Ah, the Sontarans are back! My first exposure to the Sontarans was when I had purchased the DVD of The Sontaran Experiment. And I thought, for the time, that the mask was quite good for the sontaran. Sadly the actor who first portrayed them, Kevin Lindsay, passed away a year after The Sontaran Experiment was made.
But I digress! Let’s talk about this episode, the first two-parter of the series. Though be warned for those who have not seen it yet, SPOILERS MAY ABOUND. But as not to let you accidentally read anything, I’ll put my review in after the jump.

Before we do though, I wanted to point out a really bad choice of words to be put into a sentence on The Official Site’s “Fear Factor”. But it made me laugh. Here is how it should have read: “Martha is grabbed by the cloned soldiers and the boys (the ones rating the scariness of the show) wince.” Instead they use the rank of the U.N.I.T. grunts which reads: “Martha is grabbed by the privates and the boys wince.” Seriously that is on there. Check it out. Anyway, click the link for the review…

Ok, so you’ve either seen the episode or you just say, damn the consequences, let’s get on with it! Very well. Basically the Sontarans are in league with a boy genius (and we all know how much people love boy geniuses… Adric anyone?) and together they have fitted four hundred million cars with sat-nav systems that also reduce the cars’ carbon footprints to zero. Nice of the Sontarans to do that after trying to destroy the Earth a number of times. But as we know the Sontarans are not really all that altruistic. They plan on using the cars as weapons. The Doctor and Donna are called back to Earth at the behest of Martha Jones, who now as it turns out is working with U.N.I.T. U.N.I.T., by the way, has also had a change since we last saw them way back when. The United Nations had asked the producers of the show to not associate U.N.I.T. with the U.N. And let’s face it, had U.N.I.T. still been with the U.N. all we’d have is a bunch of diplomats writing off tersely worded letters to the Sontarans for two hours. Hardly exciting television. Anyway, all talk about the uselessness of the U.N. aside, Donna tells the Doctor she wants to go home. The Doctor drops her off to see her family while he goes on to have a little chat with the boy genius. There he discovers the truth behind the kid’s inventions and calls Martha to send U.N.I.T. onto red alert. What he doesn’t know is that Martha has been cloned by the Sontarans and of course never alerts the commander. The Doctor hooks back up with Donna and in a great little comedic moment meets Wilf, Donna’s grandfather, again. When they examine the family car, the Doctor accidentally trips the weapon trapping Wilf inside the car. The Sontarans realize the Doctor is onto them and decided to go ahead and start their war.

This episode was written by Helen Raynor who wrote last year’s lackluster Daleks in Manhattan/Evolution of the Daleks two parter. I think she really nails this one though. The characterizations of the Sontarans was spot on. When General Staal is facing off against two U.N.I.T. soldiers and one says, “I’m warning you, stop or I’ll shoot,” and Staal shouts back, “A warrior should never warn…” Brilliant. There were some nice comedic touches as well such as the introduction of Martha to Donna, Donna’s mother seeing the Doctor again, Donna wanting to go home. What also makes this episode great is Christopher Ryan as Staal the Undefeated and the makeup team. Ryan’s portrayal as Staal really seems to echo what Kevin Lindsay did. I mean even his voice is similar. One thing I found a bit odd though is that the Sontarans are bald, yet, Staal has a soul patch. Again, just thought it was strange. All in all I thought this was a really good, solid episode and I cannot wait to see what ahppens next week. What do you guys think?

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