Heroes Of Sontar
The TARDIS arrives at the planet Samur, a strategic location in Rutan space which was once the site of fierce fighting between the Rutans and Sontarans. The planet is now coated in a colorful form of mold, with no other signs of life, at least until a Sontaran ship crashes. Only a few of its warrior crew is left alive, but they’ve lost their sealed order. When the Sontarans round up the TARDIS travelers and learn that one of them is the Doctor, they assume that their orders are somehow related to the capture and execution of the Time Lord and his companions. There are only things that save the Doctor, Tegan, Nyssa, and Turlough: this platoon of Sontarans is more inept than most, and Samur may not be as uninhabited as it looks.
written by Alan Barnes
directed by Ken Bentley
music by Jamie RobertsonCast: Peter Davison (The Doctor), Janet Fielding (Tegan Jovanka), Mark Strickson (Turlough), Sarah Sutton (Nyssa), John Banks (Fleet Marshal Stabb / Trooper Jorr / Witch Guard), Duncan Wisbey (Field-Major Thurr / Adjutant / Orbital Command), Alex Lowe (Sergeant Mezz / Trooper Nold), Andrew Fettes (Corporal Clun), Derek Carlyle (Trooper Vend)
Notes: This is the first Big Finish audio story to feature the Sontarans (an enemy Peter Davison’s Doctor never met on television), though they had appeared in a few stand-alone stories (Silent Warrior, Old Soldiers, Conduct Unbecoming) in Audio Adventures In Time & Space series produced by BBV, a company whose audio releases came to an end a few years after Big Finish picked up the Doctor Who license. Nyssa mentions her husband and children (hinted at in part four of Circular Time), but keeps them a secret from the Doctor because of the events of that story, which remains in the Doctor’s future. TV Sontarans Linx (The Time Warrior) and Styre (The Sontaran Experiment) are also mentioned, as is the Sontarans’ defeat at Gallifrey (The Invasion Of Time). Sontarans were shown to be vulnerable to coronic acid in The Two Doctors.
Timeline: for the Doctor, Tegan and Turlough: between Enlightenment and The King’s Demons; for Nyssa: 50 years after Terminus. This story takes place after The Cradle Of The Snake and before Kiss Of Death.
LogBook entry and TheatEar review by Earl Green
The Doctor responds to Ace’s request to experience the Summer of Love in 1967 by bringing her to Soviet Russia in 1967, where strangely-helmeted motorcyclists are trying to track down a man who’s stolen classified experimental weaponry. Immediately recognizing the weapon, the Doctor knows that it’s unsafe not just in civilian hands, but in any human hands. At an official reception, the time travelers home in on wildly out-of-place businessman Markus Creevy, who has both personal and professional reasons to be mingling with members of the KGB. He’s employed by the owner of the alien weapons: Ice Lord Hhessh, on a mission to retrieve some of the Ice Warriors’ most sacred relics before humans can defile them with further experimentation. But Hhessh isn’t the only alien on the scene. A Time Lord is operating incognito on Earth, and the Doctor is doing his bidding by letting Ace do most of the work.
Tegan and Nyssa enjoy a vacation world that the TARDIS has conveniently stalled on while the Doctor effects repairs. Turlough tries to stay aboard the TARDIS to help with the repairs, but the Doctor convinces him to step outside and enjoy himself. Within minutes of leaving the TARDIS, however, Turlough encounters an old flame, a girl named Deela, just before they’re both abducted by a pair of mercenaries who know Turlough’s identity. With the Doctor, Nyssa, and Tegan in hot pursuit in a decrepit mining ship, Turlough and Deela are taken to a planet once owned by both of their families. The mercenaries’ paymaster, Renor, needs Turlough and Deela alive to open a biometric lock to a dimensional vault side to contain unimaginable treasures. The Doctor’s procured ship is shot down and makes a barely-survivable landing, but the impact awakens a security system that has lain dormant for centuries, quietly forgetting its programming and going mad. Turlough and Deela are forced, at gunpoint, to try to open the vault, but the controls don’t work – and suddenly, everyone’s life is in danger from the whims of Renor and his hired thugs and from the living guardian known as the Morass.
The Doctor pays a visit to Markus Creevy’s daughter, Raine, 23 years after her birth. Markus has largely gotten out of organized crime, but despite his best efforts to ensure Raine has an education, she has turned her considerable intelligence toward such pursuits as safecracking. She’s been stealing some very specific items for an unknown client who pays very well; it turns out that the Doctor is the mystery benefactor who’s been engaging her services. He needs the Creevys to help him do one last “job” – and the stakes are high: the survival of humanity itself. An old enemy of the Doctor and Markus is trying to tip the balance of the Cold War by inviting alien mercenaries called the Metatraxi to demonstrate their gift for warfare. But the Metatraxi are losing track of which humans they’ve been hired to assist or attack. The Doctor has an ace up his sleeve to keep the Metatraxi busy…
Intrigued by the robot guardians employed by the Metatraxi and built at Margrave University, the Doctor and friends follow the trail to that university in the year 2001. Brigadier Winifred Bambera and UNIT are already on the scene, conducting an investigation that they’re more than happy to recruit the Doctor’s companions for. Undercover as new students, Ace and Raine both meet Scobie, a brilliant science student whose fight-the-power mentality stretches from an elaborate scheme to free the school’s lab animals, to contacting an alien race and inviting them to Earth to share their enlightened mentality with humanity. One thing Scobie hasn’t counted on is that these beings see Earth as a ready-made feeding ground full of docile creatures. Fortunately, UNIT and its former scientific advisor are on hand to alter that perception.
Recorded Time: The TARDIS brings the Doctor and Peri to the court of King Henry VIII, and the moment he lays eyes on Peri, the King begins making plans to rid himself of Anne Boleyn (and, as soon as he proves to be even slightly argumentative, the Doctor as well). But King Henry has another secret, one that could rearrange history at his whim – one which the Doctor must put to an end.
