Two episodes
Aired between 22nd February 1975 and 1st March 1975
Written by Bob Baker and Dave Martin
Produced by Phillip Hinchcliffe
Directed by Rodney Bennett
Synopsis
The Doctor materialises at the other end of the trans-mat beam onto a wild, rocky moor. He is standing in a circle of rusting trans-mat refractors and it looks like the entire area is devoid of life.
Harry beams into the area and fades out again a couple of times. The Doctor beings to look at the refractors to see if there's anything wrong with them.
Harry meanwhile frets that Sarah is missing. Not to worry though, she's been beamed a little bit away into a ditch. Harry helps her get out of it and they re-join the Doctor, remarking that this cannot be Earth. The Doctor seems to think it is though and suggests they explore the area for signs of life whilst he fixes whatever's up with the beacon.
As Harry and Sarah Jane explore, Sarah thinks she hears something but Harry brushes it off as nothing and they continue. But she did hear something after all though, perhaps the two men armed with a laser rifle that aim at the Doctor. The rifelman's companion, Erak, tells him to wait whilst he reports in finding the Doctor.
The rifleman, Zake, agrees and Erak goes off through the moors.
Harry meanwhile trips down a big hole that looks like it was some kind of hunters trap. The sides of the hole are a bit too steep for Harry and he agrees to stay put whilst Sarah goes back to get the Doctor.
Erak goes back to the men's encampment and tells of the Doctor's arrival to another, Krans. Together, they go back to the Doctor.
Back with the Doctor, Zake is still observing him when a big robotic bug turns up and chases him halfway across the moors before Zake ends up running off a cliff. The Doctor hears his screams and goes to investigate, finding the man dead. Krans and Erak arrive on the scene and see the Doctor stooped over him, mistaking the Doctor for Zake's killer. They stun him with their rifles before he can explain himself. As they carry him away to their camp, another "spaceman" watches them from a nearby rocky outcropping.
Meanwhile, Harry encounters something that causes rocks to fall towards him. Trying to escape their path, he finds a very narrow passageway through some rocks, to freedom.
Sarah Jane gets back to the trans-mat beacon and finds the Doctor gone. She goes back to the hole and finds Harry missing from there too. She's really confused and beings to climb down the hole and look for Harry when the other "spaceman" grabs her and pulls her into some bushes. Seconds later, the robot bug glides past, beeping and whirring like it's looking for something.
Once it's gone, the man introduces himself as Roth. He explains that he set the pit trap. trying to get the robot. He tells her that the robot is a servant of an alien that lives among the rocks. This alien supposedly captured him and his crew before and tortured them all/ He managed to get away though. He's obviously lost the plot to the point where he's adamant he'd rather die than be captured again. Sarah asks about the Doctor and Roth tells her that he's been captured/
Back at the Spacemen camp, Erak and Krans wake the Doctor and interrogate him, believing him to be the one responsible for kidnapping Roth and the rest of the crew.
The Doctor sets them straight and tries to explain that they were sent from Space Station Nerva. Krans and Erak don't believe him, saying that they are the only survivors of the Earth Calamity, the lost colony of Nerva is nothing but a legend and even if it isn't, the men have just re-claimed Earth in the name of their colony, GalSec, and aren't about to give it over.
Around this point, the men's leader, Vural, returns having also escaped from the alien in the rocks. He explains the rest are dead or being tortured. The Doctor notices a strange button on Vural's suit and asks him about it. The leader gets very shirty and threatens to kill the Doctor
Roth takes Sarah Jane to the GalSec campsite but won't enter it. he explains that he saw Vural being set free by the alien in the rocks, meaning Vural is probably a traitor.
Meanwhile, the Doctor calms everyone down and asks how they came to be on this wasteland.
They explain that they were sent out locate a GalSec ship that had disappeared in the area. They detected the ships distress signal from this planet and began to descend, but the call was a fake and they were hit with a rocket that severely damaged the ship and killed most of their crew, stranding them there. One by one, the crew have been taken ever since,
The Doctor re-iterates his promise to fix the beacon and let the Nerva station rescue them but they refuse.
Roth appears at this point and the surprised men chase after him as he runs off, leaving Sarah to come out of hiding and rescue the Doctor. They eventually meet back up with Roth and together, he and Sarah update the Doctor on everything they know. As they move through the landscape, they come upon the original landing site of the alien. The Doctor recognises the scorch marks as belonging to a Tellurian Drive, meaning it's definitely alien because there is no Tellurian in this galaxy.
They go to Roth's hole and try to find out what's happened to Harry but the Doctor falls in it this time, just as the bug robot turns up and catches them unawares. The bug robot shoots out ropes and ensnares Roth and Sarah Jane, taking them away and leaving the Doctor unconscious in the hole.
And what of Harry? Well, the small hole he found led him to some rocky terrain where he comes across a large spherical spaceship. He spends time watching it until the bug robot shows up with Roth and Sarah Jane in tow. The spaceship opens and out comes a Sontaran!
To Sarah's horror, when it removes it's helmet, she sees that it's none other than Linx! Except that it isn't really. He explains that the Sontarans are a clone race. This is Field Major Styre of the G3 Sontaran Military Survey Corps.
Whoever it is, Roth doesn't care. He refuses to be tortured again and makes a run for it. Styre casually pulls out a gun and shoots him in the back. Sarah is naturally upset about it but Styre doesn't care. Roth had already provided most of the date a he could for Styre's experiments, but Sarah is another story.
The Doctor meanwhile, regains consciousness, and tries to use a fallen tree as a pole to pull himself out of the hole. As he's putting his plan into action, Krans, Vural and Erak show up and re-capture him. They force him to climb up out of the hole but as he does so, Styre's bug robot shows up again and captures the three of them.
The Doctor manages to slide back into the hole and finds Harry's escape route.
Harry leaves Styre to be entertained by Sarah Jane whilst he looks around the rest of the Sontaran's setup. He finds one of the GalSec crew chained to a rock, being purposefully left to die of thirst and starvation.
The man weakly says its an experiment Styre is conducting into human endurance. Harry tells him to hang in there and goes off to find Sarah and the Doctor.
Like the GalSec crewman, Styre also chains Sarah Jane up to a rock, but this time, he places an eye like device on her forehead.
She tries to trick Styre into believing that there's loads of humans on the planet but he doesn't fall for it. He seals her behind a force field whilst he goes off and makes his report to Sontaran HQ.
Harry in the meantime comes across Sarah. He runs smack into the force field and can't get through it. He resolves to go and find a way to help her.
Elsewhere, Styre contacts his Marshall (who also looks like Linx) and explains that as thought, it appears as though the Earth isn't inhabited but their preparation study for invasion of Earth cannot be completed until he's cleared up some anomalies that have shown up. The Marshall is impatient but agrees to hold off the invasion until he's received Styre's report.
Unknown to Sarah at first, Styre's experiment with her has begun. She is being tested to her reaction of fear. The device on her head causes hallucinations, particularly that a nasty sentient slime eating her up.
She thinks she's about to die when the Doctor shows up. He de-activates the force field with his sonic screwdriver and shuts off the experiment.
Styre shows up and easily beats the Doctor to the ground when he rushes him. The Doctor distracts the Sontaran and tries to run for it but Styre shoots him, just like Roth.
Styre's robot bug turns up again, carrying the three remaining GalSec crew.
Styre exclaims he's happy as he can begin his final experiment, but Vural asks for his freedom, especially as he's done what Styre asked him to do, much to Krans and Erak's disgust. Styre turns on Vural and goes back on the deal, keeping him prisoner anyway.
After wandering about a bit, Harry returns to Sarah to find her unconscious and the force field deactivated. He also sees the Doctor and fears him dead and just around the corner finds that the GalSec crewman has finally died of thirst.
Harry waits until Styre turns up to record the results and is about to attack him from behind but the Doctor grabs him and leads him away in silence. It turns out the Doctor was saved by getting shot in the exact spot where the Doctor placed a sheet of metal (a piece of the rocket locking mechanism from the Nerva rocket).
The Doctor ponders what Styre is really up to, reasoning that Sontaran's never do anything without a military reason. He goes off to find out the exact nature of Styre's plan, leaving Harry to revive Sarah.
Styre uses the last of the GalSec crew to set up an experiment, forcing Erak and Krans to hold a gravity bar above Vural's chest in an effort to determine the human rib cage's resistance to pressure.
Knowing he'll be occupied for a short time, the Doctor goes to find Styre's ship. The bug robot shows up and the Doctor uses his sonic screwdriver to disable it. He finds Styre's computer and listens to Styre's latest communication with the Major.
Sure enough, the Doctor's plan goes as expected, he challenges Styre who's sense of honour demands that he face the Doctor with a hand weapon rather than his gun.
When Styre finally tires and disables the Doctor long enough to go back to his ship, the ship overloads, draining all the energy from Styre and forcing his head to implode, and destroying the ship.
With Styre dead, the Doctor contacts the Marshall and warns him that Styre is dead and they know exactly what the Sontaran invasion plan is, therefore they dare not invade.
With the Sontaran threat defeated, the Doctor frees the GalSec prisoners and invites them back to the Nerva Station. They say they'd prefer to wait planet side, so the Doctor, Harry and Sarah Jane step back into the newly repaired trans-mat beam and disappear.
Trivia
- This was the second Tom Baker story to be filmed, but shown third
- This is the second story in Doctor Who's history to have been shot entirely on location. It does however use video tape, which is why it's not as grainy as Spearhead from Space (which used film). I believe it was filmed all on location to keep the production costs down.
- During the initial confrontation between Styre and the Doctor, Tom Baker broke his collarbone when he fell. If you look carefully, you will see scenes where the Doctor is holding his left arm close to his torso (because of a sling). Needless to say, Terry Walsh stepped in and did the action scenes for the Doctor's final showdown with Styre which is painfully obvious
- The GalSec crewman, Krans is actually the guy who wrote The Space Museum
- The Sontaran head had to be redesigned because of Kevin Lindsay's (the actor who played Linx and Styre) respiratory problems. Unfortunately, he died not too long after this story from a heart condition
What worked
- I liked the fact that GalSec had regional accents. It made it feel like they were a separate colony
- The acting is pretty good
- The location, whilst unusual, is interesting
- You get a pretty good feel for the Sontaran mindset in this story, it's nice that they've filled out the background of this race a bit
What didn't work
- Why is everything covered in rock? Unless there were massive earhquakes, mountains wouldn't just spring up around Piccadilly
- Similarly, if everything IS covered, where the hell was the trans-mat beacon, on top of a skyscraper?
- The bug robot is terrible
- The fight scenes are terrible
- The "hole" that Harry and the Doctor fall into isn't so much a hole as a ditch. It reminds me of that mountainside that Sarah Jane falls down in the Five Doctors!
Overall Feelings
This story promises much but the technology and budget of 1975 can't deliver. We're supposed to get the remnants of a destroyed and desolate world, with the last vestiges of humanity on the threat of being invaded by a powerful militaristic force. Unfortunately, what we get looks exactly like a bunch of props stuck in between rocks on Dartmoor.
I'd be the first one to say you can't judge classic Doctor Who by the special effects, but in this case I'm going to make an exception. There's just so much about this that pulls you out of the story - the fact that Dartmoor is a destroyed London, that the hole is gigantic, that it's feasible for an entire invasion fleet to be waiting on a field report before they come to an "uninhabited planet" or the fact that Sarah looks in horror at the Sontaran and proclaims that it looks exactly like Linx. It just leaves you thinking "erm, no".
If there's any salvation to be had, I could say that Tom Baker and almost everyone else puts in a respectable performance. They all try to take it seriously and that fact saves this story from being one of the very worst.
Rating
5 out of 10
Re-watchability Factor
4 out of 10
Watch this if you liked...
- The Sontaran Strategem (Doctor Who, Series 4)
Consulting the matrix
Do you think that Doctor Who would have been better with more location shooting?
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