Doctor Who/The Sontaran Experiment

The Sontaran Experiment
Season 12, Serial 3
Airdate	February 22, 1975
Production Number	4B
Written by	Bob Baker and Dave Martin
Directed by	Rodney Bennett
← 12x02 The Ark in Space	12x04 → Genesis of the Daleks
Doctor Who — Season Twelve

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The Sontaran Experiment is the third serial of the twelfth season of Doctor Who, and the seventy-seventh serial overall.

Part One: Tom Baker (Doctor Who), Elisabeth Sladen (Sarah Jane Smith), Ian Marter (Harry Sullivan), Donald Douglas (Vural), Glyn Jones (Krans), Peter Walshe (Erak), Kevin Lindsay (Styre), Peter Rutherford (Roth), Terry Walsh (Zake)

Part Two: Tom Baker (Doctor Who), Elisabeth Sladen (Sarah Jane Smith), Ian Marter (Harry Sullivan), Kevin Lindsay (Styre and The Marshal), Donald Douglas (Vural), Glyn Jones (Krans), Peter Walshe (Erak), Peter Rutherford (Roth), Brian Ellis (Prisoner)

Trivia

The Show

• First serial to feature no interior scenes whatsoever.

• One of the rare (11 to date) stories in the series to not feature the TARDIS.

Behind the Scenes

• Tom Baker slipped and fell during filming, breaking his collarbone. Producer Philip Hinchcliffe was worried that the injury was serious enough that the new Doctor might have to be recast so soon in his run. Designer Roger Murray-Leach drover Baker to the hospital where his injuries turned out to be far less serious, leading to Baker both able and willing to resume filming. The Doctor's scarf was used to cover Baker's neck brace with fight arranger Terry Walsh doubling for him in several shots for action scenes.

• Shot in entirely on location in Dartmoor.

• Glyn Jones, who played the astronaut Krans, wrote The First Doctor serial The Space Museum, making him one of few individuals to both write for and act in the series.

• The astronauts were mostly played by South African actors who used their native accents. Baker and Martin were interested in how language evolves with cultural cross-pollination and believed the cultural and racial mix of South Africa was an indication of how language might sound in the future.

• Baker and Martin wanted to incorporate some relics of human civilisation, which would imply that the story was actually set where London had once stood, such as having the top of Nelson's column poking up out of the ground in homage to Planet of the Apes. Much of the action in their scripts was set in the Styre's base of operations, which would be the ruins of an old priory complete with dungeons, and so many of Styre's torture devices were medieval in nature. Ultimately, the story would be completely set in natural environments, which jettisoned the medieval aspect of Stryre's experiments.

• Baker and Martin were inspired by stories of Nazi scientists using concentration camp prisoners as test subjects during World War II and the nature of some of Styre's experiments were drawn directly from these reports.