Softer Six: It’s the final sixth Doctor Lost Story so this
is a good time to look back at the previous eleven stories and see just how
well he was served over this season and a half of stories. It has been
delightful to be able to enjoy stories that were taken from us through various
circumstances. Some of them would have never have made it to the screen in the
way they are presented here (Point of Entry is far too adult and talky for 80s
Who, Paradise Five’s gay villains most probably would have been vetoed) and
some of them were a spot on aural recreation of the series at the time
(Leviathan and The Guardians of Prophecy sound like soundtracks of missing
stories that have suffered an archive wipe of the actual episodes). The
majority of the stories have been superb with only The Hollows of Time, The
Macros and Power Play falling short of expectations. Its been a terrific gift
to fans of the sixth Doctor to be able to enjoy some of the material that Colin
Baker may have played at the time. It proves to be a useful bridging of the
more acerbic, angst ridden relationship between the Doctor and Peri in
Revelation of the Daleks and the gentler, more mature friendship we see in The
Mysterious Planet. Clearly a great deal of time and an awful lot of adventures
have taken place in this gap for them to have softened towards each other and
whilst the sharper, insulting sixth Doctor was in evidence in The Nightmare
Fair, come The First Sontarans the Trial of a Time Lord/Big Finish Doctor has
grown into existence. Its definitely a shift in his favour.
Its great to finally hear the sixth Doctor showing Peri some
of the wonders of the universe and he proudly declares they are walking on the
surface of the moon. Its gorgeous to hear them laughing together and having
fun, discussing how naughty it would be to plant their footsteps on the moon
for Neil Armstrong to find! How long has Peri known him if she doesn’t
recognise that he thrives on things that aren’t wise or safe? The Doctor
prefers to leave the Marie Celeste mystery alone because it is a fixed
point in Earth’s history and there are all kinds of bizarre explanations. He
finds cock fighting barbaric and disgraceful. The Doctor’s coat is described as
looking like ‘every headache I’ve ever had.’ Like the first Doctor in The
Gunfighters, the sixth Doctor is not aversed to a glass of milk. He doesn’t
like people entering his personal space and is more than a match for a Sontaran
in battle. There’s a wonderful moment where the Doctor gets on his moral high
horse and calls Roach’s work unethical and gets a torrent of abuse about how
the Sontarans murdered his child and left him homeless. Stick that in your pipe
and smoke it, Time Lord! He’s sympathetic to any species that are driven from
their homeworld by Sontaran invaders. He appreciates the genius involved in
creating the gun specifically designed to kill Sontarans but refuses to stand
by and watch the Caveetch commit genocide via any method. The Doctor ponders
why he can never get a straight answer to a straight question from his
adversaries! His is a name that is spoke of reverently by the Sontarans as a
great warrior and a target that they long to bring down to avenge their people
for previous battles. Rather wonderfully the Doctor blocks the Sontaran
listening devices with his rendition of the Lady in the Lake in a dreadful cod
Scottish accent (which we get to hear an agonising snippet of!). He refuses to
lose anybody in this tale and rushes to the zero room to save Leandra.
Busty Babe: Every time she steps out of the TARDIS is a wow
moment, even if she doesn’t say wow every time. She really does appreciate all
the wonders he has shown her and she’s lost for words when she sees the Earth
filling the sky from the moons surface. Bless, the Doctor has to explain to
Peri what being in high dudgeon means!
Not so much an offworlder as an offtimer. I love the fact that
Peri is a seasoned enough traveller now to be trusted by the Doctor to head off
to the spaceship in orbit and be useful. She goes from being an ally to a
prisoner in a second as soon as Jane reveals who she has made a bargain with.
The Doctor is genuinely bereft when he thinks that Peri is dead and calls her
the bravest of souls although this turns out to be a big con – he realised that
she was disguised in Sontaran armour all along.
Standout Performance: Dan Starkey is the voice of the
Sontarans these days in exactly the same way Kevin Lindsay was in the first few
stories they appeared in.
Sparkling Dialogue: ‘A Sontaran on nineteenth century
Earth?’
‘Do you intend the genocide of the Sontaran race?’
‘Revenge wiped out my people…’
Great Ideas: There is anachronistic technology, the Doctor
is recognised as a Time Lord and people are discussing him in the shadows –
something is definitely up with 1872. There was me thinking that the Sontarans
must be behind all this so when one is imprisoned with the Doctor I started to
questions everything I had previously suspected. A cellar of a large house
adapted into a laboratory with the transmitter sending its message to the moon.
Sontarans have been experimented on and murdered and there are jars full of the
organic remains of the rest. It’s a grisly discovery and a memorable scene.
Roach is a cellular geneticist posing as a local innkeeper. He is a member of
the Caveetch race and his work is to ensure that they aren’t obliterated by the
Sontarans. They invaded their world which had strategic value for them and
although they fought back they never stood a chance (this is a well rehearsed
story that sounds plausible enough until the truth is revealed). A few hundred
escaped (‘rather a paltry number for an entire race’) and two of them found their
way to Earth. They have assimilated perfectly into Earth society and know their
duty to protect their established history. Now almost all of the original
refugees have followed, called using the transmitter on the moon. They
deliberately lured the Sontarans to Earth as specimens, to examine their
physiology and work out a way to defeat them. They are working on a gun that
uses technology that targets Sontaran cloned cell structures leading to total
cellular collapse. It is bio specific so it only harms Sontaran clones and can
be deployed against entire battalions or whole planets full of clones. They are
constantly hunted down by the Sontarans and it has become a kill or be killed
scenario, the difference being that the Caveetch are afraid. An entire
Sontaran kill fleet is on a direct course for Earth and it doesn’t get much
more threatening than that. Turns out there are many races that the Sontarans
have upset and they are more than willing to enter into a bargain with the
Caveetch to wipe them out. They provide the method and their allies, the
Krelliban Confederacy, will replicate it on a large enough scale and pull the
trigger. The Doctor has to bring the Caveetch up to date with current events on
Krelibas because nowadays it is a Rutan slave world. I love the fact that
nobody is pulling out that old chestnut of calling the Sontarans jacket
potatoes but rather describing them as ‘like something from hell.’ I appreciate
that the Sontarans are treated seriously in this story – its not that I am
against monsters being poked fun at by the ridiculous Dad’s Army bunch that we
met in Heroes of Sontar were a little too arch even for my tastes! The twist
that the Caveetch homeworld is Sontar came out of nowhere and blew me away.
They have erased all evidence of the Caveetch from Sontar after they drove them
from the planet. The Caveetch travelled forwards in time to escape the clutches
of their persecutors. Roach created the Sontaran clones, that is his
tragedy. The Caveetch were living peacefully with their neighbouring worlds
when the Rutans attacked. They bred an army of clones bred specifically for
war, super strong, tactically brilliant and totally ruthless. It fits in
completely with what we understand about the Sontarans and proves to be a
terrific backstory that makes episode three (usually the filler episode in Who)
the one to listen out for. Three million Sontarans were hatched within a week
and replaced the Caveetch military, making a destructive impression on the
Rutans. The Sontarans considered their creators a weaker species, not worthy of
survival and turned on them. The Caveetch had too much tactical and
psychological intelligence on them, it was a dangerous vulnerability they were
not willing to allow to survive. Given the revelations about their gift to the
universe, the genocide of the Caveetch has a pleasing touch of the climax of
Genesis of the Daleks about it. Finally we understand why the Sontarans hate
the Rutans so much, because they were bred to do so. Sontar used to be a
beautiful world but now it is little more than a factory, functional and ugly,
entire continents armoured. Fascinatingly Jaka is willing to sacrifice himself
to save the hatchlings almost like a father protecting his young. I enjoyed the
cheat at the end that made it appear that the Doctor failed to save Leandra
when it is in fact Major Thessinger’s funeral.
Audio Landscape: Noisy revellers, a horse and cart, lighting
a match, crackling fire, unsealing the astronaut helmets, birdsong, electric
shocks, a zooming camera, a Sontaran banging on a cell, running footsteps, a
distress beacon, an exploding photon grenade, a teleporter, Lork melting to
death, the Rutan bubbling transformation noise, electric tendrils, guns firing
and people screaming, Sontaran scout ships descending, Sontaran communication
devices, Sontaran ships firing, bubbling vats in the clone hatcheries, the
Sontaran ship blowing up.
Musical Cues: Jamie Robertson is on hand to make things as
filmic as usual and adopts his memorable Sontaran war theme from The Heroes of
Sontar.
Standout Scene: The end of episode two is awesome because it
takes hold of everything from the first two episodes – the Sontaran/Cavitch
conflict – and practically brushes it aside in favour a hidden threat…the
Rutans are on the Earth too! It’s a transformation that gave me chills because
finally we are going to be spoilt with a story where these two races and their
much hyped war actually makes it into a story! Not only that but considering
this takes place on audio the scale and their conflict can be as ambitious as
the writers wants it to be. Also the truth about the origins of the Sontarans
comes completely out of left field (its there in the title but that could mean
anything frankly) and gives the Caveetch an important placing in Doctor Who
history.
Result: A story I wish could have been made at the time
because it clearly has a great deal to offer, The First Sontarans climaxes the
sixth Doctor’s collection of lost stories on a memorable note. As script editor
John Dorney points out in the special features this is a tale that grows
exponentially more ambitious and epic as each episode progresses. What starts
as a somewhat traditional Avengers-esque opening in a spooky village
manages to build to an action packed climax on a scale that the production team
would have trouble bringing to life now let alone in the eighties. Along the
way the fascinating Sontaran backstory is finally publicised, a touching
backstory for the Caveetch survivors and some memorable villainous performances
especially from the incomparable Dan Starkey. What’s so satisfying as a Doctor
Who fan is that in a series that seems determined to keep the two races apart
and to mythologise their conflict in as cheap a way as possible, The First
Sontarans goes out of its way to bring the Sontarans and the Rutans together
and revels in them threatening to tear bloody chunks out of each other. Placing
the Earth in the way only helps to ramp up the tension even more. Much like The
Guardians of Prophecy this story is plot heavy and has a narrative that keeps
evolving and surprising but what surprised me was the emotional undercurrent to
the events that play out. I have an insane affection for The Two Doctors but
even I have to admit this is a much better Sontaran story for the sixth Doctor
and Peri. Exciting and epic, this is a story about three races with a long
history that are all searching for a genocidal conclusion to their conflict so
expect fireworks. After The Invasion of E-Space was such a disappointment, The
First Sontarans proves that Andrew Smith’s Full Circle was not a one hit
wonder: 9/10
1 comment:
So I'm looking to buy a Sixth Doctor Lost Story soon and the ones I'm interested in are Leviathan, Paradise 5, and this one. Do you have a favorite of the three, and/or which one would you recommend to someone trying out the line? As my budget's quite tight, it will be a while before I'm able to hear all of them...
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