The First Sontarans (audio story)
The First Sontarans was the sixth story release in the third series of The Lost Stories, produced by Big Finish Productions. It was adapted by Andrew Smith, from his original script, and featured Colin Baker as the Sixth Doctor and Nicola Bryant as Peri Brown.
Publisher's summary
1872. After finding a strange signalling device on the moon, the Doctor and Peri travel to the depths of the English countryside to track down the source of its transmissions. But they're not the first aliens to arrive on the scene.
Old enemies of the Doctor are drawing their battle lines in the forest and the local humans will be lucky to escape the conflagration unscathed.
For hidden within this village is a deadly secret - a secret that could destroy the entire Sontaran race...and reveal the terrible mystery of their creation.
Plot
Part one
The Doctor takes Peri to Mare Nectaris on the Moon in 1872 where they find a crashed communications repeater. Taking it back into the TARDIS, he finds that its purpose is to cover up the fact that the message it is retransmitting, saying "We are here", comes from Sussex. They trace the message to a forest and put a stop to a cockfight, for which innkeeper Jacob Gilley apologises whilst also emphasising the difficult times that the villagers are currently going through. Peri, recognising the opportunity to collect information about possible anomalies in the area, suggests that Jacob take her and the Doctor to his tavern, The Coach and Horses.
The Gentleman bursts into the tavern and demands to know what a Time Lord is doing on Earth, having recently killed another alien. Before he can attack the Doctor and Peri, Major Thessinger arrives and invites the two of them to his home to seek sanctuary against the Gentleman, who departs after warning the two travellers to leave. They do not stay long with Thessinger, whom the Doctor quickly realises is not as affluent as he claims and is lying about serving in the Battle of Inkerman, and are knocked out and captured shortly after leaving his home.
Thessinger is visited by the Gentleman, who accuses him of being a Kaveetch and draws a technologically advanced firearm which Thessinger claims not to recognise. The Doctor awakens in a dungeon fitted with an anachronistic CCTV camera and electronic doors, behind one of which he finds Commander Lork of the 1st Sontaran Battle Fleet, a Sontaran prisoner who assumes that the Doctor is his jailer and goes to attack him.
Part two
The Doctor manages to lock Lork back up and release Peri from behind another door. The two of them manage to get through the exit by applying different degrees of force to its energy field and enter a makeshift morgue in a cellar. The Doctor switches off the transmitter to the Moon, finds two dissected Sontarans and identifies the contents of four jars as the remains of the other members of a Sontaran patrol before Gilley enters, granting him and Peri their freedom as he has confirmed that they are not Sontaran agents. In truth, Gilley is Meredid Roath, a Kaveetch cellular geneticist.
Roath explains that the Sontarans attacked his planet and that he and his ex-wife, Leandra, escaped to Earth before sending a transmission to summon the other survivors and lure in a Sontaran patrol which he could dissect. Lork escapes his cell and, enraged to find the corpses of his comrades, tries to attack the Doctor, Peri and Roath, who lock him in the basement until he uses a photon grenade from his companion's survival pack to break out and flee the tavern. The Doctor and Roath stop him from getting any further whilst Peri looks around the tavern, but she is joined by Leandra, who shoots Lork with a gun which targets Sontaran cell structures. The Doctor and Peri recognise her as Thessinger's housekeeper.
After the Doctor deactivates a distress beacon activated by Lork, Peri and Leandra teleport to the Roaths' orbiter to run a scan and detect a Sontaran Planet Kill Fleet commanded by Fleet Marshal Jaka. The Doctor and Roath learn of Thessinger's death from Barclay, his manservant, and go with him to the house where they find Thessinger alive. The Doctor suspects that he is a Rutan impostor, however, and goes looking for the real Thessinger's corpse. Instead, he finds Barclay's, leading the Rutan impersonating him to attack.
Part three
to be added
Part four
to be added
Cast
- The Doctor - Colin Baker
- Peri - Nicola Bryant
- Fleet Marshal Jaka / Barclay - Dan Starkey
- Jacob Gilley - Anthony Howell
- Jane Ross - Lizzie Roper
- The Gentleman / Commander Lork - John Banks
- Major Thessinger / Commander Strek - Cameron Stewart
Worldbuilding
Cultural references from the real world
- The Doctor refers to Neil Armstrong and the Apollo 11 moon landing on 20 July 1969.
Individuals
- Petros Ambier goes by "John Mackie". He worked as a porter at Covent Garden Market for seven years.
- Major Thessinger's father fought in the Battle of Waterloo on 18 June 1815. Furthermore, Thessinger claims that he himself fought in the Battle of Inkerman on 5 November 1854 during the Crimean War.
Planets
- The Doctor takes Leandra to Calisto 4 to heal after her wound from a Sontaran blaster.
Timeline
Species
- The Doctor refers to the Sontarans' sworn arch-enemies the Rutan Host. The two species have been at war for millennia.
- A Sontaran patrol numbers seven.
- The Kaveetch were natives of Sontar. They worked with an infiltration scout.
- The Kreliban from Krelibas were once a well established military force in the Mutter's Spiral. Now, they are slaves in the Rutan Empire.
TARDIS
- The Doctor is able to preserve Leandra's life using the Zero Room.
Notes
- This is the first Big Finish audio drama to feature both the Sontarans and the Rutan Host.
- Writer Andrew Smith removed all of the Mary Celeste scenes from the original TV script and instead added a reference. According to Smith, when he was originally writing the TV episode, he became highly disturbed when his research about the Mary Celeste turned into him knowing every detail about all the crew who died on the ship.
- This story was originally released on CD and download.
Continuity
- The Doctor and Peri would return to the Moon when they visited the Gogglebox in the far future. (AUDIO: The Reaping) Although he objects to the notion of visiting the Apollo 11 landing site in person, he is willing to allow her to view it from a distance aboard the TARDIS following a visit to 1963. (AUDIO: The Space Race)
- The Doctor refers to the disappearance of the crew of the Mary Celeste in 1872. The Doctor refers to the Daleks' involvement in the incident. The First Doctor and his companions Ian Chesterton, Barbara Wright and Vicki Pallister were indirectly involved in the crew's disappearance. (TV: The Chase, AUDIO: The Rosemariners) The Fifth Doctor had told Alan Fitzgerald, a student summer intern at the Gogglebox, that he was "sort of" responsible. (AUDIO: The Gathering)
- The Doctor and Peri previously encountered the Sontarans in Seville, Spain in 1985. (TV: The Two Doctors)
- The Doctor tells Roath and Fleet Marshal Jaka that he is aware that the Sontarans possess rudimentary time travel technology as he previously witnessed it in operation. (TV: The Time Warrior, The Two Doctors)
External links
- Official The First Sontarans page at bigfinish.com
- DisContinuity for The First Sontarans at Tetrapyriarbus - The DisContinuity Guide
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