Day 198 — July 17th 2021
The Sontaran Experiment Parts One and Two
The Sontaran Experiment — Part One
Whenever we go on holiday, I try to find a Doctor Who location that I can drag the wife to. Her interest in the series is less than zero, but she’s grudgingly willing to hold a camera while I try to recreate iconic publicity shots all the same. In Dubai a few years ago we hired someone to take us right out into the desert so I could see if I could find any London busses. In Paris we walked past the Scaroth door four times before I realised we’d found it. My mother lives in Cyprus — where Doctor Who has never been filmed — but I did try to find out where those prints of The Reign of Terror had been sitting for all those years.
That one was going ‘too far’, apparently.
In 2018 we took a trip down to Devon for a week, and of course we visited Hound Tor on Dartmoor. It took ages to pinpoint the exact location where Styre had parked his spaceship but we got there in the end, and when we found it I took the opportunity to propose. I can’t say she was particularly bothered by it being a Doctor Who location, but I reasoned it would give me a thrill the next time I watched this story.
And I was right! You don’t see the Sontaran spaceship until the closing moments of this one but when I did I couldn’t help but smile. Hundreds of Thousands of years from now, in 1974, that spaceship is parked on the exact spot I proposed in 2018. Wibbly Wobbly and all that. How fitting for a time travel show.
Aside from the personal thrill of managing to connect my own life to a little bit of Doctor Who history, I can’t say this episode has done a lot for me. There’s nothing actively wrong with it — there’s several great moments and ideas in here — but there’s nothing that really stands out either. It’s probably hampered by coming after four very strong episodes, and another four before that which were surprisingly enjoyable. It means that anything which is merely ‘alright’ looks worse than usual by comparison.
This is only the second time — after Spearhead From Space — that a Doctor Who story has been recorded entirely on location. Whereas Spearhead really benefitted from that, becoming the first story to be shot entirely on film, and therefore looking gorgeous when restored and released in full HD on Blu-ray, The Sontaran Experiment takes a different approach, being shot entirely on videotape. It’s been ages since I whined about the difference in the two formats (it was a regular bugbear in the 1960s), but I think this just highlights things all over again.
The image is often a bit flat and washed out, and when I look at the gorgeous vistas of Dartmoor I long to see them in high definition. It’s especially a pity because I’m not sure we’ve ever had the series giving us such wide alien vistas before. When our heroes arrive in the landscape the view behind them stretches on for miles, but there’s almost no detail in any of it.
I’m surprised by just how much the episode tries to build up the mystery of who the enemy might be; with vague talk of ‘the alien in the rocks’, and occasional close ups of a hand. It’s a trick Terry Nation usually plays with the Daleks — holding back the reveal for the cliffhanger despite their name being right there in the title. I’ve grown to sort of enjoy it as a recurring motif there, but in this instance I think it’s just annoyed me. The story is only two episodes long, we already know what the monster is going to be… just get on and give me some Sontaran action!
I can’t totally complain about the mystery, though, because there is at least an attempt to make the build up to the reveal scary. There’s lots of moments where you get a snatch of something scurrying in the background, and our heroes turn around just a fraction too late to see what it was. Add to that Peter Rutherford putting in a great performance as someone who’s genuinely terrified and it’s at least watchable, even if it does feel a bit like a wasted opportunity.
The biggest issue with keeping the Sontaran hidden until the cliffhanger is that they have to introduce his pet robot to give us a tangible threat for this episode, and it’s not the greatest design the programme has ever delivered. I think back a few days to the K1 Robot and how genuinely solid the design looked (aside from the wrists, obviously), and then this looks even worse. I’m honestly amazed the thing didn’t collapse on location — I just don’t believe that it can negotiate the terrain of Dartmoor on those spindly legs!
Season Twelve has been incredibly strong so far, but I think this might be the first real misfire of the new era. I’ll be generous and go with a 6/10.
The Sontaran Experiment — Part Two
‘You’re identical…’ breathes Sarah Jane upon seeing the face of our Sontaran in this episode. It’s such a brilliant idea — they’re a clone species, so of course Sarah might automatically assume she’d come face to face with her old foe.
The only problem is that the mask for Styre is totally different to the one we had last season for Linx. Oh they’re similar — it’s still the same basic design — but they’re certainly not identical. If anything, Sarah Jane’s inability to notice the differences makes her seem oddly prejudiced. Maybe I’ll be fair and suggest that it’s been a long time for her since The Time Warrior…
Sadly the new mask for this story isn’t half as effective as the one we had last time around. Where that looked really carefully blended and real, you’re never in any doubt that this is a man in a mask. It just doesn’t seem to fit as well, and it’s not as well applied as the make up for Linx. I wondered if this might be a result of this story being made entirely out on location, but then the castle filming for The Time Warrior held up just as well as any of the studio material.
I’m also sorry to say that the performance isn’t as strong this time around, either. In the back of my mind I knew they’d gotten Kevin Lindsay back in to play the part, but I had to double check to be sure because it’s just not as confidently delivered as Linx was. Several of the same little ticks are there — the occasional licking of the lips, for instance — but they just don’t have the same effect. Lindsay died not long after the broadcast of this story, and it makes me wonder if her might have been unwell during the production.
I’d forgotten that he also plays a second Sontaran in this adventure, with the Marshall occasionally popping up on screen to hound him for his progress. You get a much better sense of the species all being clones from this, and I love that they’ve differentiated the two by giving the Marshall some extra adornments around his neck!
As for the plot of the episode itself… oh, I’m sorry. It just hasn’t grabbed me. I quite like the idea that a Sontaran might want to experiment on human ‘prey’, and there’s a great suggestion at one point that the Sontaran military haven’t actually authorised these experiments, it’s just Styre being sadistic. It’s just that after the third or fourth ‘experiment’ being slowly performed I found that I was looking at my watch more than I ever want to be during an episode of Doctor Who.
I’m dropping to a 4/10 for this one. The next story is regularly voted among the very best of all time, so I’m hoping Season Twelve can regain some points over the next few days…
