Cyberclogs

Episode 4, the Sontaran Stratagem saw the return of those ruthless potato headed military driven alien swines. And on behalf of the Sontaran race I would like to apologise as I called them egg-headed last week but they are indeed potato headed, not egg-headed. But the episode was to be fair not a bad one, it also marked a nice re-introduction of Martha Jones aswell (who looks rather lovely once more!). Another pleasant surprise was seeing Christopher Ryan play a Sontaran general very effectively, it was almost but not quite like listening to Kevin Lindsay again (the late great actor who played the original Sontaran officers back in the 70s very well).

There were a few drawbacks to this episode though, mainly that the stories still rely on the same old recurring solutions such as the Doctor (again!) in mid-episode running away from trouble, it also relies heavily on the Doctor using his sonic screwdriver all the time on everything, and in deadly situations its actually next to useless because of deadlock seals! The inclusion of Luke Rattigan as Ryan Sampson was a bit annoying to watch, as his character is such an irritating little dweeb (bet he gets commupenced next week!).

But there were some nice little touches here and there too, one of them being the scene where Donna tells the Doctor she is going home, and he misreads her meaning entirely as he thinks she is going home for good, but she's just going home for a visit. And yes the Sontaran make-up is pretty good aswell, Chris Ryan's line about the time war was quite good too "The greatest war in history and we weren't allowed to take part in it!".

So the second part should be hopefully more entertaining (or maybe less who knows) but it wasn't a bad little ep. Cue the next un....