The Sontaran Experiment

Never throw anything away, Harry. Now, where's my 500-year diary? I remember jotting some notes on the Sontarans. It's a mistake to clutter one's pockets, Harry.

The Sontaran Experiment is the last of the proper two-part stories for me as Resurrection of the Daleks is a four-part story smooshed into two parts. I have seen this one once before but don't really remember it making much of an impact other than it being a bit of a weak reintroduction of the Sontarans. But perhaps my memory is faulty. Still, it'll blow by quickly whether it's good or bad.

Plot Summary

The Doctor, Harry and Sarah transmat down to Earth from Nerva Beacon. The beam has trouble with Harry and Sarah and the Doctor elects to do some repairs to the receivers while Harry and Sarah head off to explore. Wandering around, Harry stumbles into a pit which had it's mouth hidden by brush. Sarah runs back to the circle to get the Doctor to help.

As the Doctor is working on the circle, he is watched by two men from one of the Earth colonies. The Doctor hears the scream of a man who is running from a robot and slips off a cliff. The Doctor finds him dead of a broken neck and the two men take him back to their base camp. At the base camp, they and a third man, interrogate the Doctor, believing him to be the person who destroyed their ship and has systematically killed or captured the rest of their original nine man crew.

Sarah returns to the circle to find the Doctor gone. She goes back to the hole to try and help Harry herself but she finds him gone as well. She is about to climb down when a fourth man, Roth, grabs her and keeps her quiet as a robot probe passes by. Once gone, he explains that there is an alien who has captured and killed most of the crew. He manages to escape and is trying to get away. When Sarah informs him that the Doctor can get him off, he agrees to help her.

Roth refuses to go into the camp as one of them, Vural, was also captured by the alien but let go and Roth fears a trap. Instead he runs past drawing the three of them away. Sarah cuts the Doctor's bonds and the three of them run back under cover. Sarah then shows the Doctor where Harry was. The Doctor suspects that there is a tunnel to get out but slips down and is knocked out at the bottom. Sarah and Roth try to get him but they are apprehended by the robot before they can climb down.

Harry had found a tunnel letting him out when he was looking for cover to avoid the robot's first pass through the area. Emerging a ways away, he picks his way through the rocks and eventually discovers a silver sphere nestled on the hill side. He watches as the robot pulls up, dragging a bound Sarah and Roth behind it. The door of the sphere opens and a Sontaran emerges to look at the prisoners.

Sarah believes it to be Linx, but he is simply of the same clone batch thousands of years later and called Styre. He takes Sarah as a new experiment but kills Roth as he had already learned what he could from him. He chains Sarah to the rock and sets a force field around her while he reports in to the field marshal in charge of the Sontaran fleet. Harry tries to free Sarah but is blocked by the force field. He also finds another crewman being deprived of water but is unable to free him either. He goes to look for the Doctor.

The Doctor tires to climb out the pit on waking but his cries only attract the three remaining crewmen. It also attracts the robot which takes them prisoner, but misses the Doctor in the pit. The Doctor finds the same tunnel Harry found and emerges on the rocks near Styre's ship. He finds Sarah being tortured by a mental device that makes her see her greatest fears. He uses his sonic screwdriver to short circuit the force field and removes the device, causing her to pass out. Styre discovers the Doctor and shoots him as he tries to run for cover.

Styre's robot returns with the three remaining crewmen to whom he reveals Vural's treachery. He ties Vural to a rock and forces the other two, Krans and Erak, to hold a gravity bar over him. He adjusts the weight and they try to hold it over him to prevent Vural from being crushed to death. Styre is interrupted in his experiment by a demand for a status update from the field marshal.

While Styre is detained, Harry returns and finds the Doctor alive, Styre's shot having glanced off a piece of metal in his pocket. Harry also determines the other crewman has died from dehydration. The Doctor sends Harry and Sarah up the rocks while he follows Styre. He disables the robot and overhears Styre delay the delivery of his report while he finishes his last experiment.

The Doctor returns to Harry and Sarah. He gives Harry his sonic screwdriver and tells him to remove a piece of equipment from Styre's ship. He then heads down and challenges Styre to single combat. Styre, his honor affronted, engages with the Doctor, leaving Sarah to free the three men. The Doctor continually falls back, forcing Styre to expend more energy in fighting him. Styre does get a drop on him at one point but Vural attacks him from behind. Styre kills him but it allows the Doctor to crawl away.

Exhausted from the fight, Styre returns to his ship to recharge himself. However, the piece of equipment that Harry removed causes raw energy to be drained from Styre's body. He stumbles outside the ship and his body collapses in on itself. The Doctor then signals the field marshal, informing him of Styre's demise and that an Earth fleet will destroy the Sontaran fleet if it crosses the border. Without the report, the field marshal orders his forces to fall back.

The Doctor, Harry and Sarah head back to the transmat circle. They offer to take Krans and Erak with them but they decline, not trusting the beam. The Doctor promises to have Nerva signal for a rescue ship when they get back as they are transported away.

Analysis

This story is easily a tale of two halves. The first episode is a bit slow with a lot of set up and running around. We aren't even introduced to the titular Sontaran until the end of the episode like the Daleks in a Terry Nation script. The second half is quite fast paced with only a few moments given for quick exposition scenes. It is far more engaging that the first episode but because so much action is compressed into one episode, the overall resolution feels rushed and a bit ham-fisted.

This story is the third overall to feature the Fourth Doctor but it was the first one shot for Season 12, before The Ark in Space. I think it shows as well. While I enjoyed the Fourth Doctor in this story, there is aloofness that seems more forced that normal, as though Tom Baker is playing the Doctor in a disinterested fashion. In later stories, you see him with aloofness but with confidence and overarching interest in matters that would normally be considered mundane. This story, even more than Robot, feels like the one where the Fourth Doctor was finding his feet. Of course, some of that may not be Tom Baker's fault as he was dealing with a broken collarbone for a good portion of the story and that will take a lot out of a person.

Both Sarah and Harry are quite enjoyable in this story. Harry is continually a bit of a klutz, but ends up doing more for himself and helps out a great deal, being the one to actually kill Styre with his sabotage. Sarah also does well, even if she falls a bit more into the damsel in distress role. Probably her best moment was when dealing with the effects of the terror inducing chip. That was some very good acting on her part and it sells the scene and the effects very well, given that all we actually saw were a rubber snake and a shaky camera.

Styre himself is pretty good as a villain. As it's the same actor, he is played nearly identical to Linx from The Time Warrior but there is a slightly more sadistic edge to him. Although not immediately obvious, Styre has a certain relish of his experiments, to the point where he keeps putting off the filing of his final report with the Marshal just because he wants to finish. It's also nice to see him not bothering with the standard capture but keep alive trope. He kills Roth as he is finished with him and likewise shoots the Doctor as he is of no use. I appreciate that he is also a good shot rather than having him take several shots to bring down the Doctor. It's just one shot and then done.

The rest of the cast is serviceable but there's nothing really to note about them. They seem to fill the standard role of survivors that are suspicious of the Doctor and then eventually ally with him. It hits the standard level of tropes, including having one be an enemy agent. If there had been another episode, there might have been a bit more development, especially in the case of Vural. But as it stands, none of the guest cast did anything to hurt the story so that stands in their favor.

One of the reasons this story gets talked about as much as it did is the visual style. It's shot all on location and with OBE video, akin to a sporting event broadcast. It gives the story a very natural look and the realism imposed by just using the surrounding countryside rather than any set draws the viewer into the story that much more. I'm a bit surprised that this wasn't done a bit more often, although I imagine that trying to do an entire four-part story on location would have been a bit of a logistical problem. Still, it would have been nice to see another shot at something like this prior to the Seventh Doctor era.

The overall direction is pretty standard with no issues either overly positive or negative. The ruggedness of the terrain probably made doing anything other than a basic point and shoot system very difficult. Things would have been compounded further by the fact that the lead actor was partially immobilized. This is rather obvious in the final fight scene where it's obvious the director is hiding the Doctor's face due to the fact that it's a stunt double. Amusingly, and I didn't know this until reading production notes, the actor who played Styre was also unable to film the fight scene due to his own poor health. So the final fight is between two stunt men. But it's only obvious with the Doctor.

I think my two biggest gripes are about the overall story. Episode One is rather slow with it's set up. I think Bob Baker and Dave Martin had locked into the idea of revealing Styre as the end of Episode One cliffhanger and built the first episode around that idea. I think this would have been less noticeable if it weren't a two episode story. It has the slow build up that you would expect from a four-part story and would be termed as building atmosphere if that were the case. But when things are so limited, it feels more like wasted time that could have been used elsewhere.

That plays in directly with the second problem of dealing with the incoming Sontaran fleet. Most of the second episode deals with the physical problem of getting rid of Styre and that goes fairly well. But you then have the Doctor bluffing the Marshal by not only lying about the presence of an Earth fleet but also insinuating that there is critical information in Styre's report about how to deal with humans. It's a "wave the magic wand" solution that just seems out of place. An argument could be made about how it satirizes bureaucracy, but even there it just feels like more of a cop out. I think I would have actually preferred it if the Marshal hadn't been included and instead you just had Harry overhear Styre telling Sarah that he will report back to his fleet to file his report prior to invasion. That eliminates the need to stop the Marshal and would have kept the entire focus on Styre.

Even with those limitations, this was still an enjoyable watch. I think it would have been better if it had been either the story had been balanced a bit more or if it had been expanded to three episodes. But there is a lot to like in this story and it goes by quickly. It's fun and straightforward. It also would make a pretty good story to show someone dipping their toe into the classic era. At only two episodes, they'd get a pretty good handle on whether or not the classic era is of a style they would like or not.

Overall personal score: 3.5 out of 5