Review of Doctor Who: The Sontaran Experiment

Introduction

A departure for the classic TV series releases on DVD. The Sontaran Experiment was chosen to be the first "standard edition" release, with not quite so many extras (always a commentary and production note subtitles, plus the odd other extra), but still with the high quality audio and video restoration work. This should help to step up the output of the series on DVD, and I`m all for that.

The Sontaran Experiment was also a departure in other ways, being the first Doctor Who story to be shot entirely on location without any film cameras, and being a 2 part story, which follows on from The Ark in Space (already out on DVD). Along with Robot, The Sontaran Experiment is the weak story in season 12, but it was followed by the all time classic Genesis of the Daleks (also already out on DVD).

After leaving the space station Nerva via a transmat beam, the Doctor, Sarah & Harry arrive on Earth, but all is not as it seems. A suspicious alien is conducting experiments on the population....

Video

This story is now over 30 years old, so you might be forgiven for thinking that it will look like a 30 year old programme. And that`s true up to a point, for example the "Smash advert" style alien robot (as Elisabeth Sladen refers to it in the commentary). But Dartmoor has a nice "future Earth re-growing after a war" look to it.

However, the video quality itself is stunning given the age of the story, and this keeps up the consistently high standard of releases. Like other releases, it has been cleaned up by the Dr Who Restoration Team, and a fantastic job has been done as ever. It probably looks better now than it did when first broadcast. You won`t see it looking better.

Audio

A DD2.0 track is presented here, though it is just a mono track played through both channels. As with the picture, it`s good considering its age, and it has been cleaned up and tidied up.

Features

As mentioned earlier, this is the first "standard edition" release, but it still puts other DVDs to shame.

First and foremost is the commentary track, which features Elisabeth Sladen, co-writer Bob Baker and producer Philip Hinchcliffe. They only have 2 episodes to talk through, but manage to recall most of the events of the time, including dashing back to the hotel to get a hot bath, and Tom Baker`s famous accident where he slipped and broke a bone during filming.

As with previous releases, there`s another commentary track of sorts which is the subtitle commentary option, which brings up production notes throughout each episode. Plenty of useful information is contained here, and lots of good bits of trivia.

The other real extra is a featurette about the history of the Sontarans, "Built for War". This is a 40 minute programme featuring lots of interview footage with Elisabeth Sladen, Nicola Bryant and Colin Baker, stuntman Stuart Fell, writer Bob Baker, and script editors Terrance Dicks, Anthony Read and Eric Saward. There`s also some new footage of a Sontaran wandering around looking lost, which is a bit silly and doesn`t add much to the feature, but it does stop it being just a series of talking heads. There`s some repetition from the commentary track, but this is a good feature overall.

We also get a photo gallery.

Conclusion

The Sontaran Experiment is rather average, because it`s very short, and not much really happens. It is a definite stop gap between the 2 strongest stories of the season, The Ark in Space and Genesis of the Daleks, and suffers even more when compared against those two.

However, it is still an excellent DVD package, with the commentary well worth listening to, and the very good 40 minute featurette. This DVD is another chance to see a favourite programme looking and sounding better than ever, with some great bonus features and an enjoyable commentary track that will certainly appeal to fans of the show. You might pick up most of the other episodes before considering this one, but Tom Baker fans will probably still want it, and completists certainly will.

An excellent effort, and if the first "standard edition" release is anything to go by, there`s nothing to worry about with any of the others.