The Sontaran Experiment Part Two

The one where a Sontaran does some experiments...

Elisabeth Sladen plays her first scene with Styre really well, selling Sarah's shock and fear of what she thinks is a creature she'd seen the back of. Kevin Lindsay is just as menacing as Styre as he was Linx (perhaps even more so), exemplified by his gradual, silent approach to Sarah before grabbing her by the thorax. Sadly, the mask for Styre isn't as effective as it was for Linx, with obvious loose holes for the eyes, and a less realistic, rubbery skin lacking the detail of The Time Warrior's version (I miss the little hairs). The fact Styre's lower lip is attached to Lindsay's jaw means you can quite clearly see the actor speaking inside, which also unravels the illusion.

When poor Roth takes his chance to escape, Styre guns him down in cold blood, having already got from him all of the scientific knowledge he can muster. Roth was of no more use to him, so he killed him. "I am a warrior," Styre justifies. "Murderer. MURDERER!" shouts Sladen. Electrifying stuff.

The star of this episode is Kevin Lindsay's Field Major Styre, because he's just such a bastard. I mean, Linx was a ruthless devil, but Styre's scientific investigations are thoroughly merciless and unpleasant. It's also in the way he refers to his human captives as commodities, rather than people. At one point he says he's "used up" five of the nine Galsec survivors in his experiments, and when the robot captures the remaining three, he revels in having a "final batch of material". He even refers to Sarah as a mistake that must be eliminated. When he looks at the humans he doesn't see living, sentient beings, just meat ripe for live testing. He even displays vindictiveness when he calls Vural a traitor, blaming him for betraying his own species when it was to his advantage all along!

The experiments we learn of are terribly vindictive, like something out of a Saw film:

• Experiment IV: Immersion in H2O, in which the subject is asphyxiated within three minutes.
• Experiment V: Fluid deprivation, which finds that the poor Galsec prisoner lasts for nine days and seven hours without liquid before dying.
• Experiment VII: Resistance to fear, in which Sarah is tricked into thinking her bindings are a venomous snake, and that a sentient form of sludge is rising up her body to smother her (I love the way director Rodney Bennett shoots the sludge in slow-mo, lending it a nightmarish quality).
• Experiment VIII: Resistance to pressure on the human breast cage + muscle strength, in which Erak and Krans have to suspend an ever heavier weight above Vural's chest until all three collapse.

Styre is also a pretty dirty fighter. When the Doctor challenges him to a duel, he grabs a machete (at 5.50pm on a Saturday teatime!) and slashes viciously at our hero as they scrabble over the rocks. The fighting is given a real element of danger by Styre's animalistic attack, but I can't help thinking that scenes such as this are a hangover from the Pertwee era, when the Third Doctor regularly had fisticuffs with his enemies.

In fact, I'm not sure how much of The Sontaran Experiment was written with this new Doctor in mind. Bob Baker and Dave Martin were commissioned while Planet of the Spiders was still on TV, and although Tom Baker had been recording Robot since April 1974, it's unlikely the nuances of his performance were filtering through yet. This story feels very much like it's written with Pertwee in mind, particularly the scene where the Doctor stands atop a rock and goads Styre into one-on-one combat, and the awful bit where he calls Styre a "despicable abomination" (not actually a line many actors could deliver convincingly!).

For saying this is only a two-parter, there's an awful lot of padding, with Harry, and particularly the Doctor, spending far too much time scrambling around the rocks achieving little apart from showing off the beautifully rugged location. It's almost as if Baker and Martin wrote this story to fit the location. There are flaws in the writing. For example, it's a real cheat that the Doctor has a never-before-mentioned lump of Nerva tech in his inside pocket to protect him from Styre's laser blast. Styre's rubbish robot succumbs instantly to the Doctor's sonic screwdriver attack, yet seemed impervious to the Galsecs' pathetic laser assault. And there's one of those awful scenes where the monster announces he is going to destroy everybody... but not yet! "I shall kill you all now... but first I have more important tasks to perform!"

It's also nonsense that the Field Marshal cancels his entire invasion of Earth and the galaxy, just because Styre hasn't sent his report. It's a very weak end to a very slight story all round, although not one without its strengths, such as the characterisation of Styre, and the sweeping, desolate location work. The Sontaran Experiment is a rather frivolous story slotted between two giants of the era. Despite its brevity, it's less than the sum of its parts, and doesn't have the scale of imagination I've come to expect from writers Baker and Martin. So much more could have been made of Styre's sadistic experiments, he could have been in both episodes to make the most of the situation. The story never reaches its potential.

As for Styre's deflating balloon head... Again, it looks great, but at the end of the day it just looks like a deflating rubber balloon, and not a realistic demise for a pudgy potato-headed monster.

First broadcast: March 1st, 1975

Steve's Scoreboard
The Good: The sadism of Styre's experiments
The Bad: The Sontaran invasion plans are called off because Styre fails to email his report. Oh, the power of red tape, even on Sontar. Ha!
Overall score for episode: ★★★★★★☆☆☆☆ (story average: 6 out of 10)

"Would you like a jelly baby?" tally: 05

NEXT TIME: Genesis of the Daleks...

My reviews of this story's other episodes: Part One

Find out birth/death dates, career information, and facts and trivia about this story's cast and crew at the Doctor Who Cast & Crew site: http://doctorwhocastandcrew.blogspot.com/2014/06/the-sontaran-experiment.html

The Sontaran Experiment is available on BBC DVD. Find it on Amazon - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Doctor-Who-Sontaran-Experiment-DVD/dp/B000GRU8QS