The First Sontaran is the third
and final Sixth Doctor story in this current series of Lost Stories. We have
had the return of the Melkur, the return of Victoria Waterfield and in this
story we get the return of the Sontaran’s and also the return of the Rutans.
The Sontarans last appeared in HEROES OF SONTAR in 2010 and the Rutans in
CASTLE OF FEAR in 2009. This is the first encounter between the Rutans and
Sontarans ever. It’s an encounter that I have personally be looking forward to
for years and was hoping that it would take away the disappointment of the
Daleks/Cybermen battle in DOOMSDAY in 2006. According to the interviews at the
end of the story this was replaced with THE TWO DOCTORS. The story starts off
with an interesting scene which a very dark scene which then moves into a nice
little scene with the Doctor and Peri on the moon. I liked it because it
captured the tentative relationship between the Doctor and Peri. We got an
unexpected reference to THE CHASE and more specifically the Mary Celeste
section of that story. I always love it when there are references that just
turn up out of the blue.
Despite knowing that the
Sontarans are going to appear its near the end of the episode before we meet
our first Sontaran. It’s a nice way to end the first episode, it’s the end of
second episode before we get our first Rutan so the story takes its time and is
able to do this because of right sort of characters and a story that is very
interesting. I wasn’t as wild about the episode three cliffhanger as I thought
that it didn’t have the killer punch that I thought it should have had, it wasn’t
terrible but the weakest out of the three. I thought there was a nice bit of
humour in the story, my favourite line was when they were describing the Doctor’s
outfit and we get the line “like every headache I’ve ever had”. It’s the best
way that anyone has ever described the Doctor’s unique outfit.
The First Sontaran is effectively
the Genesis of the Daleks/Spare Parts for the Sontarans and gives us something
else we haven’t had before and that’s a bit of back story to the Sontarans. The
Kafeech are the original in habitants of Sontar and it was Meredith Roth who
created the Sontarans before they turned on him and forced him to flee to
Earth. Not only is it a nice bit of backstory but it’s a nice lead into this
story. It makes the Sontarans look a bit more than just a bunch of war hungry
people. Another thing that helps give them weight is when its revealed there is
a hatchery that has 600,000 Sontarans which is a wonderful idea of that many
Sontarans which you just know that they wouldn’t have had that many on TV in
1985. 6 maybe but not 600,000.
Only issue I have with this story
is that they did the whole ‘companion is killed’ thing. I just don’t buy it and
don’t know why they persist in doing it. It happened in THE EMERALD TIGER and I
just think that it detracts from the story and we have about 10-15 minutes of
the Doctor thinking he has lost someone he cares about. Thankfully it’s pretty
brief and Peri’s return is actually quite surprising but I still wish that they
wouldn’t do it. Apart from that I really liked The First Sontaran. I had high
expectations and they were met. Out of the two Sontaran stories that we have
had this is definelty the stronger of the two. I felt that whilst HEROES OF
SONTAR was a enjoyable story it was in many respects a light hearted story
whereas this was a more traditional Sontaran story.
Highly enjoyable.
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