Rutan - Sontaran War The Rutan - Sontaran War was fought between the Rutan Host and the Sontaran s . It lasted for thousands , perhaps millions , of years , and was waged across the universe . The Doctor had considered the war a pointless waste of time , as the Sontarans never fight for anything other than the joy of battle . ( TV : " The Poison Sky " ) History . Origins of the war . The Sontarans , not yet a species of clone s , were already , in the Seventh Doctor ' s words , a " fierce , martial race " . They began to sweep over Mutter ' s Spiral . Only the Rutans opposed them . Reacting to this , the Sontarans stopped reproducing naturally and turned themselves into a clone species . ( COMIC : " Pureblood " ) A definitive date of the start of the war remains unknown . The Tenth Doctor described it having begun fifty thousand years before 2009 AD , clearly a rough estimate . ( TV : " The Poison Sky " ) Field Major Kaarsh gave the same figure in 1605 . However , the Rutan known as Lady Winters gave the contradictory figure of ten thousand years , which would mean that the war would have begun circa 8395 BC . ( GAME : " The Gunpowder Plot " ) The Seventh Doctor described this event as " ten centuries " before the 25th or 26th century , meaning that the conflict would have begun in the 15th or 16th centuries . ( COMIC : " Pureblood " ) This contradicted evidence given elsewhere , such as a Sontaran speaking of war with the Rutans in the 12th century ( TV : " The Time Warrior " ) and the Rutan plan to destroy the Sontarans in the 13th century . ( GAME : " The Gunpowder Plot " ) Kygon Brox described the Earth as a " primitive world " during the Fifty - first Star Fall Campaign . ( COMIC : " The Instruments of War " ) The Rutans and Sontarans both involved themselves in the Millennium War of 150 million years BC . ( PROSE : " The Quantum Archangel " ) Events of the war . During the dying days of the Fifty - first Star Fall Campaign , the Sontarans suffered heavy losses against the Rutans . Sontaran scientists created the world engine weapon the Warsong to change the course of the war . The Sontarans were unable to deploy the weapon , and the " brave warrior " Surnat Gaq escaped the Rutans , and while mortally wounded , he took the Warsong to primitive Earth , where it lay dormant and undetected . ( COMIC : " The Instruments of War " ) During the 13th century , ( TV : " The Sontaran Experiment " ) the Sontaran Linx claimed Earth for the Sontaran Empire when he crashed there after being shot down by a squadron of Rutan fighters . He time travelled into the future to kidnap scientists to repair his ship . He was unable to hold the planet , and was killed as he tried to leave Earth by the archer Hal , the Third Doctor having helped return the scientists . ( TV : " The Time Warrior " ) Around the same time , a Rutan ship containing two doomsday weapons collided with the Doctor ' s TARDIS , causing it to crash - land on Earth . The Rutans on board were placed in suspended animation for four hundred years and lost one of the weapons . When they awoke in 1605 , they sent out a distress beacon , which both the Sontaran Empire and the Rutan Host discovered . Sontarans and the Rutans raced to retrieve the weapon and use it on the other species . The Eleventh Doctor modified the weapon , as well as a second weapon Charlie stole . He gave one to each race , telling both that if one attempted to use it , they faced a possibility of killing their own species instead of the enemy . ( GAME : " The Gunpowder Plot " ) By the early 20th century , the Sontarans were winning the war . The Rutans , who had once controlled all of Mutter ' s Spiral , had been driven to the far fringes of the galaxy . In the 1900s , a Rutan scout attempted to establish a beachhead for a Rutan invasion of Earth . The Fourth Doctor prevented it from doing so and destroyed the Rutan mothership , also ending the Rutan plans to use Earth as a launching point for their " final assault " against the Sontarans . ( TV : " Horror of Fang Rock " ) By 1941 , when human s developed destructive enough technology to cause the Warsong to begin its activation , both the Sontarans and Rutans were able to detect the Warsong stirring on Earth after its " overture " reached out across the galaxy . A Rutan spy disguised himself as a decorated Nazi veteran called Heinz Bruckner . As Bruckner , he ordered artillery strikes in the Sahara Desert to pinpoint the location of the Warsong so he could use the Earth as a weapon against the Sontarans . After activating the weapon , the Twelfth Doctor stopped Bruckner ' s plans by using a Sontaran osmic projector to send Bruckner ' s trigger mechanism through time . He then blew up the weapon with his sonic screwdriver so that neither the Sontarans nor the Rutans could claim the weapon for themselves to use against the other side . ( COMIC : " The Instruments of War " ) In the 1980s , the Sontarans investigated the possibility of using time ships to win the war . They attempted to gain the secrets of TARDIS es from the Second Doctor , but were betrayed by Chessene of the Franzine Grig . At the same time , the Sontarans were involved in a battle with the Rutans in the Madillon Cluster . ( TV : " The Two Doctors " ) In the early 21st century , the Sontarans were apparently losing the war ( based on speculation by the Tenth Doctor ) , though naturally they refused to concede such a possibility . Apparently without authorisation from High Command , the Tenth Sontaran Battle Fleet set about invading Earth , hoping to turn it into a cloning world to produce more soldiers . The Doctor stopped their plan , and the Sontaran fleet was destroyed by Luke Rattigan , with Kaagh as the only known survivor . ( TV : " The Sontaran Stratagem / The Poison Sky " ) Circa the late 21st century , the war saw conflict near the solar system again , leading to the Rutans attempting to capture planet Earth . A Rutan agent was sent to Earth and attempted to cause a war by infiltrating an international school of athletes . Sontarans were sent to the school , however the Tenth Doctor was able to cause the deaths of nearly all of them . The Sontaran Stenx survived and killed the Rutan , though died in the process . ( PROSE : " The Sontaran Games " ) During either the 25th or 26th century , the Rutans destroyed the Sontaran homeworld , Sontar , with photonic bomb s , though some escaped with the Sontaran racepool . ( COMIC : " Pureblood " ) In the 26th century the Rutans took over the colony of Chelsea 426 above Saturn by using spores from flower s to take over the people . However the Fourth Sontaran Intelligence Division opposed the Rutans and attacked the colony . Due to the Tenth Doctor ' s intervention , the Sontarans were victorious , although later there was evidence that one Sontaran had been taken over by the Rutans . ( PROSE : " The Taking of Chelsea 426 " ) Involvement of Gallifrey . Gallifrey was involved with the war several times . During the Dark Times , the Gallifreyan hero Prydonius was sent to act as an observer in the war . ( PROSE : " " ) Other universes . In an alternate universe , the Warburg , led by General Sontar , the Warburg ' s Supreme Commander and the Rutan Host convened on Gallifrey to meet face to face without violence . They were both trapped in the TARDIS and eventually reached an agreement thanks to a parallel version of the Doctor . ( PROSE : " The Infinity Doctors " )