The King of Sontar (2014)

It’s hard to believe that we are on our third series of Fourth Doctor Adventures. When there was a time when we thought that Tom Baker would never appear in a Big Finish adventure, we have got more adventures coming and to kick off the third series of adventures we welcome back the Sontarans. The last time we had a Sontaran story it was in ‘Starlight Robbery’ which is to be fair not the most serious story that they have ever been in so one thing that I like about this story is that it uses the Sontarans really well.

The idea of Leela encountering a Sontaran is always a good one and its not the first time that this has happened but as I started to listen to this I knew that this was going to be better than that first encounter. It’s easy to imagine a Sontaran version of Leela due to the way that Leela is

Strang is a unique Sontaran and doesn’t need armour and doesn’t get affected when he is struck on the back of the probic vent. Due to a glitch during cloning, instead of several Sontarans being born its good to think that he has several Sontarans in him. The main plot point about this story is Strang’s plan to spread his clones across the galaxy. It’s a relatively straight forward plot but its done in a very creative way and what the story has is a nice dose of morals which play a significant part in the adventure.

When the Fourth Doctor started travelling with Leela, it was with the intention of educating Leela. It seems sometimes that Leela needs to go back to the classroom and it leads to one of the best scenes that I have heard from Big Finish for quite sometime. I like how the Doctor goes with the very real possibility of sending Leela back home. Even though I know that this wouldn’t happen its still an emotional scene and both Tom Baker and Louise Jameson are brilliant in this scene. The Doctor does his ‘not angry but disappointed’ thing. This scene makes a very good story even better. John Dorney has written a solid story and it’s a solid start to the third series. I think that out of the three series openers, this is by far the best story and it shows that the rest of this season is going to be very good.

As far as the performances go, they are all strong. Dan Starkey has become synonymous as a Sontaran in the six years since he first played one on TV. David Collings played Poul in ‘The Robots of Death’ and I thought that as Rosato was a nice character played really well. The character of Rosato was a conflicted character that had some good moments. John Banks, David Seddon and Jenny Funnell all put in good performances as well but unfortunately for them they are somewhat overshadowed by Starkey, Collings and the regulars.

I listened to this after ‘Antidote to Oblivion’ and I thought that that story was going to be tough to beat but ‘The King of Sontar’ has managed to achieve that and I think that there is much more mileage in the Sontarans and with if we get more stories like this then the Sontarans could be more popular than the Daleks in the Big Finish universe. Maybe.

I have to try and find a fault with this story and……erm…..I’ll get back to you on that.