Theory:Doctor Who television discontinuity and plot holes/The Sontaran Experiment

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This page is for discussing the ways in which The Sontaran Experiment doesn't fit well with other DWU narratives. You can also talk about the plot holes that render its own, internal narrative confusing.

Remember, this is a forum, so civil discussion is encouraged. However, please do not sign your posts. Also, keep all posts about the same continuity error under the same bullet point. You can add a new point by typing:

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* This is point two.
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::Further discussion and query of point two.

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• If the Earth is uninhabited, why do the Sontarans need intelligence to invade it?

They might think the Humans on the Nerva Beacon are ready to fight back at any moment.

Also, they are invading the galaxy and there are more humans in it. The intelligence is regarding humans in general, who have a vast empire by this point throughout the galaxy.

To add to that point, the humans were only on Earth because the Sontaran lured them there.

Again, the point is that the Sontarans are invading the * galaxy* , which has lots of humans in it. Therefore, they want to experiment on humans and find their weaknesses.

• Why isn't Styre's communications link to the General inside his ship? Why leave it outside in a rock crevis, exposed to the elements and for the humans to find?

His ship is quite small. Since he was going to be there for awhile, why not leave it outside? The humans aren't really a threat to him and presumably Sontaran technology isn't so fragile that it will be damaged by rain.

Actually, he was contacting a marshal. Zero a general.

• Why only send one Sontaran? Numbers are surely not unavailable in a cloned race?

The earth is uninhabited so they don't need to send an army and since Styre can easily handle the number of humans he needs for his experiments with his robot, there is really no point. Also the more they send the easier it is to notice them.

Also, they are a cloned race, but they are a cloned race fighting a fearsome and long war with the Rutans. Their numbers may be needed elsewhere.

• In episode 2, Harry uses the word Sontaran despite not having heard it.

He overheard Sarah call Styre a Sontaran (from his hiding place).

• Harry is also looking for Sarah when he meets the torture victim, despite seeing her captured by the Sontaran at the beginning of the episode.

Perhaps he was looking for where the Sontaran placed her or perhaps he though she had escaped.

• Why did Sarah Jane think that Styre was Linx? Even though they were played by the same actor, they looked completely different.

She might not have remembered Lynx that much and she was scared at the time; they look around about the same so Sarah was just confused.

The Sontarans are supposed to look identical, and these two do look reasonably close.

Looking at the production notes, it was supposed to be the same actor in the same costume, and that's how the script was written. He should have been identical to Linx. In the event, a new costume was made, making him considerably less identical. So more of a production gaffe than a discontinuity issue.

• Styre has five digits on each hand rather than Linx's three; this is the only story in which the Sontarans do not possess the usual three digits upon their hands.

Styre has been specially engineered for research purposes and as such, has been given additional digits to make his hands more dexterous for manipulating delicate equipment. In PROSE: The Infinity Doctors the issue of the varying number of digits on a Sontaran hand is explored.

Regardless, there's no reason to assume that the Sontarans wouldn't have made some changes in their clones in the thousands of years between the settings of the two stories.

• When Harry is trapped down the crevice and someone starts throwing rocks down at him, who exactly is doing it? It's never revealed.

Anyone or thing walking by could have caused the rocks to fall, or general instability in the rock wall could have done so.

• Where does the spaceman survivors' machete and leather sheath for it come from? Surely this isn't standard equipment?

From one of the Sontaran's off-screen experiments on human skin resistance to sharp pointy things.

• At the beginning of episode 2, Styre has just captured Sarah and Roth. One scene later, Harry discovers Roth chained to the cliff. Shortly thereafter, Sarah is found chained to the rocks in a different area. In the middle of the episode, Harry overhears Styre reporting that Roth died from dehydration after 9 days. Sarah is then freed by the Doctor. Either the first 15 minutes take place over 9 days, with absolutely no mention of the passage of that time at all, or Styre is lying. If the first part did last 9 days and we never saw nightfall, then Sarah should have also died of dehydration, or at the very least been extremely weak/delirious. If Styre was lying, no explanation was ever even implied for why he would. As the Doctor notes, Sontarans are meticulous, and Styre is writing the report that will guide his entire race on a galaxy wide conquest, not something a Sontaran would fudge. If he was lying because he was being pressured by the Marshall to rap up his experiment more quickly, then why would he purposefully put off the Marshall and ask for more time to complete additional experiments when he could just as easily have lied about them too?

Roth was killed when Styre shot him. The prisoner Harry met was not Roth but a crewmate who looked a bit like him. This man could have been chained up for nine days with no contradiction of the rest of the plot.

• Why don't the Sontarans already have this information and data about humans by this late date? They have visited the human race many times between Lynx (13th Century) and Styre (The year 16,087).

Their continuous failure to subjugate the humans in all this time indicates to the Sontarans that the previous date collections could be inaccurate, or simply lack the thoroughness to be entirely useful. Or maybe their data collection system wasn't that great/was concentrated in one place and they lost it all to a Rutan attack. Either way, they clearly need to know this species inside and out to defeat them once and for all.

• Why did the Doctor lie about Sontarans being terrible with melee weapons when Sontarans proved handy with melee weapons including Colonel Snathe with his cutlass in The Betrothal of Sontar?