Doctor Who (TV Series) The Sontaran Experiment: Part One (1975) User Reviews

Classic Doctor Who? Not quite but still good fun, as usual.

[poolandrews · 7/10 · 25 February 2007]

Doctor Who: The Sontaran Experiment: Part 1 starts tens of thousands of years in the future as the Doctor (Tom Baker) uses a transmat to transport himself & his two assistant's Sarah Jane Smith (Elisabeth Sladen) & Harry Sullivan (Ian Marter) to an uninhabited planet Earth to make sure it's safe for the survivors of the Nerva-Beacon (see previous story The Ark in Space which this follows) to re-inhabit themselves. There they run into trouble in the shape of a military expedition lead by Vural (Donald Douglas) who are stranded there themselves after their ship was vaporised upon lading by some unknown alien who has since been abducting & torturing them one-by-one...

This 2 part Doctor Who adventure comprised episodes 9 & 10 from season 12 & first aired in early 1975 & was Tom Bakers third story. Directed by Rodney Bennett this first episode is alright, the script by Bob Baker & Dave Martin spends most of it's 30 odd minute duration setting the situation up & there's no too much action here. The unveiling of the Sontaran alien is saved for the cliff-hanger ending & we don't get to see it before so there's a distinct lack of monster action which may disappoint some, me included. Some of the technical dialogue the Doctor comes out with is really funny & almost plausible sounding thanks to the fabulous Tom Baker & despite not being the most exciting Doctor Who ever it's still top entertainment & good fun to watch.

This being a very low budget BBC production it looks cheap throughout but that's all part of it's charm & always will be. It seems to be shot entirely on a very cold & windy looking moor somewhere in the English countryside. There aren't many special effects in this episode, the Sontaran's flying machine thing looks like it's been make out of cardboard, you can see it shake & it seemed to me that a gust of wind would have blown it to pieces & the laser guns the military guys have look like they're made from toilet roll tubes... Apparently Tom Baker broke his collar bone filming this story & it was the first Doctor Who adventure to be filmed entirely on location. I must also mention Sarah Jane's amazing costume, she's wearing a hilarious bright yellow plastic jacket & trousers, a blue hat & horrible bright orange shoes...

The Sontaran Experiment isn't the best Doctor Who I've seen but it still provides bags of camp, cheesy sci-fi entrainment & Tom Baker is an absolute delight to watch as ever. Definitely worth a watch.

Sontarans look like Russett Mr. Potatoheads!

[Ospidillo · 8/10 · 27 January 2008]

I'm reviewing both parts 1 and 2 here because that's the way it comes on the video.

This one is a really great episode, one of my personal favorites. Tom Baker plays Doctor Who and Sarah is his sidekick along with one other male sidekick, Ian Sullivan.

Doctor Who stops off on Earth (far in the Earth's future when it is no longer inhabited) to make repairs to some equipment that he has based there. Sarah and her friend come along for some R&R in the beautiful English countryside but they run into a "hole-trap" right away! Pretty soon some human astronaults show up and they are very suspicious of the TARDIS trio because some of their crew members have been killed.

The facts ultimately show that it is Field Major Styre, a Sontaran, along with his devilish mobile robot, who has been torturing and killing off the astronaults. Styre had lured them to Earth with a fake distress call and then destroyed their space ship after they had landed. He is conducting "experiments" on humans to detect all their mental and physical inferiorities, (e.g., by water deprivation, by mashing them, etc.), so that his tribe can invade the galaxy and exploit these weaknesses. His superiors are awaiting his final report prior to the invasion.

But Doctor Who has other plans for the Sontarans! The Sontaran, Styre, (as well as his look-alike superior), looks like a giant russett potato with arms and legs and dressed in a cool space suit, and is actually made up quite good. His robot is also a timeless work of tinsmithing art. The cinematography in this entry is spectacular and the action is constant.

If I have a singular critique of this one it's that it is one of the shorter Doctor Who episodes, having only two parts. Still, it's very worthwhile television. My highest recommendation.

Short and sweet

[Leofwine_draca · 6/10 · 7 July 2015]

Review of the Complete Story:

A short and sweet serial from Tom Baker's tenure as the Doctor. THE SONTARAN EXPERIMENT has the distinction of being filmed almost entirely on location in the rolling Devon countryside, and it features the Doctor, Sarah Jane, and tag-along Harry visiting a futuristic Earth that has been long since abandoned. They hook up with some other human visitors, but soon find something more sinister is lurking in the background...

This is the second of the Sontaran stories, following on from Pertwee's adventure THE TIME WARRIOR. At only two episodes it's a fast-paced adventure with plenty of action to recommend it, with Baker giving a particularly energetic performance (he broke his collarbone during one stunt). Some of the elements are a little cheesy, like the robot machine which trundles around the country and looks so flimsy that a little kid could push it over, but overall the story is fun and dramatic in equal measure.

It looks nice, it's just ultimately a bit dull.

[Sleepin_Dragon · 6/10 · 18 October 2019]

Following on from the events aboard Nerva Beacon, The Doctor, Harry and Sarah land on a supposedly empty Earth, only it's not so empty.

I know among many fans there is a lot of love for this rather unique two part story. I'm not really a fan of it, it's very nicely made, well acted, and is generally a really nice production, I just find it so slow, and uninteresting, particularly after the quality of Ark in Space.

The reveal of the Sontaran is a nice moment, but only being a two part story there isn't going to be a lot of mileage from it. I like the creation of the Sontarans, but I don't think there's ever been an out and out classic episode for them, The Time Warrior, this and Invasion of Time, none are particularly exciting, maybe The Two Doctors sees them at their best, certainly not in the new series.

A bit dull. 6/10

Experiment in more ways than one with very good results.

[A_Kind_Of_CineMagic · 9/10 · 18 November 2014]

Review of both episodes:

It was an experiment to have the first two-part story for many years and to film the entire story on location in an outdoor setting (Dartmoor National Park). These experiments work well as the location work is very good and the two part story is very neat with no waste material or time for boredom. This never quite manages to reach 10/10 classic status because it is quite unremarkable as a story but it is very interesting, thoroughly entertaining and very well done so I rate it very highly.

The story follows on from The Ark in Space. The Doctor, Sarah and Harry travel via Transmat to Earth from space station Nerva 10,000 years in the future. There they find a tiny group of humans some of whom have been captured and tortured by a mysterious alien that turns out to be a Sontaran. The experiments are being done on the humans to find their weaknesses in preparation for a Sontaran attack on humanity.

Some criticisms I have read are not deserved in my view as for instance I have seen it said elsewhere that it does not make sense the Sontarans are wasting time testing humans when there are very few surviving on Earth but it is clearly said in The Ark in Space that the humans on Nerva are the chosen people to take humanity forward but not the only humans left. It is clearly said in that previous story and in this one that there are other human colonies and it is also explained that the Sontarans plan to wage war on the humans elsewhere not just those living on Earth. So this all makes more sense than some critics claim. It does seem a slightly inefficient and unnecessary strategy but it is credible enough.

Another criticism is that this is dull and merely a filler. I do not find it dull. This is an entertaining story with a welcome return for Sontarans and very good performances. It is gritty and bleak looking but I rather like that and it fits the story that Earth has been abandoned. I find the story fun. It is a filler but a really good one because it is short and acts as an extension of The Ark in Space which also links in to the later story Revenge of the Cybermen.

It is not a 10/10 classic but is very good and neatly presented as a tight two parter. The acting is excellent. Tom Baker, Elisabeth Sladen and Ian Marter are all wonderful in the regular lead roles and this adventure strengthens the relationships developing between their characters. Sontaran Styre is brilliant visually and in the performance of Kevin Lindsay. He acts the part perfectly delivering dialogue really well and enacting fight scenes and torturous experiments well. The Sontaran face moves perfectly with speech and the overall costume is great for its day. The human colonists are well believable and engaging and the idea is interesting. Grim torture, the threat of war, the return of an excellent alien race and involving characters make this really good in my opinion.

Both episodes 9/10.

The Only Race of Intelligent Baked Potatoes in the Universe

[JamesHitchcock · 16 March 2016]

Like the later 16th season, the 12th season of "Doctor Who" formed a single story arc with each adventure following directly on from the previous one. In the case of "The Sontaran Experiment", this can make parts of the story difficult to grasp for those who have not seen the previous serial, "The Ark in Space", and I must admit that I have not seen it since it was first broadcast in 1975. It would appear that the action takes place at some date in the future on a now deserted Earth. The exact reason why the Earth is now uninhabited is not clear at first, but it later transpires that most of the human race, and all advanced forms of animal life, were wiped out by a series of solar flares.

The Doctor, Sarah and Harry arrive on this future Earth. According to the Doctor they have landed where London once stood, somewhere in the Trafalgar Square/Piccadilly area, but the solar flares have evidently also had the effect of transforming the low-lying London Basin into a granitic upland, something which is difficult to explain in purely scientific terms. A more prosaic explanation might be that the serial was filmed on location on Dartmoor. As the landscape is covered in heather those solar flares obviously had no effect on plant life. The Doctor and his companions, however, discover that they are not alone. They share the planet with a robot and a group of South African astronauts. I call them "South African" because they all speak with South African accents, although they are of course not actually from South Africa itself. It turns out that they are the descendants of those who managed to escape the doomed Earth in a spacecraft.

The first of the two episodes into which the serial is divided is mostly taken up with the Doctor, Sarah and Harry running away from either the robot or the astronauts, occasionally falling down crevasses for the sake of variety, but at the very end the real villain of the piece emerges, a Sontaran named Styre. (This serial marks the second appearance of the Universe's only race of intelligent bipedal baked potatoes, the first being in "The Time Warrior". They were brought back by the thrifty BBC on the grounds that recycling an existing alien race is cheaper than creating a new one). He is on a reconnaissance mission and to has been capturing and torturing members of the astronauts' party in order to investigate the physical capabilities of the human race. Episode two explains how the Doctor goes about foiling this dastardly plot, aided by the astronauts who now accept him as an ally.

Four half-hour episodes generally seemed about the right length for a "Doctor Who" story; those which ran to six or seven could seem overlong or slow-moving, even when (like "The Silurians" or "Genesis of the Daleks") they were otherwise well done. Two episodes, however, seem too short a space of time in which to develop a story properly, which doubtless explains why this format was a rare one. (This was the only two-episode serial between 1965 and 1982). The second episode here seems very rushed, possibly because the scriptwriters wanted to get matters over with as soon as possible before anyone noticed the massive hole at the centre of their plot. Styre's experiments, which give the serial its name, are supposed to pave the way for a Sontaran invasion of Earth, but an uninhabited planet does not need invading in the military sense; the Sontarans could simply land and take possession of it. Why would the Sontarans need to know about the physical capabilities of humans when there are no humans left alive on Earth to oppose them? And why would they want to colonise a planet whose parent star is so obviously unreliable?

"The Sontaran Experiment", with its hurried script, its silly plot and that horribly unconvincing robot, will never rank among my favourite "Doctor Who" adventures. Even the best efforts of Tom Baker and the lovely Elisabeth Sladen cannot do much to rescue it.

A goof. Dartmoor (like most moorlands in Britain) only looks as it does because it is kept open by grazing. Without humans and their domestic animals it would quickly revert to woodland. The existence of an area of open moorland, therefore, would imply that animal life has indeed survived on Earth.

Entertaining Yarn

[Theo Robertson · 7/10 · 21 March 2011]

Slight Spoilers

Hincliffe and Holmes continue to stamp their radical authority on DOCTOR WHO with the first ever story to complete one hundred per cent location filming carried out by Rodney Bennet who also directed the one hundred per cent studio bound Ark In Space . Actually " filming is something of a misleading word since the story like Robot is shot on videotape which makes things much easier for filming . 30 years later Danny Boyle with 28 DAYS LATER found it was easier to shoot a film on digital video for the exact same reasons

The location filming is probably the best aspect of the story ., bleak moorland and rock formations filmed in Dartmoor does give the impression we're on the Earth that is now bereft of humans save for a small expedition who are finding it difficult to survive against an unseen foe

Where the story falls down slightly is where everything is resolved a little too easily but this is common criticism of DW in all eras and there's no big cop out as we saw in the NuWho season finales . It's an entertaining story and remember the shock ending of episode one where a " Time warrior " came out of nowhere . One problem for a fan watching this for the first time is that everyone knows what a Sontaran is but for young fans in the mid 1970s we all thought they were called Time Warriors . Bare this in mind and you might recapture some of the magic the show held over us

Gotta love the sontarans!

[jasonpauljones-64690 · 6/10 · 10 December 2022]

There's a lot of clambering over rocks, clambering over rocks and did I mention clambering over rocks? There's also a fair bit of tumbling down grassy knolls and ravines and it's all very rompus and fun, until...the Sontarans appear! Ah the mighty Sontarans, who couldn't love those cuddly cutthroats? It's great to see them here, albeit briefly in a rapid fire 2 parter. The acting from the supports however needs to be mentioned here in one word: terrible. But the Sontaran Experiment moves at break neck pace and is never boring. A quick visit to Earth via trans beam or something that sounds like that, where the Doctor must stop the Sontaran invasion which he achieves of course and then zaps back to the Nova space Ark. Jolly good show old chap.

An Inelegant Jumble...

[Xstal · 5/10 · 21 June 2022]

Appearing on the surface of Earth, there appears to be quite a large dearth, of talented actors and storyline factors, who stumble and mumble, with inelegant jumble, while providing a great deal of mirth.