Product Details

• Actors: Tom Baker, Elisabeth Sladen, Ian Marter
• Directors: Rodney Bennett
• Format: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, Original recording remastered, Restored, Widescreen, NTSC
• Language: English (Dolby Digital 1.0)
• Subtitles: English
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  
• Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Studio: BBC Video / Warner Bros.
• DVD Release Date: March 6, 2007
• Run Time: 50 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (28 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B000KGGIRI
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #16,456 in Movies & TV (See Bestsellers in Movies & TV)

  Popular in these categories: (What's this?)

  #25 in	Movies & TV > Television > Science Fiction & Fantasy > Doctor Who
  #87 in	Movies & TV > Cult Movies > Sci-Fi & Fantasy

• For more information about "Doctor Who: The Sontaran Experiment (Story 77)" visit the Internet Movie Database (IMDb)

• This is item 3 in The Doctor Who: The Fourth Doctor, Tom Baker (1974-1981) Series.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

One of the more suspenseful stories of the Tom Baker-era Doctor Who, 1975's The Sontaran Experiment pits the Time Lord and his companions against a ruthless alien carrying out experiments on the survivors of a decimated Earth. The first Doctor Who serial to be shot entirely on location (in Dartmoor) and solely with video cameras, The Sontaran Experiment picks up where the previous serial, The Ark in Space, left off, with Baker's Doctor, Sarah Jane Smith (Elisabeth Sladen) and Harry Sullivan (Ian Marter, who also wrote the serial's novelization) visiting a future Earth abandoned by its inhabitants save for a small band of space colonists who are being hunted by an unseen force and its robot servant. The alien – a Sontaran warrior (the race was previously encountered in the Jon Pertwee serial The Time Warrior) – is capturing the colonists and subjecting them to horrifying medical and psychological experiments, and the Doctor and friends soon find themselves among its new test subjects. A short (only two episodes) but gripping and effective story, The Sontaran Experiment has received its share of positive and negative reviews from the fan community, but remains an entertaining entry from the Baker years. The single-disc DVD of The Sontaran Experiment offers surprisingly fewer extras than other recent Doctor Who releases; commentary is provided by Sladen, producer Philip Hinchcliffe, and co-writer Bob Baker, while a featurette, "Built for War," traces the history of the Sontarans via interviews with Sladen, Baker, sixth Doctor Colin Baker, writer Terrance Dicks, and others. A brief photo gallery and the by-now standard production notes subtitle option round out the extras. -- Paul Gaita

Product Description

The Doctor (Tom Baker), Sarah Jane, and Harry return from the space station Nerva to Earth 10,000 years in the future. The desolate landscape that once was the site of Piccadilly Circus has become the testing ground for the human race.

DVD Features:
Audio Commentary:Audio Commentary by actress Elisabeth Sladen, co-writer Bob Baker and producer Philip Hinchcliffe.
Featurette:Built for War A 39-minute history of the Sontaran race
Other:Classic Doctor Who DVDs are restored and loaded with exclusive extras
Photo gallery:Photo gallery (4 mins)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars I Will Destroy You All....Later, January 20, 2007

By	Shaun Anderson (Nottingham/Hereford, England, UK) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

"The Sontaran Experiment" is a breezy delight, which whips along at breakneck speed and contains some of the most delightfully absurd dialogue the series had seen, I think only "Pyramids of Mars" betters it. Field Marshall Styre wins the dialogue plaudits with his inspired "I will destroy you all later....But first I have more important tasks to perform". How can you not love a villain who refers to the Doctor as a "worm". Dialogue aside the 2 episode format really fits this story, which doesn't suffer from Doctor Who's perennial problem of over padding and repetition. Perhaps most important about this story though is the wonderfully cruel sadistic streak that runs through it. Some of Styre's experiments truly are abominable and I shan't spoil them here for those who haven't seen this story. This dark, horrific side of Doctor Who developed strongly under the production of Phillip Hinchcliffe and showed that Doctor Who was willing to push the boundaries of its time slot. However it must be remembered that "The Sontaran Experiment" does form part of a short story arc exploring the future of the human race that began with "Ark in Space", an awareness of this story will enhance the enjoyment of "The Sontaran Experiment"
The DVD itself may sound like a bit of a rip off, the main feature after all does only run for 50 minutes. But we are compensated by a very good 40 minute documentary entitled "Built for War" and a commentary track, which overall makes it a worthwhile purchase. This is not the deepest and thematically exciting Doctor Who story, but it very entertaining and good fun.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars "I just love clocks: atomic clocks, quartz clocks, grandfather clocks...Cuckoo clocks.", March 17, 2007

By	Crazy Fox (Chicago, IL USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)

Amazon Verified Purchase

I can't help but get the impression that with "The Sontaran Experiment" the writers and producers are experimenting with the viewers just a bit. By that I don't mean the unusually short length of the storyline (two episodes instead of the standard four or the epic six) or the exclusively outdoors setting (which works well except for making the poor robot stick out like a sore thumb). Their experiment is this, I think: can we make the other factors of the show so very good that viewers will overlook the implausibility of the plot?

The answer in my case is in the affirmative, I'm afraid. I was enthralled by the brisk, tightly-scripted adventure with all of its tension. I was laughing uncontrollably at the Doctor's classic quirkiness masterfully rendered by Tom Baker--"Never throw anything away, Harry" he tells one of his traveling companions as he tosses an object aside. I was impressed with the acting by the cast, who are able to convey a range of extreme emotions without going over the top. I was appalled by the military experiments being performed by the eponymous Sontaran, Field-Major Styre--these are truly chilling, all the more so for being convincingly authentic, as anyone familiar with Nazi war crimes or the terrible stuff the Japanese Imperial Army's Unit 731 did in Northeast China can attest. Styre himself makes for a great villain, his dismissive arrogance almost as enjoyable as the Doctor's quirkiness; by the end of basically a half hour, you love to hate him so much that watching him get his just desserts is thoroughly satisfying. In short, the show's whole crew really had me going the whole time. It was only after the story was over that cool reflection set in and it struck me: why are the Sontarans trying to "invade" an abandoned planet?! The whole premise of the plot is bogus, but I was taken in by the hocus-pocus, so hats off to the folks responsible for this little gem.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars BBC: Lets put these in collections!, September 9, 2008

By	D. Osborne "historybuff" (Virginia) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I love Dr. Who, especially the Tom Baker years. The Sontaran Experiment is weaker than most, it's just a little unsatisfying. But why on Gallifrey doesn't the BBC put the episodes in season format in box sets? Please folks, don't make your US fans collect the epsiodes one at a time, complile then!