4.3: The Sontaran Experiment

In which we go to space South Africa.

Broadcast: February-March 1975

Watched: May 2020

The Sontaran Experiment, Part One

One of [the writers] Bob & Dave’s better efforts, I think – the discipline of the shorter script seems to help them. Efficiently separates the regulars within about seven minutes. This is the first two parter since The Rescue, isn’t it? Why did they do it now? Why didn’t they do it before? 

More importantly, why are the humans all South African?

[They hadn’t done it before because it’s an uneconomic way of using the budget, to create sets, costumes etc. that’ll only be used for 1/13th of the season. They do it now because this location filming was originally allocated to a six-part version of the previous story, for scenes set in the ark’s botanical section; but that version didn’t work, so Bob Baker and Dave Martin were commissioned to write a self-contained two-parter in a tearing hurry.]

Anayway, the Earth looks bleak as anything. The Doctor’s grim jokes about this being London (“Trafalgar Square is that way... might find the Central line” etc) clearly influenced [script editor Robert] Holmes on Mysterious Planet [his last completed story, from 1986].

I’m not sure the history as presented here fits with the Pertwee era... Suggests that the empire only happens after humans are forced to flee. I do like the way that it reframes the people on Nerva from humanity’s last best hope to a bunch of weird, scientific cultists. The way that, to the people on the Earth, those on the Beacon should seem like our bumping into an ancient Sumerian – we might think they’re savages, but we’d be interested – feels under-explored.

The cliffhanger is wrecked by the fact we’ve seen the title card. Thinking about it, The Ark in Space is the only title this season that *doesn’t* blow the first cliffhanger isn’t it?

The Sontaran Experiment, Part Two

This episode feels like the inspiration for a lot of the modern Sontaran stuff. Two clones having an argument is inherently funny, the enthusiastic use of the word “puny”, the cruel yet strangely pointless experiments...

Sarah’s hallucinations are let down by the FX. The bit where the Doctor is suddenly replaced by a stunt double are let down by it being blindingly obvious that it’s not Tom Baker doing the fighting. There are also some bits of editing that make it hard to know what’s going on – Harry disappears for five minutes with no explanation, Styre walks away from the fight with no explanation, etc.

Also I am really not buying the Doctor managing to ruin an entire galactic invasion by basically telling the fleet to piss off.

Funny how it’s always the traitor who saves the day in the end isn’t it?

Anyway. That was not bad, quite nicely done, but it wasn’t really about anything was it? Still, now we’re into the Tom years I suppose I shall have to get used to that.

Still don’t understand why all the humans are South African, mind.