Sontaran

A Sontaran, as seen in The Time Warrior

The **Sontarans** were a humanoid race of belligerent and militaristic clones from the planet Sontar. They waged an eternal war throughout Mutter's Spiral against the Rutans, though they made no effort to change this nor did they want peace.

## Biology

The Sontarans had grey-brown skin and deep set features. Sontarans generally had three digits on each hand (two fingers and a thumb), (TV: *The Time Warrior*, *et al*) though some had five fingers on each hand. (TV: *The Sontaran Experiment*) Some Sontarans also had vestigial hair, generally in the form of beards, which grew white with age. (TV: *The Green Knight*) Sontaran blood was green. (TV: *The Two Doctors*, *The Green Knight*)

Group Marshal Stike and Major Varl were noticeably taller than their Androgum associates Shockeye and Chessene. (TV: *The Two Doctors*)

The Sontarans reproduced by cloning, meaning every Sontaran was nearly identical to each other. There were some variations over time, such as the number of fingers, (TV: *The Sontaran Experiment*) height, (TV: *The Two Doctors*) or skin colour. (TV: *The Green Knight*)

Due to the high gravity of the moon of Sontar that they were first created on, the Sontarans had great strength and resilience in lower gravity environments like Earth or Gallifrey. (TV: *The Two Doctors*) However, Sontaran muscles were designed for load bearing rather than leverage, (TV: *The Time Warrior*) which could lead to unwieldiness. (TV: *The Sontaran Experiment*)

They were vulnerable to coronic acid. (TV: *The Two Doctors*)

Sontarans fed on pure energy through a probic vent in the back of the neck. (TV: *The Sontaran Experiment*) This vent was also their crucial weakness, as any sudden blow to the vent would stun them. The penetration of a sharp object into the vent would kill them. (TV: *The Time Warrior*, *The Invasion of Time*, et al.) Tampering with the energy source could also lead to a reversal effect that could destroy a Sontaran from the inside out. (TV: *The Sontaran Experiment*)

## Society

The Sontarans were a martial species, obsessed with war. They hated the idea of a great war going on without them. (TV: *The Time Warrior*, *The Green Knight*) Jingo Linx claimed that hatchings of a million cadets occurred at each Academy muster parade. (TV: *The Time Warrior*)

Though they would ally with other species, (TV: *Subjects of War*) they felt no need to keep these alliances, (TV: *The Green Knight*) with Stike insisting that the Sontarans did not need allies. The Sixth Doctor claimed that the Sontarans lacked allies because they were untrustworthy, whilst the Second Doctor made the observation that, like the Androgums, treachery was as natural to the Sontarans as breathing. (TV: *The Two Doctors*)

Sontarans generally held a chauvinistic attitude towards females. They also considered their reproductive systems inferior. (TV: *The Time Warrior*)

The ranks of individual Sontarans were generally not prominently displayed on the uniform. The Marshal above Styre sported two large spiky disks on the front of his collar. (TV: *The Sontaran Experiment*) Commander Stor wore a larger collar than his troops and had a white, three-pointed, crown imprinted on his helmet. (TV: *The Invasion of Time*) Group Marshal Stike had white braiding on his shoulders, akin to epaulettes. (TV: *The Two Doctors*) Both Field Major Staun and Major Raal had a silver collar, compared to the golden collar of their troops. (TV: *The Green Knight*, *Destiny*)

### Forces

The Sontaran military was divided into several different units, regiments, and fleets. These included the Fifth Sontaran Army Space Fleet, (TV: *The Time Warrior, Subjects of War*) the G3 Military Assessment Survey, (TV: *The Sontaran Experiment*) the Sontaran Special Space Service, (TV: *The Invasion of Time*) the Ninth Sontaran Battle Group, (TV: *The Two Doctors*), the Eighth Sontaran Space Regiment, (TV: *The Green Knight*) and the G5 Sontaran Military Regiment. (PROSE: *Destiny*)

## Technology

The Sontarans were reasonably advanced, though all their technology was designed for use in the war with the Rutans. They often used spherical spaceships and could make advanced robots for various purposes.

### Weaponry

The Sontarans could use and make a wide variety of hand-held weapons, though they usually used the rheon carbine, a thin, metallic weapon, which was designed to optimally fit the Sontaran hand. The weapons were used for energy projection and hypnotism. (TV: *The Time Warrior*) A variant of these, known as the laser caster, could hit multiple targets at once. (TV: *Subjects of War*) The Sontarans of the Eighth Sontaran Space Regiment also used small laser pistols, which fired out balls of green light capable of killing regular humans. (TV: *The Green Knight*) One Sontaran made use of a large gun which had a blade-like component to it. (HOMEVID: *A Fix with Sontarans*)

They also used melee weapons such as machetes. (TV: *The Sontaran Experiment*)

They also made use of fragmentation grenades, which could destroy everything in a certain area. (TV: *Legacy,* PROSE: *Doctor Who and the Terror of the Autons*)

### Transportation

The Sontarans used spherical vessels, which were covered in square plates. They were generally only large enough for one Sontaran. (TV: *The Time Warrior*, *et al*)

Assault ships were also used for planetary invasions. Sontaran fleets had a typical arrow formation, with ships composing the head and the shaft. (TV: *The Invasion of Time*)

In the 13th century, (TV: *The Sontaran Experiment*) Sontarans utilised an osmic projector for time travel. (TV: *The Time Warrior*) In the 20th century, they made other attempts to obtain more effective time travel technology such as the Kartz-Reimer module developed by Kartz and Reimer. (TV: *The Two Doctors*)

Control stations could be used to materialise troops into set positions to prepare for incoming attacks. (TV: *The Green Knight*, *Destiny*)

### Armour

Sontarans wore distinctive battle armour, identified by Jingo Linx as Sontaran space armour, which resembled a thick and bulky grey space suit. Their helmets were dome-shaped and almost featureless except for two eye holes and a small, flat crest running from the forehead to the back of the neck. They generally carried around their rod-like weapon and a translating device. (TV: *The Time Warrior*) Certain divisions had gold areas on their uniform, rather than silver. (TV: *The Green Knight*)

### Other Technology

Sontarans could take over their minds through hypnosis. (TV: *The Time Warrior*)

Styre used a miniature camera and a force field while studying humans. (TV: *The Sontaran Experiment*)

Through negotiations with the Space Vessel *Sekhmet*, a military vessel of the Human Empire, the Sontarans gained access to the Hadron Cannon, a superweapon capable of wiping out an entire army of Rutans in a second if set up correctly. (TV: *Subjects of War*)

## History

### Rutan-Sontaran War

#### 13th Century

In the 13th century, (TV: *The Sontaran Experiment*) Linx, a scout, was forced to perform an emergency landing in England after being attacked by a squadron of Rutan fighters. He claimed Earth and "its moons and satellites" for the Sontaran Empire. He proceeded to make an alliance with Irongron, a local warlord, and to transport scientists from the late 20th century into the past using his osmic projection. He would then hypnotise them in order to make them work on his ship. He was killed when his repaired ship began taking off. (TV: *The Time Warrior*)

#### 20th Century

In the 1980s, Group Marshal Stike claimed that the war with the Rutans was "on the contrary" to going badly. The Ninth Sontaran Battle Group attempted to gain unlimited access to time travel through Kartz and Reimer's experiments. This failed when Chessene betrayed Stike and Major Varl, and the Sixth Doctor sabotaged the Kartz-Reimer module. At the same point in time, the Sontarans were involved in a battle with the Rutans in the Madillon Cluster. (TV: *The Two Doctors*)

In the 1990s Field Major Staun set up a pact with the S'rax commander Bertilak, intending to destroy Camelot in order to make room for an interdimensional Sontaran outpost. He voiced his plans to betray Bertilak to one of his subordinates, with Bertilak overhearing, though he initially seemed indifferent to the revelation. When Guinevere's forces, backed up by UNIT, attacked, Staun oversaw the counter-attack by the S'rax and Sontaran forces. He demanded Bertilak fire the Grail, which he had helped Bertilak construct, only for his troops to be wiped out by the superweapon and Bertilak to turn on Staun, killing him. (TV: *The Green Knight*)

#### 26th century

Around 2570, the Sontarans were engaged in activities in the Magellanic Clouds. (TV: *Love and War*)

#### 29th century

At some point, Major Raal and his forces came into contact with Cybermen attempting to destroy the Doctor's timestream. They were partially converted shortly before launching an attack of the *Space Station Abraxas*. After the Fourth Doctor and Sarah Jane Smith helped the ship re-stabilise, Raal and his second-in-command Srik materialised on the ship, ordered to kill the Doctor. This mission failed thanks to the timely arrival of Bernice Summerfield, the Third Doctor and Liz Shaw, with Liz shooting Srik dead and Bernice using a pipe to knock Raal out. Raal was then moved by the Doctor to a garbage disposal chute, presumably killing him too. (TV: *Destiny*)

### 34th century

Members of the Fifth Sontaran Army Space Fleet led by Commander Strokk came to the aid of the Space Vessel *Sekhmet*, which had came under attack by Rutans when travelling through their battlefield. The Rutans had been after the Hadron Cannon, which the Space Vessel was trying to transport to the other side of the galaxy. As part of negotiations for safe passage, mediated by the Ninth Doctor and Sergeant Lena Haigh of the Human Empire, the humans reluctantly had to hand the Hadron Cannon over to the Sontarans. (TV: *Subjects of War*)

#### Post-11th millennium

Many thousands of years after the 20th century, at a time when the Earth had been abandoned for 10,000 years, the Sontarans were separated from the many human worlds like GalSec throughout Mutter's Spiral by a buffer zone. The Grand Strategic Council planned to invade the galaxy, but they had to abandon that plan when a scout, Field Major Styre, was killed while trying to assess the strengths and weaknesses of the humans. After this, the Fourth Doctor bluffed, telling the Sontarans that their battle plans had been captured, so they would have to call off their invasion. (TV: *The Sontaran Experiment*)

### Undated events

The Sontarans, in concert with the Vardans invaded Gallifrey, until beaten back by the Lord President the Fourth Doctor. (TV: *The Invasion of Time*)

## Behind the Scenes

* The Sontarans were created by Robert Holmes, who conceived of them partially based on the joke of a Doctor Who monster taking off its helmet to reveal a head shaped like that helmet.
* According to Bob Baker, when he and Dave Martin consulted Holmes as script editor for help with writing *The Sontaran Experiment*, Holmes had drawn out an elaborate backstory for the Sontarans, including that the Sontarans had sex through the backs of their necks (whether this is through the probic vent or not is unclear).
* In the documentary *Built for War*, Elisabeth Sladen credits Linx actor Kevin Lindsay with establishing the pronunciation for "Sontaran" that is now generally accepted. Her description of the filming of *The Time Warrior* suggests that Lindsay insisted upon stressing the second syllable over the objections of director Alan Bromly, who wanted to emphasise the first.
* The *Star Trek* series *Voyager* introduced a species that was physically very similar to Sontarans.
* In the David Walliams novel *Grandpa's Great Ecscape*, kids dress up as Sontarans, along with Cybermen and Daleks, using costumes stolen from a *Doctor Who* exhibition, and pretend that there is an alien invasion of Earth.
* In 2017, leaked CIA documents listed "sontaran" as the name of a hacking tool used for Skype.
* In "A Sourcebook for Field Agents" from *The Doctor Who Role Playing Game*, the Sontarans were descended from a race called the Anar, who came to be at war with the Isari. The Anar then turned control of their world to General Sontaris, who after wiping out the Isari refused to give up his dictatorship, having himself cloned into an army and wiping out the rest of the Anar. He then declared himself Emperor, renamed the Anar homeworld Sontara, and gave his newly-cloned race the name Sontarans.