The Sontaran Experiment

Target novelisation Doctor Who and the Sontaran Experiment

Author	Ian Marter
Published	1978
ISBN	0 426 20049 7
First Edition Cover	Roy Knipe

Back cover blurb: Landing on Earth, now a barren, desolate planet, Sarah, Harry and the Doctor are unaware of the large, watching robot. The robot is the work of Styre, a Sontaran warrior, who uses all humans landing here for his experimental programmes. What has happened to the other space explorers who have come here? Why is the Sontaran scout so interested in Earth and in brutally torturing humans, including Sarah Jane? Will the Doctor be able to prevent an invasion and certain disaster, and save both Earth and his companions?

• A vote for three digits... by Tim Roll-Pickering

A vote for three digits... by Tim Roll-Pickering 22/3/04

Ian Marter stated in interviews that no-one else wanted to novelise this story and so he wound up doing it. As the first two parter to be novelised the natural trepidation of trying to turn barely forty-five minutes into a 128 page novelisation is understandable. It doesn't help that The Sontaran Experiment is very weak to start with, serving little more as a time filler and not offering much anyway beyond some action and location filming, so a novelisation has very little to work from. Ian Marter struggles bravely, adding in extra scenes such as Harry roaming about in some underground caves or later exploring Styr's (this spelling is used throughout the book, despite what the back cover blurb implies) spacecraft which is much bigger than onscreen and contains extra Sontarans and robots. But all this fails to convince as anything more than just extra padding which makes the novelisation exceedingly tedious to read, with few redeeming factors.

Marter does make some good contributions, usually correcting previous erros. So the Doctor, Sarah and Harry now arrive on Earth in the TARDIS (tieing in with Marter's previous novelisation Doctor Who and the Ark in Space) whilst Styr has three fingers/talons rather than the five that appeard onscreen. We also learn about Styr's oiley breath, a feature that has been returned to in the New Adventures. But these are mere scraplets in an otherwise dull novelisation. The blame cannot be laid solely at Ian Marter's door though, since the original source material is not the best for turning into a book. Target's policy at the time of producing straightforward novelisations must also bear some blame as the plots could not be substantially restructured to make them workable - something which might well have helped turn the story nto a more bearable form. What we're left with feels all too much like a mere attempt to produce a money spinner than anything good. As noted above this book is clear that Sontarans have only three fingers, not the five seen in the televised story. And holding back the thumb there is a very easy gesture that can be made with the remaining two fingers. A coincidence or is it being made to the readers? 1/10