However, the war is still raging at least 20, 000 years later, in the serial The Sontaran Experiment.

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 )).

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 swagger stick has appeared in every Sontaran story except The Sontaran Experiment.

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 ).

Another Sontaran named Styre appears in The Sontaran Experiment, experimenting on captured astronauts on a future Earth.

Their war is still ongoing at the time of the earlier serial The Sontaran Experiment, which takes place at least 10, 000 years beyond the 30th century.

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 ).

As Dicks explains in an interview in the documentary Built for War, included on the DVD release of the serial The Sontaran Experiment in 2006, he served as unofficial editor of the Target Books line.

* The Sontaran Experiment

* The Sontaran Experiment ( as Harry Sullivan )

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

* The events of this serial and The Sontaran Experiment are referenced in the The Sarah Jane Adventures serial Eye of the Gorgon, and more explicitly in the Fifth Doctor audio story Castle of Fear.

It also suggests that the Earth had never been surveyed, which would eventually happen in the following Sontaran story The Sontaran Experiment.

* 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.

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.

* 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 ).

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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 ).

In The Sontaran Stratagem, the Sontarans are seen to create human clones by growing them in tubs of green fluid.

The Sarah Jane Adventures story The Last Sontaran showed further technological advancements of the modern Sontarans.

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.

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 Sontarans also feature in the Kroton solo strip Unnatural Born Killers ( DWM # 277 ) and the Tenth Doctor's comic strip debut The Betrothal of Sontar ( DWM # 365 -# 368 ), by John Tomlinson and Nick Abadzis, where a Sontaran mining rig on the ice planet Serac comes under attack by a mysterious force.

The Sontarans then headed back to Sontaran space, unknowing that they were carrying Rutans into their territory.

While the Sontaran wear protective helmets in battle, to fight without their helmets, or to be " open-skinned ," is an honor for the Sontaran.

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.

Commander Linx, an original Sontaran.

Even something as simple as a squash ball aimed at that point ( The Sontaran Stratagem ) or contact by the heel of a shoe (" The Last Sontaran ") is capable of incapacitating them temporarily.

In the episode The Poison Sky, it is revealed that the Sontaran Empire have been at war with the Rutan Host for more than 50, 000 years, and which, at a time around 2008, they are losing.

Strax expressed irritation at the task at the Battle of Zaruthstra in the 41st century after helping to heal an injured human boy, claiming this was " the greatest punishment a Sontaran can endure: to help the weak and sick.