Introduction
So as you've probably noticed, I'm starting off easy. Of course, I'm not saying that 'The Sontaran Experiment' isn't an interesting story, but just that's it's a two-parter, and, as the Classic Series goes, two-parters didn't swing around very often (not counting the fifty-minuters of Colin Baker). When one did appear it was usually for economical reasons - it was always going to be cheaper to make three six-parters and a two-parter than, for instance, five four-parters (I don't think this actually happened in the classic run, but it's just an example).
So as you've probably noticed, I'm starting off easy. Of course, I'm not saying that 'The Sontaran Experiment' isn't an interesting story, but just that's it's a two-parter, and, as the Classic Series goes, two-parters didn't swing around very often (not counting the fifty-minuters of Colin Baker). When one did appear it was usually for economical reasons - it was always going to be cheaper to make three six-parters and a two-parter than, for instance, five four-parters (I don't think this actually happened in the classic run, but it's just an example).
Season 12 was, as most classic fans will know, fantastic. It saw the introduction of Tom Baker, the series' longest standing Doctor to to date, of Harry Sullivan, UNIT's old-school Medical Officer, and of Davros, the tyrannically insane creator of the Terry Nation's Daleks. It also heralded the return of two other popular villains; the Cybermen, not previously seen since Patrick Troughton's epic adventure 'The Invasion', over seven years previously; and the Sontarans, having been introduced the previous year with Jon Pertwee's historical classic 'The Time Warrior'. The Season was also the first to possess something of a running narrative throughout (and into 'Terror of the Zygons' the next year) - a route that Doctor Who would not go down again until the gargantuan 'Key to Time' saga four seasons later.
So it was always going to be a big 'un.
'The Sontaran Experiment' came at the halfway point of Season 12, sandwiched rather unflatteringly between 'The Ark in Space', an all-time fan-favourite, and 'Genesis of the Daleks', voted numerous times as the best Doctor Who story of all time - enough said. This unfortunately left director Rodney Bennett in a bit of a pickle - to first try and repeat the success he had enjoyed with 'The Ark in Space', and second to make a two-part story with a strict budget into the awesome it needed to be in order to fit in. Oh, and it had to be filmed entirely on location.
Let's see how it went, shall we?
Part one:
We open on a desolate moor, beset by a dark sky and pale sun. On the ground lie some silver orbs. All is mysterious and bleak, and things are immediately feeling very far removed from the 'safe adventures' of the Pertwee era. And no sooner than everything's set up we get our heroes, materialising badly. Honestly, the whole Sarah-Jane in a thicket thing feels more than a little bit contrived, and the upside-down-flourescent-clothing arrangement doesn't help either. That doesn't feel Holmesian at all. Which is a shame, because it was all going so well, but there you go Rodney Bennet. So the Doctor starts fiddling with the orbs (no euphemism intended) and Sarah and Harry go off for a bit. Didn't they learn from the Ark not to do that? Tch. Ah well.
So it was always going to be a big 'un.
'The Sontaran Experiment' came at the halfway point of Season 12, sandwiched rather unflatteringly between 'The Ark in Space', an all-time fan-favourite, and 'Genesis of the Daleks', voted numerous times as the best Doctor Who story of all time - enough said. This unfortunately left director Rodney Bennett in a bit of a pickle - to first try and repeat the success he had enjoyed with 'The Ark in Space', and second to make a two-part story with a strict budget into the awesome it needed to be in order to fit in. Oh, and it had to be filmed entirely on location.
Let's see how it went, shall we?
We open on a desolate moor, beset by a dark sky and pale sun. On the ground lie some silver orbs. All is mysterious and bleak, and things are immediately feeling very far removed from the 'safe adventures' of the Pertwee era. And no sooner than everything's set up we get our heroes, materialising badly. Honestly, the whole Sarah-Jane in a thicket thing feels more than a little bit contrived, and the upside-down-flourescent-clothing arrangement doesn't help either. That doesn't feel Holmesian at all. Which is a shame, because it was all going so well, but there you go Rodney Bennet. So the Doctor starts fiddling with the orbs (no euphemism intended) and Sarah and Harry go off for a bit. Didn't they learn from the Ark not to do that? Tch. Ah well.
The Doctor Arking about as usual
So it's all alright so far. There's been some nice dialogue and interplay, with the surrounding area turning out to be London and such and such. Some crosshairs looking at the Doctor. Lovely. At least no-one's fallen down any crevasses.
Oh, Harry.
So Harry falls down a crevasse. Sigh. Ah well, the situation is salvageable yet, as a stricken Sarah runs to get help from the Doctor, who turns out to have disappeared. Bugger. However, help is soon at hand from a new character, Roth, who explains that he has been tortured by an alien living in the rocks. Now I like Roth. I like his panic. I think his fear is believable - ex-torturee, fleeing from a mysterious something in the dark old bleak old rocks? Now that's cool, and it really picks up on the hammer horror elements of Robert 'Wow' Holmes later stories. All good. Roth the distressed then continues to explain to Sarah the plight of his fellow astronauts (yeah, he's an astronaut), having crash-landed on this terrible planet, and that Vural, their leader, is somehow getting chummy with the rock-monster. Hmm, betrayal. Like it. And could it possibly link in with those crosshair people from earlier? I think it could...
Remember these guys?
So the Doctor's been captured by the other astronauts, which is kind of neat, and ties things up a bit more. They have a chat about Nerva, and how it's all a myth. Vural talks about the distress signal they responded to, and how their ship was vaporised as it came into orbit, and how there were nine of them but now there are only four. Wasn't that the premise for a book recently?
Anyway, Vural instantly blames the Doctor for the deaths of his crew, which is kinda suspicious, and threatens him with a hot poker. Charming. It's around now that the Doctor sees the camera attached to Vural's spacesuit. I'm going to need a bigger quizzical hat. But alas! The wonderful Roth creates a diversion, and in the madness chase that ensues, Sarah is able to free the Doctor, and the two end up rendezvousing with Roth at some prearranged point. Did I mention that all the astronauts are South African? Well they are. Sarah guides the Doctor to where Harry fell, and this is where I get a little ruffled. Because, for reasons unknown, the Doctor falls down the crevasse. So there are two people who have fallen down the crevasse. And it's the same crevasse.
Oh dear. Oh dear me
And then Sarah and Roth are captured by a robot that looks like this.
>sigh<
It's the scaffolding monster. That old chestnut. And, let's be honest, it doesn't need to be in this story. Really really. All it does is wobble around Dartmoor glittering. Mm. So okay, it's kind of cool when it descends, and yes, the animation when the ropes fly out is effective, but really - it looks like a camping table, and has about as much use as one, even in Dartmoor. I heard the other day that it was meant to glide, and it sort of made me sad that it didn't, because without said skill, all it has within its power is to trundle endearingly. And piss rope.
So Sarah and Roth are taken by the fold-up chair to a small plateau among the rocks, which, barring silly robot, is an awesome place to set the rest of the story. Atop a small outcrop sits a strangely familiar silver sphere. Oh wait... this rings a bell. The music goes up a notch, Harry appears from behind the rock (having regained consciousness and navigated his way out of the crevasse), Roth trembles masterfully and Sarah waits in anticipation. It's all very exciting. A door opens in the sphere, something steps out, something strangely, potato-ly familiar, takes off its helmet menacingly - it's a Sontaran!
Part Two:
Oh, yeah - Sontarans are cool.
I think Styre is awesome. I think he is really, really good. He is an amazing character. Maybe not quite as cool as Linx from the previous Sontaran story 'The Time Warrior', because, well, Linx is the best Sontaran ever. But still - damn. It's something in his alien-ness. His aggression. His - Sontaran-ness. It must be the way he's written. There's a part very early on in the second episode where he sees Sarah and exclaims 'Ah! The female of the species!', and that is so interesting, just to mark out the alien in Styre more. The bit where he examines her and smashes her neck back and forwards? That is seriously wrong. That's not what we want to see happening to Sarah Jane, and maybe it's not something you might have seen in Doctor Who at all until Hinchcliffe and Holmes. It's an incredible piece of writing/directing, though, and is part of the reason that I prefer Styre and Linx to their later replacements (who were often incompetent and looked rubbish) - that and the sword fight, but I'll talk about that later. So Sarah and Styre do some predator-prey chatting in which Sarah mistakes him for Linx, which is lovely and dangerous. Then Roth tries to escape. Ruh-roh.
'The female of the species!'
So Styre shoots Roth. Just like that. Bam. And so now we're in danger. This Sontaran will just shoot you, and that has an amazing effect. We know Styre is a dick, but now he's a mega-dick. A menace among dicks. Looks like things might be looking up for this story at last.
HOW DID IT FIT?
Styre returns to his hideout and calls up his superior on a big yellow communicator that somehow managed to fit through the door to his tiny spaceship, and it is revealed that Styre is part of a scientific assessment to define whether Earth is compatible for invasion, and there is some mutual tension from both ends of the line, even though the two are cloned and therefore must understand the delays that Styre is being forced to overcome. Am I overthinking this?
Look familiar?
So the Earth's being prepped for invasion - again. This, to be honest, didn't particularly surprise me the first time I watched the story. It's just a generic alien race takeover scenario, but in a dystopian future without many supporting actors. And you know something? I think it works well this way. Maybe that's just because the kind of aliens-vs-military format that had almost totally overshadowed the Pertwee era is just a little bit tired. I'm not sure.
What comes next in this story, however, I did not see coming. It's kind of nasty.
Oh no, it's this bit
So yeah. You thought that bit earlier was grim. You know, the bit with Styre and Sarah Jane. Think again.
No-one wants to see a protagonist in pain. It's not something we're generally accustomed to, but nevertheless, it sometimes happens. No-one wants to see Sarah-Jane tied to a rock and subjected to hours of terror. But nevertheless, it happens. And it's nasty. The ropes become snakes and the ground becomes quicksand and the world turns over and over and, while the effects aren't necessarily fantastic, we get the gist of what's going on here. And all the while Styre is just sitting there, watching her scream from a safe distance. It's terrifyingly effective.
Predictably, the Doctor intervenes and removes Styre's hallucinogenic device, rendering poor Sarah unconscious. Styre approaches, aware of the interruption to his experiment, and the Doctor charges at him in anger, which is scary - the Doctor, losing his cool? Things must be bad. However, Styre knocks him back with lethal smack on the shoulder, and the Doctor's down.
Now, for those of you who don't know, Kevin Lindsay broke Tom Baker's collar bone on that shoot. And yet Baker kept going to the end of the scene. Just wow. I mean, wow. The Doctor actually got his arm broken by a Sontaran. This meant trouble - how would Baker be able to fight Styre in one on one combat? Would it even be possible for filming to go ahead?
Yes. Because this is Doctor Who.
So Styre leaves the Doctor for dead, and the flat-pack robot captures Vural and his men. Vural spits out some spiel about his bargain with Styre - yep, so that was true then - and Styre decides to experiment on him anyway. Lovely Styre, wonderful Styre.
Lovely Styre, wonderful Styre
And then we get this really awful experiment in which Kranz and Erak have to stop a gravity bar from crushing Vural. It's a really nasty idea, and the way it's directed is brilliantly dark. Also there's a guy in a cave who's been chained up and deprived of water for three days. And trust me, it's horrific.
Very Holmesian
The Doctor is eventually reunited with his companions, and devises a plan to destroy Styre, challenging the Sontaran to single combat - this appears to be a challenge Sontarans cannot refuse, even if the success of their race is jeopardised. Hm.
Mind you, I'm glad they included this, because anything ever is made at least 70% cooler by a sword fight, even if one of the swords is just a branch. In fact, a sword-branch fight is probably even better. Anyone seen Les Mis? You'll know what I mean.
So yes, the sword-branch fight is awesome, even if the Doctor is played by some other guy with a wig on. But you can't really tell, so that's alright.
Sorry about the pixels - here, have another one -
Yeah, have this one, this one has no pixels.
Weakened by combat thanks to Earth's comparatively low gravity, Styre is forced to return to his ship and recharge. Recharge? I've always found that odd. Unfortunately, Harry's gone and removed Styre's equipment, so lots of bad things happen and the ship ends up exploding. Oh, and Styre deflates. No, seriously.
DEFLATES
Immediate threat dispelled, the Doctor contacts the big chief Sontaran and says that Earth has the capability to defeat the Sontarans, so there. And the big chief Sontaran believes it. Which seems... odd. Ah well. It's Doctor Who. Sometimes you just have to go with it.
Dystopian Dartmoor
But yeah. That's kinda the end. There's some slightly odd Doctor addressing the camera business, a little Harry and Sarah quipping and then we're off. Le fin.
Last words?
I reckon 'The Sontaran Experiment' could have been one of the greats. A sweeping four-parter with a multi-layered antagonist and his evil scary flying robot. COULD have been. As it stands, 'The Sontaran Experiment' wasn't the glorious return a race like the Sontarans could have had. That's not saying it's a bad story - it most certainly, certainly isn't. In fact, I've decided that it really makes an impact in Season 12, in it's own little way, even when surrounded by such fiercely impressive and important stories as 'Genesis of the Daleks' and 'The Ark in Space'. However, I said at the end of episode two that sometimes you just have to go with it, but it feels like that I've been doing that through the whole story, and that's not a good thing. There are some lovely bantery elements, disturbing concepts and brilliantly perverse notions - but with all the technical difficulties the serial was laden with, it was never going to become all it was cracked up to be. And this was, and still is, a crying shame. Still, everyone loves Styre and who can forget the Meccano monster, after all?
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