The Sontaran Stratagem/The Poison Sky
Story 192, Episodes 742-743, Series 4 Episodes 4-5
Doctor: The Tenth Doctor
Companions: Donna Noble, Martha Jones, Wilfred Mott
The RTD era finally gets its big UNIT story as Martha recalls the Doctor to Earth to uncover an insidious Sontaran plot.
The Review
It’s been seven years since I’d seen Series 4, and I’d forgotten: it’s the romp season. There is a lot happening in The Sontaran Stratagem/The Poison Sky, and it gives us our best look at RTD-era UNIT. UNIT has existed on the periphery of the RTD era so far, but here it takes center stage, and it is its usual militaristic self. Now funded by homeland security, there could be room to comment on, I don’t know, the militarization of police (and UNIT got a bad bad look in Torchwood), but this story is not that interested in it. We do get Colonel Mace, who admits he is no Brigadier, but the Brigadier is stranded in Peru right now. As well, we get the heroic soldier Ross, whose death is a brutal part of the episode. Cars across the world have installed ATMOS, which eliminates carbon emissions from cars completely, but the Doctor points out this might lead to more cars being made and oil being drained. There’s not really an environmental angle here either, this story is about saving the world! The most infamous element of this story is 18-year old super genius Luke Rattigan who is a dumb annoying shrill brat, by design, and Ryan Sampson does his best to hold the performance together but it still misses at times.
I remembered the Sontarans being silly in this episode, but maybe having seen more of them I think they’re pretty effective, their crazed devotion to war and identical appearance making them memorable foes. This is still the only episode in the new series to have them as villains, and I think we are overdue for more Sontarans (perhaps with Rutons?). Martha is back on screen, newly engaged, but the question of if the Doctor turned her into a soldier is batted down (for now). Martha and Donna get along very well, but unfortunately Martha gets replaced with a clone so we get precious little time with the genuine article. Donna is perfectly Donna in this story, saving the day, roasting the Doctor, and gaining in confidence by the minute. Bernard Cribbins is still everyone’s favorite grandfather as Wilf, and Sylvia Noble continues to be rude and nagging (though her saving Wilf by shattering his car window with an axe is fun). This is a story that could choose to say a lot about the environment, the police, the futility of war, and basically chooses not too. However, it was better than I remembered and I had a fun time seeing David Tennant bounce off the walls to get it done. Just good fun saving the planet!
The season of fun rolls on with Donna meeting Martha, Sontarans meeting UNIT, and David Tennant gluing the whole thing together.
8.25/10 Donna calling the Doctor a space dunce was great
Reviewing Doctor Who from Start to Finish 