The Sontaran Experiment (TV story)
Synopsis
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Plot
Following on from The Ark in Space, the time travellers transmat down from Space Station Nerva to a field on the surface of the now-healed Earth. However, the system is not functioning well: Harry appears and disappears several times before fully materialising, and Sarah lands in an undignified position some distance away from the others. The Doctor starts on fixing the circle of transmat refractors with his sonic screwdriver while the other two wander off to explore the surrounding area.
As Sarah and Harry walk across the plain, she hears a sound and sees some movement on the top of a hill. Harry dismisses it, saying that Sarah is imagining things — there has been no life on Earth for ten millennia. Sarah, however, is not so sure. True enough, two men in spacesuits — Erak and Zake — are observing the Doctor through the crosshairs of their rifles. Erak leaves Zake to watch the Doctor while he reports the presence of the Doctor to another spacesuited man, Krans, who is tending a campfire.
Meanwhile, Harry slips on the edge of a hole and tumbles down into it. He finds himself stuck, unable to climb out, as Sarah observes that the edge of the hole had been covered deliberately. Harry has no choice but to stay put as Sarah goes to fetch the Doctor.
Zake's observation of the Time Lord is interrupted by a strange floating robot drone that bears down on him. Zake flees, the robot pursuing him over the edge of a cliff. The Doctor finds Zake's body when Erak and Krans arrive. Thinking the Doctor has killed Zake, they stun him with their rifles before he can explain. As the two carry the unconscious Doctor away, they are being watched by yet another spaceman, Roth.
Sarah gets back to the circle, and finds the Doctor gone, his screwdriver abandoned. When Sarah returns to the hole, Harry is nowhere to be seen. Something had started throwing rocks down at Harry, and in scrambling for cover, he discovered a way out of the hole, climbing up through some rocks to the hills beyond. Sarah is about to climb down into the hole to look for Harry when Roth grabs her from behind, hiding her as the drone floats past.
Once the danger is gone, Roth introduces himself to Sarah. He was the one who covered the edge of the hole, trying to trap the drone. He tells Sarah that the robot serves an alien who lives among the rocks, an alien who has tortured him and killed two others of his crew. Roth is obviously traumatised by his experiences, and vows he will not be captured again. When Sarah tells him about her friends, he informs her that the Doctor has been taken to the campsite.
At the campsite, Erak and Krans interrogate the Doctor, demanding to know what he has done to their crewmates. When the Doctor explains that he came down from Space Station Nerva, the spacemen (now joined by their leader, Vural) greet that news with great scepticism. Nerva is a mere legend, like Atlantis, the lost colony of mankind. The spacemen are from one of the other colonies, GalSec. The Doctor suddenly spots an odd looking button on Vural's suit, identifying it as non-human technology. The button is actually a remote camera, and somewhere else, everything is being observed by something with a grey, heavy, four-fingered hand.
Roth brings Sarah near the campsite, but refuses to approach: he tells Sarah that he saw Vural go to the rocks, and the alien let Vural go. The three spacemen discuss the Doctor's story and Krans concedes the possibility that the Doctor may be telling the truth, as his story is so implausible. Vural questions the Doctor further; the Doctor explains that the Nervans had overslept, which is why they had not emerged to reclaim Earth. The GalSec men tell him in turn that a GalSec freighter had gone missing. Detecting a distress signal from the supposedly uninhabited Earth, they came to investigate, but their ship was vaporised when they emerged, leaving nine of them stranded. Then, the surviving crew began to vanish one by one.
The Doctor offers to fix the transmat refractors and beam them all to Nerva where they can contact another GalSec ship, but Vural says that they are not taking orders from the "Old People". While the Nervans did nothing but sleep, the rest of mankind had spread across the galaxy and built an empire. At this point, Roth appears. While the three spacemen chase him, Sarah sneaks out from the rocks and frees the Doctor.
Roth loses the others, and meets up with Sarah and the Doctor. Sarah tells the Doctor about the robot, and the Doctor examines some residue on the ground, evidence of a terullian drive; except there is no terullian in this galaxy. The Doctor reasons that there must be some way out of the hole that Harry fell in, but as he climbs down, he too slips and falls to the bottom, losing consciousness. At that moment, the robot returns, and snares Roth and Sarah with cables.
Harry has made it to the hills, where he spots a man-sized metal sphere among the rocks. As he watches, the robot arrives with Roth and Sarah in tow. The sphere's door opens, and to Sarah's horror, out steps the horrendous alien, whom she believes to be Linx, the Sontaran warrior she met in the 13th century.
When Sarah expresses her disbelief — Linx was destroyed when she last saw him — the Sontaran tells her he is Field Major Styre of the Sontaran G3 Military Assessment Survey, identical to the other Sontaran clone she encountered, but not the same. Roth cries out that he will not be tortured again, and makes a break for it, only for Styre to shoot him down. Roth had already been tested, so he was of no further use. Sarah, however, is far more interesting.
The three spacemen find the Doctor in the hole, but as they force him to climb out at gunpoint, the drone arrives and snares the trio. The Doctor goes back to the bottom of the hole, and finds the same exit that Harry used. Harry, in the meantime, finds another human chained to the side of the rocks, severely dehydrated. Nearby, Styre has Sarah tied up to the rocks as well, and has placed a device on her forehead. He seals her in with a force field.
Styre goes to his transmitter station and reports back to his Marshal. The Marshal is impatient for the intelligence report, but Styre tells him that some inconsistencies have arisen that he has to clear up before he submits it. Styre proceeds to subject Sarah to Experiment 7: resistance to fear. The device on her head begins to give Sarah hallucinations, and she starts to panic. The Doctor, however, has reached her and uses the sonic screwdriver to breach the force field. When he rips off the device on her forehead, she gives a scream and falls unconscious. The Doctor, enraged, attacks Styre, but the Sontaran easily fends him off. Styre shoots him when he runs, the Doctor collapsing in a heap.
Harry finds Sarah unconscious, and the Doctor's apparently lifeless body. The chained-up spaceman has also died of thirst, and Styre records the result of Experiment 5: human resistance to fluid deprivation. Harry prepares to attack Styre from behind, but is dragged back by the Doctor. Styre's shot had hit a piece of scrap metal the Doctor had taken from Nerva, saving his life. The Doctor tells Harry to look after Sarah while he discovers Styre's mission.
The robot brings the three remaining spacemen to Styre's ship, where it is revealed that Vural had tried to make a deal with Styre in exchange for his own life. However, Styre intends to experiment on Vural anyway, this time to determine the human ribcage's resistance to pressure and muscular strength. He forces Erak and Krans to hold a gravity bar above Vural's body, making it progressively heavier until it is all they can do to keep it from crushing Vural. Styre stops the experiment temporarily to go make another report, and the Doctor eavesdrops on it.
The Doctor sneaks away again, and meets Sarah and Harry. He tells them that Earth's galaxy has somehow become strategically important in the Sontarans' never-ending war against the Rutans, and Styre's experiments are to determine the physical limitations of humans, following which a Sontaran fleet will invade. The Doctor hatches a plan: he will distract Styre by challenging him to single combat. After a while, Styre will start to tire, and return to his ship to recharge his energy. While the Doctor fights Styre, Harry will go to Styre's ship and remove a key component.
The Doctor confronts Styre, lying to him that his experiments are useless: the spacemen are the human's "slave class", the weakest of them all. The Doctor, on the other hand, is representative of the warrior class. Styre accepts the Doctor's challenge, and while the two fight, Sarah and Harry free the three spacemen, then Harry climbs towards Styre's ship to carry out the Doctor's instructions.
Styre nearly gains the upper hand, but Vural attacks him, saving the Doctor at the cost of his life. Styre, reaching his limits, heads back towards his ship. As the time travellers back away from Styre's ship, the Sontaran staggers out in pain, shrivelling up and deflating like a balloon before exploding. The Doctor explains that the device Harry removed sabotaged the energiser, so the energy fed on Styre instead of the other way around.
The Doctor makes his way to Styre's transmitter, and tells the Marshal that not only has Styre's intelligence mission failed, but that the invasion plans are in their hands, and if the Sontaran fleet moves across the buffer zone, it will be destroyed. The Marshal swears revenge, and terminates the signal.
Erak and Krans thank the Doctor, but decide to wait on Earth for the Nervans rather than transmat up to the station. As the two watch, Sarah, Harry and the Doctor vanish.
Cast
- The Doctor - Tom Baker
- Sarah Jane Smith - Elisabeth Sladen
- Harry Sullivan - Ian Marter
- Vural - Donald Douglas
- Krans - Glyn Jones
- Erak - Peter Walshe
- Styre / The Marshal - Kevin Lindsay
- Roth - Peter Rutherford
- Zake - Terry Walsh
- Prisoner - Brian Ellis
Crew
- Assistant Floor Manager - Russ Karel
- Costumes - Barbara Kidd
- Designer - Roger Murray-Leach
- Fight Arranger - Terry Walsh
- Incidental Music - Dudley Simpson
- Make-Up - Sylvia James
- Producer - Philip Hinchcliffe
- Production Assistant - Marion McDougall
- Production Unit Manager - George Gallacio
- Script Editor - Robert Holmes
- Special Sounds - Dick Mills
- Theme Arrangement - Delia Derbyshire
- Title Music - Ron Grainer
- Visual Effects - John Friedlander, Tony Oxley
References
to be added
Story Notes
to be added
Ratings
to be added
Myths
to be added
Location Filming
to be added
Discontinuity, Plot Holes, Errors
to be added
Continuity
The Time Warrior, The Ark in Space, Genesis of the Daleks
DVD and Video Releases
The Sontaran Experiment was released on DVD by BBC Worldwide in 2006.
Target Novelisations
to be added
