“My boss fired me from my work, so I went over to the coffee house just over the road. There was the sound of glass smashing, and the next thing I knew he was on the road, dead. He must have fell out the window. But the thing is, people don’t just fall out of windows.”

The Doctor frowned, “No they don’t, do they? That’s peculiar. Before we told you about it, did you see the tattoo on your hand that the Tsuraxi left?”

“No I didn’t. It’s still there. Doesn’t that mean they can activate the bomb at any time? Can’t you get it off somehow?”

“I don’t know, Lydia, I really don’t. You’re a weapon, and I cannot have that.”

“So get it off.”

The Doctor remained silent. He placed his screwdriver back inside of his pocket, before moving through the corridors of the base. Lydia eventually hurried after him. Suddenly, the corridors became darker. All light had been removed from the room.

Lydia shivered, “Oh my god. What the hell is happening?”

The Doctor was panicking, “I don’t know. Just go back into the room we came from.”

They returned to the main room of the colony ship, as the Doctor locked the door leading to the other corridors. Lydia struggled to control her breathing.

The Doctor comforted her, “Deep breaths, Lydia, don’t worry. It’s only a trick of the light.”

The lights closed on them once again, leaving them in darkness. The Doctor held Lydia close to him. Lydia felt a hand touch her on the back, and she screamed.

Lydia struggled to breathe, “What the hell was that? Something just touched my back.”

“It’s okay, Lydia, don’t worry.” The Doctor moved forward. “I think there’s probably something in the room with us, but it’s turned out the light because it doesn’t want us to see it.”

“Couldn’t we just leave, Doctor?”

“We can never just leave: That’s not what we do. We stay until the problem has been sorted. The lights are going out, there’s creatures in the room that don’t want to see us and there’s silence on Mars. We’ve got to find out why.”

The Doctor reached for the sonic screwdriver in his pocket. He managed to illuminate the room. For a split second, Lydia knew she could see something, but it disappeared before she could figure out what. The Doctor decided that it was best to exit the base. He noticed two spacesuits beside the door.

“Are you coming, Lydia?”

“I don’t really want to, but I don’t want to be left here alone either.”

The Doctor and Lydia trotted along the surface for a while until they reached a greenhouse. The Doctor opened the door and entered. He noticed a communicator on the floor.

Meanwhile on Earth, the Scientists had long since given up. It took them by surprise when a voice spoke through the Communication channel. It was the Doctor.

The Doctor spoke into the communicator, “I don’t know whether this communicator is communicating somewhere or if I’m just talking to myself right now but…”

One of the Scientists responded. “No, no, we’re here. I’m Professor Edmund Mortimer. What is your name?”

“My name’s the Doctor.”

Edmund was pleased to hear life coming from the communication channel once more. “How come you’re alive?”

“It may sound impossible to you, but I arrived here inside a time machine with a friend. I’m inside of a greenhouse now. Back in the colony ship, the lights all went out and my friend said something touched her on the shoulder. Looks like something killed everyone.”

“They’ve been gone for years now, but we’ve never been able to find a solution. We just decided to give up.”

“Give up?”, The Doctor was outraged. “You never give up when there are lives on the line. Hundreds of thousands of people have potentially died here and you’ve just decided to give up. I mean, we’ve not even got confirmation that they’re dead. They could be being kept prisoner somewhere or something. You never give up. You never take the easy option. You take the best option: And giving up is never the best option.”

Edmund felt guilty. “Do you need us to travel up there and help you address the issue.”

“It’s fine, I’ll come down to you and we’ll travel up there. It’ll be quicker.”

The Tsuraxi Time Ship arrived inside of the Scientists base. The Doctor and Lydia departed the ship and greeted the Scientists. It only took themselves a few moments to get ready and return inside of the time pod and travel to the Red Planet.

The lights were still out when they arrived. The Doctor, Lydia, Edmund and a few other Scientists searched the perimeter once again.

The Doctor knew he must form a plan. “Last time when I lit up the room using my sonic device Lydia spotted something in the corner of the room. This time I need you all to look intently and cover all corners of the room. We’re going to trap it.”

“But it can hear us right?” Lydia asked, “If it doesn’t want to be seen, then it’s going to hide. We can’t tell it what we’re going to do.”

“We don’t know how clever this thing is,” Edmund said, “We don’t even know if it has the ability to hear, or see. We don’t know what it’s capable of.”

The Doctor reached for his sonic screwdriver. The room lit up once again. Lydia pointed towards the creature, which soon disappeared once again. Edmund reached for a gun in his pocket (Much to the Doctors disapproval) and began to shoot in the direction that the creature had been spotted.

The Doctor frowned, “We don’t need to resort to violence here.”

Edmund approached the Doctor, “This thing destroyed hundreds of thousands of people. Why should we show mercy?”

“That thing has not shown any harm yet. There’s no proof that it’s responsible for the deaths.”

Edmund chuckled, “Of course it is!”

“Don’t be ignorant, Professor.”

There were two sets of screams. The lights returned to the room. The other scientists were dead. The Doctor, Lydia and Edmund were now the only survivors.

Edmund smirked, “Now do you believe the creature isn’t doing any harm?”

The lights died again as another scream sounded. The Doctor and Lydia backed towards the Tsuraxi Time pod.

“I thought you said we weren’t going to leave.” said Lydia.

“I did.” The Doctor responded, “That thing out there has killed Edmund and the other scientists. It will show no mercy. I don’t want you to die too.”

Suddenly the Tsuraxi time pod was descended into darkness. The Doctor tapped the controls as the ship hurtled into orbit. The creature moved silently through the ship. The Doctor pressed a switch which released the ships doors.

“Hold on tightly, Lydia!”

The Doctor and Lydia held onto the console, and the lights returned. The creature had gone.

Lydia regained her breath. “I thought you said we weren’t going to resort to violence.”

“There was no other way. That thing out there killed hundreds of thousands of people. However much I hate to say it, there’s no way for them to come back. We can’t have more innocent people dying at the hands of that creature.”

“What if there’s more than one of them?”

“We ought to hope not. We best go back to the base on Earth to inform them of what has happened.”

“And what if there are more than one of them?”

“I guess they’ll just have to put a stop to the Mars missions for a while.”

The Doctor and Lydia took a few moments on the Earth base to inform the Scientists of what had happened, before returning to the Tsuraxi time pod.

“So what next?” The Doctor pondered. “Are you ready to go home?”

“You mentioned earlier that you should never give up, well I did. I saw an opportunity to escape from the horrors of my life, but I’ve got to face them. I can’t just leave everything like that forever.”

“So Manchester then?”

The Tsuraxi time ship arrived in the exact same spot as it had done the last time. The Doctor and Lydia departed, before parting ways once again.

“So we’re parting ways again? For real, this time.”

“Yes I guess so. But I know where you live. Sounds creepy that, maybe I won’t say that ever again. I still don’t know who I am or what I want to be in this incarnation, so I need to find that out and I need to find my TARDIS. But it’s still early days.”

“Well you know where I am if you don’t find anyone else.”

“Yes indeed. Goodbye, Lydia.”

Lydia waved as the TARDIS dematerialised. She wandered towards the hospital where her mother was. Inside of the ward, she was surprised to see that Matt was sitting down by Andreas side.

“Oh.” Matt sighed, “I thought you’d gone with the Doctor.”

“I couldn’t leave my mother here. Can I have a moment alone with her, please?”

Matt left the room as Lydia moved towards her mothers bed. Andrea was in a worse state than ever.

“I’ve got some exciting things to tell you, Mother.”

“They came for me.” Andrea began. “They poisoned my drink. They’ll come for you. Don’t trust anyone-”

Andrea stopped. She was dead.

Lydia burst into a fit of tears, as silence dawned on the room.

Elsewhere, the Tsuraxi time ship drifted into the time vortex once more.

The Doctor addressed himself. “I’ve had many faces, many identities, but I haven’t quite mastered this one yet. I’ve got many things I need to do. Many places I need to go. Many problems I need to solve. Please let the next one be good.”

An alarm sounded on the Tsuraxi time pod, as an alien face popped up on the face. It was a horrifying image.

“Tsuraxi.” The figure beckoned, “We need you now. We are in ancient Greece. We shall harvest the knowledge that we need for the final result but we require your assistance.”

The Doctor grinned. Indeed, the universe did await.

Next Week: The Path to Knowledge