Elisabeth Sladen’s anecdotes about Kevin Lindsay are probably the highlight of what ‘s necessarily a compressed effort.

-Built for War, an all-purpose history of the Sontarans from ‘The Time Warrior’ through to ‘The Two Doctors’.

-Photo Gallery, including some design drawings and snapshots of the crew at work on Dartmoor

An experiment in more ways than one, the first two-part story to make it to the DVD range in its own right also saw an attempt by 2entertain/BBC Worldwide to push the idea of the "standard edition" format. The idea is sensible and evidently more suitable for some stories than others, not least those which don’t represent momentous occasions in the ongoing story of Doctor Who or where very few members of the cast and crew survive- you get the story, a commentary, photo gallery and perhaps one or two extras, but not the exhaustively-researched package or oddities from the archives that other "special edition" releases might receive. The VHS range had paired the story with ‘Genesis of the Daleks’, and indeed releasing the story close on the heels of ‘Genesis’ (and, indeed, ‘The Hand of Fear’, another Baker & Martin tale) does give a certain amount of credence to the fan rumours that at some point a Season 12 box set was conceived and subsequently abandoned.

There aren’t any great revelations in the commentary- Philip Hinchcliffe is the key participant here, as he’s recalling his first complete story as Producer including the supportive presence of Barry Letts on location and the panic caused by Tom Baker’s injury. Elisabeth Sladen has plenty to say, lots of anecdotes and opinions, while Bob Baker tends to have to be drawn into the discussion because the conversation tends to concentrate on the other actors and the location recording which happened long after he’d delivered his scripts. It’s debatable whether two episodes is long enough for a decent commentary- Elisabeth Sladen is still coming out with reminiscences as the end credits on Part Two run-but as with ‘Ghost Light’, there’s a distinct feeling that there isn’t quite the room on anything less than four episodes for the participants to really do justice to both their recollections of making the story and also digging a bit into what the writer and director were trying to achieve creatively.

While ‘Built for War’ is a good general piece on the Sontarans, with most of the contributors speaking from the perspective of stories other than ‘Experiment’, it does have the general feel of a feature designed for a box set and using up the extra space on the disc occupied by a shorter story. Terrance Dicks and Colin Baker are particularly good on the subject, having spotted the monsters’ satirical potential, but on reflection it’s dated by having been made barely a year or two before the Sontarans’ rematch with the Tenth Doctor. Nevertheless, if a new fan had picked this particular release off the shelves after seeing ‘The Sontaran Stratagem’, they’d have found a good summary of the Doctor’s previous meetings with the warrior clones, and to that extent it serves its purpose. There aren’t many revelations in the Photo Gallery, however, apart from a couple of design drawings for Styre’s robot and communications console, and a few shots of the crew at work on Dartmoor- for a story which supposedly emphasises the deserted Earth, it’s strange to see the actors surrounded by some fifteen to twenty people doing their various jobs.

So experimental it may be, but the DVD release of ‘The Sontaran Experiment’ does feel a little lost and out of place- it’s a lightweight in terms of content, but then again there may not be all that much more to be said about the story. Whereas ‘The Edge of Destruction’ could be put together with various extra features about the origins of ‘Doctor Who’, the same can’t be said for ‘The Sontaran Experiment’, and so it does feel as if the story would have been better served by being released alongside one of its contemporaries to give the release some ballast.