Aside from a ritualistic chant in " The Sontaran Strategem "/" The Poison Sky ", they are never seen to engage in any activity that would be considered recreation, though a few offhand comments by Commander Skorr in " The Poison Sky " suggest they do consider hunting a sport ( according to their creator Robert Holmes, Sontarans do have a highly developed artistic culture, but have put it on hold for the duration of the war, while the opening chapter of the novelisation of The Time Warrior, based on Holmes ' incomplete draft, refers to Linx listening to the Sontaran anthem while his spaceship is in flight ).

Human characters in both The Sontaran Experiment and The Sontaran Stratagem comment on how closely individual Sontarans resemble one another ; however, it should be noted that their height, skin tone, facial features, vocal timbre and accent, hair, spacing of teeth and even number of fingers have varied from story to story, and sometimes within stories.

The Sontaran Stratagem also saw the introduction of a large mothership from which the small Sontaran capsules could be seen to originate.

Commander Kaagh, a surviving pilot from the tenth Sontaran battle fleet, had slightly different armour due to being from the special forces.

* The Fifth Doctor's sequence in the novel The Eight Doctors – featuring the Eighth Doctor going through his own past to meet and assist his other selves – takes place after this episode, the Fifth Doctor travelling to the Eye of Orion to continue their earlier holiday only to be attacked by a renegade Time Lord from the Eighth Doctor's era using the Timescoop, forcing the two Doctors to defeat a Raston Warrior Robot and a Sontaran squadron.

Linx catches the Doctor in the laboratory once more, but this time is rendered immobile when a lucky strike from Rubeish hits his probic vent – a Sontaran refuelling point on the back of their necks which is also their main weakness.

* The original outline for the serial was humorously submitted to the production office in the form of a " Field report from Sontaran Field Marshal Hol Mes, to Terran Cedicks ".

* Before the Doctor falls from the dish, the enemies that mock him are the Master ( as seen in The Deadly Assassin ), a Dalek ( Destiny of the Daleks ), the Pirate Captain ( The Pirate Planet ), the Cyberleader ( Revenge of the Cybermen ), Davros ( Genesis of the Daleks ), a Sontaran ( The Invasion of Time ), a Zygon ( Terror of the Zygons ) and the Black Guardian ( The Armageddon Factor ).

Mickey next makes a brief final appearance in the Tenth Doctor's final episode The End of Time ( 2010 ), when the dying Tenth Doctor visits all his companions and saves the now-married Mickey and Martha, " freelance alien hunters ", from a Sontaran sniper.

All the Sontarans depicted in the television series have monosyllabic names, many beginning with an initial ' st ' sound ( e. g. Styre ( The Sontaran Experiment ), Stor ( The Invasion of Time ), Stike ( The Two Doctors ), Staal ( The Sontaran Stratagem ), and Strax ( A Good Man Goes To War ); exceptions are Linx ( The Time Warrior ), Varl ( The Two Doctors ) Skorr ( The Sontaran Stratagem ) and Kaagh ( The Sarah Jane Adventures )).

The Rutans only appeared on television in the serial Horror of Fang Rock, in which a single Rutan is encountered, though they are mentioned in some serials featuring Sontarans ( The Time Warrior, The Sontaran Experiment, The Two Doctors, The Poison Sky and The Last Sontaran and Enemy of the Bane episodes of Doctor Who spin off The Sarah Jane Adventures ).

The Sontaran Experiment is the third serial of the 12th season of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was originally broadcast in two weekly parts on 22 February and 1 March 1975.

Subdivisions of the Sontaran military structure mentioned in the series include the Sontaran G3 Military Assessment Survey and the Grand Strategic Council, the Ninth Sontaran Battle Group, the Fifth Army Space Fleet of the Sontaran Army Space Corps, and the Tenth Sontaran Battle Fleet.

The Tenth Sontaran Battle Fleet in the new series consists of a Command Ship and a number of capsules that can be moved into position when Battle Status is enjoined.

The Sontarans make their return in the revived series in the episodes " The Sontaran Strategem " and " The Poison Sky ", with Christopher Ryan playing the Sontaran leader, General Staal of the Tenth Sontaran Battle Fleet and also being the story arc's primary antagonist.

The Sontaran design was revamped for the new series, though not to a great extent.

A Sontaran named Commander Kaagh the Slayer, of the 10th Sontaran Fleet, made his appearance in the second series of the spin-off show in episodes 1 and 2, The Last Sontaran.

In 2008, as part of Character options first series 4 2008 wave of action figures, they released some Sontaran action figures.

* In one of the few times in the series that the Doctor directly kills anyone, he uses the de-mat gun to disintegrate the Sontaran warriors.

Ross Jenkins in The Sontaran Stratagem describes a Sontaran as resembling " a talking baked potato " but The Doctor sticks up for the Sontarans by saying that, to them, he looks like a pink weasel.

In The Sontaran Experiment, the Fourth Doctor comments that " Sontarans never do anything without a military reason.

However, in " The Sontaran Stratagem ", the Doctor nevertheless referred to them as " the finest soldiers in the galaxy ".

The newly married Martha Smith-Jones and Mickey Smith are seen being chased by a Sontaran sniper in the last Tenth Doctor serial The End of Time, for unknown reasons.

A Sontaran appeared in A Good Man Goes to War, but as an ally of the Eleventh Doctor.

Commander Strax, the Sontaran in question, was condemned to work as a battlefield nurse ( a punishment implied to have been meted out by the Doctor himself ) to restore the honour of his clone stock.

In The Sontaran Experiment, Field Major Styre instead used a small red laser pistol which only killed ( although it did not kill the Doctor, because of a small metal plate the Doctor had been keeping in his inside pocket ).

The Doctor knocks it out with a mallet before the Sontaran can shoot Martha.

Along with various other species, four Sontaran battle fleets appear in " The Pandorica Opens ", in an alliance to trap the Doctor and seal him inside the Pandorica.

They appear in 2009, in the novella The Sontaran Games by Jacqueline Rayner, featuring the Tenth Doctor and appeared in the New Series Adventures ( Doctor Who ) book The Taking of Chelsea 426 by David Llewellyn, featuring the Tenth Doctor, fighting both times against the Rutan Host.

The Sontaran homeworld was destroyed in the future during the events of the Seventh Doctor strip Pureblood ( DWM # 193-196 ) but the Sontaran race pool survived, allowing for further cloning ; the strip introduced the concept of " pureblood " Sontarans not born of cloning.

In 2008, he again guest starred in Doctor Who in the episodes " The Sontaran Stratagem " and " The Poison Sky ", as the Sontaran leader General Staal, and in the 2010 episode " The Pandorica Opens ", playing another Sontaran character, Commander Stark.

The symbiosis between a Time Lord and his TARDIS has been hinted at before, such as in the sixth Doctor story " The Two Doctors " in which The Sontaran try to isolate the Doctor's symbiotic nuclei in an attempt to construct their own time machine.

Hound Tor was used extensively in location filming for the 1975 Doctor Who story The Sontaran Experiment.

* ATMOS ( ATMOSpheric emission system ), fictional technology that appears in the 2008 Doctor Who two-part serial " The Sontaran Stratagem " / " The Poison Sky "

In The Time Warrior, Linx states that " at the Sontaran Military Academy we have hatchings of a million cadets at each muster parade.

The Invasion of Time saw Commander Stor using the small rod again, but also in episode six, a Sontaran trooper uses a short black rifle-like laser to try to burn through a lock on a door inside the TARDIS.

The Sontarans made their first appearance in 1973 in the serial The Time Warrior by Robert Holmes, where a Sontaran named Linx is stranded in the Middle Ages.

In " The End of Time ", a lone Sontaran soldier briefly appears chasing after Mickey Smith and his wife, Martha Jones ; the reasons for this are not expanded upon.

* The Time Warrior was also released as part of the Bred for War DVD boxset along stories The Sontaran Experiment, The Invasion of Time and The Two Doctors.

* This serial, along with The Time Warrior was referred to in The Sarah Jane Adventures serial The Last Sontaran.

# Series 4 ( 2008 ) episodes Partners In Crime, The Sontaran Strategem / The Poison Sky and The Stolen Earth / Journey's End ; and Turn Left, ( which is set in a parallel universe ).

* After falling, as the Doctor lies sprawled on the ground, he sees visions of all the companions that previously accompanied his fourth incarnation: Sarah Jane Smith ( Terror of the Zygons ), Harry Sullivan ( The Sontaran Experiment ), Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart ( Invasion of the Dinosaurs, a Third Doctor story ), Leela ( The Robots of Death ), K-9 ( The Armageddon Factor ), Romana I ( The Stones of Blood ) and Romana II ( Full Circle ).