Henry Stanton

Henry Stanton was the son of a coal-miner and a pilot of the ship Draco, one of the British Imperial Fleet heading to the Moon in 1878.

After the ship was shot down with a powerful weapon by the natives, he landed the Draco perfectly on the ground. However, Captain Green took no notice. Green then broke the team into two groups, where they would investigate the forest. Stanton wanted to disagree, feeling that Green was making a mistake taking both helmsmen away from the ship, but he couldn't bring himself to say it as he knew that Green would assume he was just being a coward.

After the men scattered when a giant creature arrived. Stanton found Green pleading for his life. He was whining loudly and so Stanton was forced to close his mouth as the creature arrived, unintentionally suffocating his commander.

Two days later, he arrived back at the Draco, the only survivor from the party that went into the forest. He told the crew that they needed to get the ship back in order before any more creatures attacked, threatening to shoot anyone who objected to him.

When the Fifth Doctor arrived in the ship's wreckage, he offered to help, which Stanton was unsure about, but allowed it in the end. They soon realised from all the dead bodies that Stanton had mutinied against his own men, just so that he could be leader. The Doctor was able to repair the worst of the damage, but was then thrown out of the Draco as it took off, leaving his companion behind.

Once the Draco was in flight, Stanton was surprised to discover that a vicious and merciless creature, known as the Vrall had entered, unnoticed, onto their ship and had killed their navigator.

With the help of Turlough and a few remaining soldiers, he searched every deck of the ship in order to find the creature. After a few hours, they finally discovered it, but were forced to retreat as bullets wouldn't kill it; the wounds would repair themselves. When the Vrall fully revealed its presence, Stanton lured it into a trap and opened the ship's airlock to defeat the Vrall, refusing to allow anything else to tell him what to do.

The Doctor later used Stanton's reaction to cement his decision to not allow Victorian civilisation to continue with space travel, concluding that the current class system wouldn't be able to accommodate the desires of men like Stanton to be respected for his skills as an astral pilot. (PROSE: Imperial Moon)