The Sontaran Stratagem/The Poison Sky

This isn't war. It's sport.

The Sontaran Stratagem and The Poison Sky are not bad episodes, despite fan indifference towards them. But they are a bit underwhelming, especially in the flow of The Poison Sky compared to the set up The Sontaran Stratagem.

Plot Summary

The Doctor and Donna are summoned back to Earth by Martha Jones who is now working for UNIT. They are investigating a company that makes ATMOS, a car emissions control device and GPS system which is suspected of being behind several mysterious deaths. UNIT moves in on the factory under the guise of an immigration raid and discovers further irregularities. During the raid, two UNIT soldiers are brought under hypnotic control of the Sontarans. The two soldiers kidnap Martha and use a Sontaran clone tank to make a clone of her to use as an agent.

Donna leaves temporarily to warn her mother and grandfather of the potential danger while the Doctor heads to Rattigan Academy, a select school run by a wunderkind who developed ATMOS. There the Doctor discovers alien technology and discovers the Sontarans behind the devices. He flees both the Sontaran ship and Rattigan Academy, evading several Sontaran attempts to kill him. He heads to Donna's mother's place and discovers a secondary purpose to ATMOS in the form of a gas release. The early release alerts the Sontarans who activate all gas release systems on the planet.

With gas emerging from all over the world, the Doctor and Donna return to UNIT which has been driven back from the ATMOS factory by a squadron of Sontaran soldiers. The Doctor tells Donna to monitor things from the TARDIS as he plans to fly up to the Sontaran ship and stop things and the air is clean in the TARDIS. However, after Donna is inside, the Sontarans transport it into the their ship and move it into the hold. The Doctor realizes this and sends a message to Donna to wait for his phone call.

UNIT attempts to launch nuclear missiles at the Sontaran ship but clone Martha deactivates the system, which is what the Doctor actually wants. Using information the Doctor has given them to adapt their weapons, UNIT storms the ATMOS factory, driving the Sontarans back. The Doctor calls Donna and walks her through the means to reactive the transport system. He then takes clone Martha into the factory where he finds the real Martha hooked up to a machine that feeds the clone memories. The Doctor frees Martha from the machine, which kills clone Martha. However, before she dies, the real Martha convinces her to tell them the Sontaran plan, which is to turn Earth into a clone planet, providing the Sontarans with billions of extra soldiers. With the teleport reactivated, the Doctor pulls Donna and the TARDIS back to Earth. The three then transport over to Rattigan Academy.

Luke Rattigan had intended to bring his academy students back to the Sontaran ship and start a new colony planet. However, the students abandoned him as insane. When he informed the Sontarans of this, they informed him that they had no intention of following on that deal and would have simply killed them when they boarded. They attempted to kill Luke, but he transported back to Earth and is hiding at the Academy. When the Doctor, Donna and Martha arrive, he watches as the Doctor builds an atmospheric pulse weapon and then fires it into Earth's sky. The clone gas ignites and burns off the toxin choking the Earth. The plan having failed, the Sontarans move to invade Earth using conventional tactics. The Doctor then transports up to the Sontaran ship and prepares to ignite the Sontaran ship's atmosphere. Before he can, Luke rigs the teleport so that he switches places with the Doctor and Luke sets off the pulse, destroying the Sontaran ship.

Everything back to normal, Martha says goodbye in the TARDIS. The Doctor offers to let her ride along again, but she refuses. However, before she can leave, the TARDIS takes off on its own and the party hurdles through time and space without knowing where they are going.

Analysis

The set up for this episode is pretty good. The Sontarans are brought back and in contrast to their current portrayal, are actually menacing with just a pinch of unintentional levity. The mystery surrounding their plan and the deviousness employed pulls you in and invests you in the plot. Seeing Martha put in peril with the cloning also draws you in.

Where things seem to fall apart is in the second part. Although there is no point where it is obvious, The Poison Sky feels like padding. It's like the Doctor is deliberately being obtuse to the problem. He says after finding Martha that he knew she was a clone the whole time, but there were points where he could have taken her out and gotten the information he needed sooner. I'm not sure if it is the writing or the direction, but there was something, especially in the second episode that just felt flat. It was like there was no snap and it made the events which should have been engaging, feel a bit dull.

One other problem with the episode was the ending. It was another case of someone else stepping in and dying so that the Doctor might live. It's a bit of a trope but even that wasn't the worst part. The worst was actually when the Doctor first got on the Sontaran ship. He spent nearly twenty seconds yelling at the Sontarans to surrender or he would kill them. However, General Staal put it correctly that the threat was meaningless since the Sontarans gloried in death. The fact that the Doctor kept hesitating until Luke beamed him out made him look weak and afraid of death, like he wasn't going to follow on the threat. Worse, General Staal lined up troops and told them to prepare to fire. Why did they wait? Good soldiers may face death with honor, but if the enemy hesitates, they should have seized the initiative and shot him down, preserving their victory. There was too much talking to try and get an emotional response and to give Luke time to swap places. It just felt hollow.

I have to admit that Martha felt superfluous as well. I've heard that she was only brought back because Catherine Tate refused to be covered in the cloning tank goop. I don't know if that's true or not, but her whole detour to her mom and grandad's place didn't offer much except a little backstory on Donna and a way to flesh out previously introduced characters. But it was not necessary. Donna could have served as the clone and in doing so, the clone might have been discovered earlier since Donna still served a valuable purpose on the Sontaran ship. It would also have given Donna a better reason to be in the TARDIS. Imagine that the Doctor discovers Donna is a clone and frees her. He takes her back to the TARDIS to recover while he assists UNIT. The Sontarans discover their clone has been compromised and steal the TARDIS, not knowing they have also beamed aboard an operative. This allows the Doctor to deal with UNIT openly without the need for subterfuge for the clone's benefit. It might have made the story zip along quicker. The addition of Martha also felt like the story didn't quite trust Donna with heavy lifting and wanted an experienced companion to balance her out. I may be reading into that, but it was a thought that struck me.

Despite my giving it a bit of a rip, the Sontaran two-parter is better than average, just not much better. It'll keep you entertained while watching it, but it is lacking that little something that will make you want to pull it off the shelf and rewatch it. If you watch both episodes back to back, you might also find yourself checking your watch a little bit during the second episode as it drifts a bit.

Overall personal score: The Sontaran Stratagem - 3.5 out of 5; The Poison Sky - 3 out of 5