Review: Doctor Who: The First Sontarans
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By Matthew Kresal.
What would Doctor Who be without its monsters? The Daleks secured the series’ hold with the public in its earliest days while the Cybermen have offered a glimpse of what humanity could become should it chose to overly embrace technology. There have been countless others introduced over the decades that have become recurring foes for the Doctor from the Ice Warriors of Mars to the Weeping Angels of Modern Who. Among those foes are the Sontarans, the clone race of warriors first introduced in 1973’s The Time Warrior who’ve faced several Doctors on-screen as recently as 2021. Their origins were nearly explored in the mid-1980s in a serial that would be delayed until 2012 when Big Finish released The First Sontarans for fans to hear.
The proposed serial came from the pen of Andrew Smith. Smith was no stranger to Doctor Who, having grown up as a fan of the series and been inspired to write for it. At age 17, Smith became the youngest writer of televised Doctor Who when he was commissioned by script editor Christopher H. Bidmead to write Full Circle for Tom Baker’s final season. Having proven he could write for the series, Smith was given the green light to write a serial for Peter Davison’s debut season, but The Torsan Triumvirate was dropped soon after Smith delivered a scene breakdown. Undeterred, Smith made two additional pitches to Bidmead’s successor, Eric Saward. While neither of Smith’s pitches caught Saward’s fancy, they were enough for the writer to be invited in for a meeting while Saward’s Resurrection of the Daleks was recording in studio. The meeting resulted in Saward sending Smith off to craft a story involving the origins of the Sontarans with a tie-in to the mysterious fate of the crew of the Mary Celeste in 1872.
Smith set to work after receiving a formal commission on the 10th of January 1984 for the serial to be part of Colin Baker’s debut season. Soon after immersing himself in research about the Mary Celeste, however, Smith became uncomfortable using the actual crew as characters in a science fiction story (though, ironically, the series had featured the Mary Celeste previously in 1965’s The Chase which had put an ill-advisedly semi-comedic spin on events by having the Daleks as the cause of the crew’s disappearance). Smith continued working on the project, getting as far as an episode breakdown when in mid-February 1984 development was halted. Though Smith wasn’t given an explanation at the time, it appears that the serial The Two Doctors was the cause as it featured the Sontarans (written by their creator Robert Holmes) facing a returning Patrick Troughton and Frazer Hines as the Second Doctor and Jamie. Smith, seeking more stable employment, soon left writing all together to pursue a career with the Metropolitan Police that lasted into the early 2010s.
Smith remained a fan of the series and, when Full Circle was being prepared for its DVD release in the mid-2000s, he re-entered the world of Doctor Who once more. Coming toward the end of his police career, Smith was approached by audio drama producers Big Finish Productions about writing for the series once more. Though Smith first released story for Big Finish was The Invasion of E-Space for the Companion Chronicles range in 2010, he revealed to Doctor Who Magazine in April 2011 issue that another script had been in the works, though it would be some months before it was revealed that it was The First Sontarans, having been resurrected as part of Doctor Who – The Lost Stories banner with Colin Baker reprising his role as the Doctor alongside Nicola Bryant as Peri. Released in July 2012, fans had the chance to experience the story that Smith had first set out to write nearly thirty years earlier.
Set in 1872, Smith did indeed drop the Mary Celeste from proceedings outside of a quick reference in the dialogue (which also alluded to the events of The Chase). Instead, Smith focused the serial on Sussex where the Doctor and Peri arrive after tracing the source there of anachronistic transmitter broadcasting a message from the Moon. What seems like a quiet village complete with a coaching inn run by Jacob Gilley and a local retired army officer in the form of Major Thessinger is soon disrupted not only by the Doctor and Peri’s arrival but that of a mysterious armed gentleman and, as the title suggests, the Sontarans. For the village hides a secret from the clone warriors’ origins that they are determined to eliminate once and for all, even if means bringing Earth into the crossfire of their long-standing war with the Rutans.
As that might suggest, this is not your traditional Doctor Who monster origin. Unlike Genesis of the Daleks on TV or Gerry Davis’ unmade Genesis of the Cybermen (which more recently itself became part of the Lost Stories), Smith doesn’t take the Doctor to their very beginnings. Instead, perhaps owed to Saward’s original insistence to incorporate the Mary Celeste, this is very much a psuedo-historical tale in the tradition of The Time Warrior. Something that stands out as an interesting narrative choice but also which slowly reveals the meaning behind the title as the Doctor, Peri, and listeners discover that not everyone in the village is who they seem to be as members of the alien Kaveechi are present. Indeed, given the Sontarans are a race of clones, it makes sense that someone else had to have created them and Smith reveals their connection to the Kaveechi over the course of the serial. It’s a unique approach that helps The First Sontarans not only stand out but also avoids the risk of it becoming a Sontaran clone (if you’ll pardon the expression) of earlier serials.
Instead, Smith’s script is a mix of mystery and action-adventure. Commissioned before Season 22’s change of format to 45-minute episodes, The First Sontarans is a neat four-part serial that packs a lot into its running time. Starting with the setup of the mysterious stranger followed by the Doctor and Peri finding the transmitter on the Moon, the serial gradually reveals plots within plots. There are a lot of moving pieces from the villagers to the aliens among them to the Sontarans and, finally, their foes the Rutans. There are captures, narrow escapes, twists, and, finally, a full-on space battle between the Sontarans and Rutans. The latter is something that, as of this writing, still hasn’t occurred on-screen, but could potentially have been wish-fulfilment for longtime fans and thrilling for general viewers back in the eighties. Given Saward’s struggles as script editor to find scripts with both enough action and pace that wouldn’t have broken the series tight budgets, The First Sontarans fits that brief nicely, which makes it all the more incredible that it wasn’t produced at the time.
This is further highlighted by the serial’s two leads. Colin Baker and Nicola Bryant were old hands at their roles by the time the Lost Stories began, having reprised them from the earliest days of Big Finish’s Doctor Who output in 1999, and that underpins their work in The First Sontarans. Indeed, as Baker spoke of in the extras early in the range’s life, the challenge for him was to return to the harder, more abrasive performances of his TV serials over the more rounded version of the Doctor he’d played on audio. Thankfully, both Baker as performer and Smith as writer found a middle ground between the two, giving him the odd abrasive moment and a more than slightly inflated ego at times, but also a warmth and humour alongside much friendlier interactions with Bryant’s Peri. Bryant, as well, benefits from Smith’s script which makes strong use of Peri beyond being a mere vehicle for necessary exposition, pairing her off with the character of Jane and giving her a role in the finale. Smith’s writing for both, admittedly influenced by Big Finish’s work with the characters as he fleshed out the storyline, nonetheless captures what they could have been on television instead of the often rough, even mean spirited exchanges they shared.
The First Sontarans also benefits from the strengths of Big Finish’s work, all brought together under director Ken Bentley. Among them being a supporting cast that included Anthony Howell, still fresh off of Foyle’s War, as Jacob Gilley, the innkeeper whose secret is very much tired into the Sontaran’s past, and Lizzie Roeper as the housekeeper Jane. As is often the case with audio drama, there are a number of cast members who play multiple roles ranging from Sontarans to the likes of Major Thessinger. Among them is Dan Starkey, best known for playing the comedic Sontaran Strax in Modern Who, who was afforded here a chance to play Sontarans in a more militaristic manner. Starkey’s presence also allowed Bentley to pull of a particular bit of misdirection in Smith’s script that makes one of the serial’s cliffhangers all the more enticing to experience. Last but not least is Jamie Robertson’s sound design and music which both wonderfully captures the feel of mid-1980s Doctor Who and makes it easy to visualize the serial for the listener. Brought together with the script and the leads, it’s everything you could ask for out of one of the Lost Stories releases.
But how would it have fared if it have been made for television? It would have been a pair of 45-minute episodes, for starters, but the basic structure of the story would have remained intact. Whether Smith could have convinced Saward to drop the Mary Celeste angle is more questionable, though losing it on audio offers no obvious loss to the narrative. However, as demonstrated by serials such as Warriors of the Deep and The Caves of Androzani, writers were all too often at the mercy of directors to bring their scripts to life. With someone like Graeme Harper or Matthew Robinson at the helm, it could have been to Colin Baker’s first season what Earthshock had been to Peter Davison’s Doctor: a thrilling adventure that called back to the series past with an old foe.
If there is a shame, it is that The Two Doctors being made kept this from being produced. For while it was thrilling to have Troughton and Hines once more reprising their sixties roles, the serial served neither them nor the Sontarans well thanks to Robert Holmes being forced to incorporate a shopping list of characters and a foreign filming locale rather than write something closer to his own sensibilities. Coupled with disinterested direction, it was a serial that never came close to its full potential. While Holmes may have created the Sontarans and given them their first dues, it’s clear from The Two Doctors script that by 1985 Smith had a better handle on them. Enough so that, frankly, The First Sontarans was the far better script of the two.
But what viewers of BBC One lost out on in 1985 would prove to be gold for Big Finish and its listeners in 2012. Not to mention one of the best entries that The Lost Stories has offered since its inception. It’s the Sontaran origin and the Sontaran-Rutan war story Doctor Who fans have always wanted and waited decades to receive, one that proved well-worth the wait.
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Matthew Kresal is, among other things, the author of the SLP book Our Man on the Hill and short stories in the anthologies AlloAmericana, The Emerald Isles, and The Scottish Anthology.