The Sontaran Experiment

Dear Gary—

The Sontaran Experiment is a fascinating two part case study. Styre is the Sontaran of our title who has lured a group of astronauts down to the deserted Earth in order to make an assessment of human strengths and weaknesses. The Doctor, Sarah, and Harry use the Space Station Nerva transmat beam and land in the midst of this experiment, allowing us to make our own assessment of the Doctor, his companions, and the Sontarans.

“Are you coming or going; or going or coming?” the Doctor asks as Harry flickers in and out before materializing completely.

“I feel a bit like a Morse message—slightly scrambled,” Harry replies. And that is Harry--losing his shoes, pushing the wrong button, falling down crevasses: “You know it’s absolutely typical of Harry . . . how anyone in his proper mind could fall down a whacking great subsidence . . . .” But Harry is perfectly capable of getting himself out again. He is only slightly scrambled; most of the time he is competent, brave, reliable. He spends much of our story gathering his own intelligence on Styre and rendering assistance to Styre’s victims.

Sarah in The Sontaran Experiment is in a transition stage between her independent, liberated woman reporter role of her early stories and her endearing, girl in peril role of future serials. Sarah bristles at Harry calling her “old thing” and uses her investigative instincts to reason out that they are not alone on the planet and that all is not right with the stranded astronauts. She rescues the Doctor from the astronauts and even recovers his invaluable sonic screwdriver. “What would I do without you,” the Doctor tells her. She also gets herself captured by Styre, and through it all she is absolutely adorable in her yellow rain slicker and knit cap.

Then there is Styre, our experimenting Sontaran. Due to the similarity in appearance, Sarah mistakes him for Linx from The Time Warrior. “Identical, yes; the same, no,” Styre replies. But he is just as enjoyable a villain to watch as Linx was.

“Your opinion of my looks is of no interest to my program,” he tells Sarah. Insults on his appearance do not faze him. He is logical, methodical; he is a Sontaran.

“Why do you make that disagreeable noise,” Styre asks when Sarah screams. He is on Earth to gather intelligence, and Sarah, “as a female is far more interesting,” than the “moron” he had already studied and found of no further use. His assessment of the female of the species: “would appear to have no military justification; offensive value therefore nil.” He is logical; methodical; he is a Sontaran.

 “That is my function, I am a warrior,” he tells Sarah when she protests his killing Roth. And when Sarah claims to be from Earth when Styre knows Earth to be uninhabited he replies, “You are a mistake and must therefore be eliminated; according to my data, you should not exist.” He is logical, methodical; he is a Sontaran.

The Doctor is also logical and methodical, but he is not a Sontaran. He is a Time Lord. He is the Doctor.

“Nerva . . . transmat beam . . . Earth. It’s as simple as that. Why don’t you believe me?”

The Doctor has explained to his captors his presence on Earth calmly, logically, straightforwardly. When the stranded astronauts reject this, the Doctor asks his perfectly reasonable question. “Why don’t you believe me?”

The Doctor remains calm and respectful while at the same time trying to penetrate the thick heads of the astronauts: “I’m sorry to keep contradicting you . . . .” The Doctor does not get frustrated. He does not get angry. He does not get flustered. He answers his captors frankly and honestly despite their disbelief and inanity. When he explains that the Nerva alarm clock had stopped, they dismiss the whole space station aspect and simply ask him if he is a clock expert. The Doctor, ever polite, replies, “Horologist actually, and chronometrist. I just love clocks: atomic clocks, wall quartz clocks, grandfather clocks, cuckoo clocks . . . .”

When asked if he has any proof of his claims he replies, “Well, no; but then I didn’t expect to meet anybody.”

He is logical and methodical. He is calm and straightforward. While those around him become emotional, annoyed, distrustful, the Doctor simply states what to him is the obvious.

But he is not a Sontaran. He is a Time Lord. He is the Doctor.

Finding the terrorized Sarah, the Doctor’s moral outrage bursts forth as he lunges at Styre accusing, “You unspeakable abomination.” The storm beneath the calm.

The Doctor’s waters run deep, unlike the Sontarans.  “The Sontarans never do anything without a military reason.” The Doctor, on the other hand, does everything with anything but a military reason. His logic and method are untidy and cluttered.

A stray piece off of Nerva’s rocket that he has tucked away in a pocket saves the Doctor’s life. Harry calls this fortuitous, but the Doctor corrects: “Foresight. You never know when these bits and pieces will come in handy. Never throw anything away, Harry.” There is method to his madness and madness to his method.

In the end, the Doctor’s method defeats the Sontaran’s. Names might never hurt Styre, but question his bravery and be prepared for a fight. As the Doctor points out, Styre is strong but unwieldy and unused to Earth’s gravity. All the Doctor has to do is wear him out enough so that he must return to his ship to reenergize. The Doctor has sent Harry to sabotage this ship, and the result is that rather than feeding on the energy the energy feeds on Styre.

This, Gary, is the one point that bothers me about The Sontaran Experiment. The Doctor seems a bit callous in killing Styre in this rather grim fashion, but I suppose the Doctor doesn’t have the same affection for Sontarans as I do.

And so, dear Gary, I come to an end of The Sontaran Experiment, but my slow path experiment is far from over . . .