Part 1 of 2
Written by Helen Raynor
Directed by Douglas MacKinnon
“We’re going to the country. Fresh air and geniuses…what more could you ask?”
If there is a single episode of Doctor Who that best exemplifies why it can do rollicking family-oriented action-adventure better than anything else on television, then it’s The Sontaran Stratagem.
As an episode laying the ground work for a second part that will be (hopefully) full of amazing pay-off, it fires on all thrusters. It sets up the situation with a minimum of exposition, it re-establishes UNIT (Doctor Who’s 1970s stalwart military men) as the chief ally of the Doctor, it re-introduces Martha Jones with a deft touch, and it brings back another classic Doctor Who monster with a surprising amount of character and personality.
The Sontarans are back in force, and their return is both a design & script triumph. They haven’t been written this well since Robert Holmes first created them, back in 1974’s The Time Warrior: intelligent, arrogant, dismissive, and entirely convinced of their own superiority. Helen Raynor makes a far better go of these classic villains than she did with last year’s Dalek outing…which goes to show that it can be crucial to match the correct monster with the correct writer. Raynor has made their voice her own, and somewhere in heaven, Mr. Holmes is nodding with approval.
Mind you, kudos must also be given to Christopher Ryan, for bringing General Staal to such wonderful life, and making us believe Sontarans really do exist. 
Meanwhile, in between some requisite action set pieces, we get a surprising amount of meaty character development. Martha is far more confident and sure of herself than she was the previous year, and her interactions with Donna are exactly what I imagined they would be like. But once again, all bow down and worship at the altar of Catherine Tate, who goes from strength to strength with each episode. She is a house on fire: witty, sarcastic, capable, and she’s even getting a chance to pilot the TARDIS! Throw in Bernard Cribbins as her grand-dad, and it gets even better. Donna has been the biggest breath of fresh air in the series for a long while; she seems to make everyone around her so much more passionate…and so much better.
Sure, there are bumps along the road: the UNIT brigade is pretty bland, aside from the immensely likable Christian Cooke as Private Ross Jenkins (complete with a very pal-ish, Sgt. Benton relationship with the Doctor); the child genius is as irritating as all child geniuses usually are (just ask fans of Star Trek-TNG or Galactica 1980); evil clone Martha & possessed UNIT troops come complete with stiff-possessed-evil-clone-acting…
…but in the end, much of this is papered over by the sheer verve of the production. It has excitement & poignancy in equal measure, and it ends on the best get-out-of-THAT cliffhanger we’ve seen in some time. It takes the invasion-of-Earth formula re-established in Aliens of London, and brilliantly refines it. It inserts just enough intellectual depth into a check-your-brain-at-the-door mini-action film…and leaves the audience begging for more. In other words, it’s grandiose FUN for just about everyone.
It’s probably only worth an 8…but I was so surprised by how much I enjoyed it, we’ll bump it up to a… 9
