The Sontaran Experiment

“S&M Lives of the Potato Men”, “How to Cope With Loneliness”, “Learn to Win Friends by Crushing People to Death”.

"The One with the Deflating Head” (USA), “Don't Arse About on Wet Rocks” (Tom Baker)

Doctor Who manages to stop a Sontaran invasion with only one arm.

*** - The sets are so realistic you could almost believe they were on Earth.

Harry: "I feel a bit like a Morse message: beep beep beeeeep”

Producer: "Let's try it again but without the obscenities"

"You never know when these bits and pieces will come in handy... It's a mistake to clutter one's pants, Harry. "

Traditionally, the producers allowed Doctor Who to defeat his enemies with both arms and over four episodes. Since this story only had two parts they had to injure Tom Baker in order to keep the maths straight.

The Stonaran’s experiments on human resilience were only necessary after their supreme council ruled that the Dona Arana was “too brittle” to be considered a suitable test subject. At least that’s what Robert Holmes says and he’s an expert.

Writers Bob Baker and Dave Martin were known as “The Bristol Boys” because of their breast fixation.

Lis Sladen’s woolly hat was stolen during a recording break and the make up department had to improvise by dying her hair blue and making it look even less real than usual. This so enraged the wardrobe department that Sladen was black listed and never wore good clothes again.

Tom Baker was prescribed pain killers following his “accident” and they turned him into a “mad, goggle eyed fool” (according to BBC documentation). Nothing is recorded about what caused it in his other 41 stories.

Legendary TV critic Terry Marmalade said that trying to appreciate all the good things in this story was like “trying to squeeze toothpaste back into the tube with your eyes closed.”

A broken chain of command meant this story wasn’t given a production code until 1986, the year of the BBC’s big tidy up.

...is not to try and invade a planet with only one soldier no matter how uninhabited it is.

Si Hunt

"I can claim a special understanding of Story 4B as the physical trials and tribulations endured by the human survivors are exactly the same as those suffered when shopping in Bargainsave at half-past four on Christmas Eve. It would, technically, be possible to go earlier but the shrewd shopper can save considerable sums buying perishable goods as close to closing time as possible. A few dislocated ribs, a punctured kneecap, a strained head and a blow from a frozen turkey of which I have no memory are mere trifles considering the savings made. Loaves of bread for three pence each, recently baked pies for six pence, doughnuts that are so cheap one has to buy two of them just to use a legal coin. These are just some of the treasures one can obtain if one is prepared to undergo a little hardship. To be honest, I fail to see why either the fictional astronauts or the real (well, real-ish <g>) Tom Baker should complain. It isn’t as if a pensioner attempted to colonically irrigate them with a bottle of tonic water."

Jeff Tippex, writing in "Vortex Three-weekly", observed 'If Sontarans are a cloned race and their breeding sites produce billions of them at a time, how come we only ever see one of them?' Sadly, this reasonable point was rather overshadowed by his decision to fill the remaining nine hundred and seventy words of his article with 'Aye? You've got to admit it's a thought. Isn't it? Aye? It's a thought. You can't argue with that. Can you? It's a good question, isn't it? Aye?' and so on.