The Sontarans vs. Rutans mini-series-that-was-originally-a-box-set comes to a close with this rare stand-alone War Doctor story. “In Name Only” does a good job of tying all the different story strands that have been created across the previous three releases while also giving a fun story to digest as well. Let’s take a look!
The story kicks off with a Time Lord possessed by a Rutan arriving on a Time Lord station and attacking the people there, openly declaring war. Due to this war council member Blaxill (Debbie Korley) tries to convince the rest of her kind of make an example of the Rutans and destroy their home world before they even crawled into a spacecraft. This seems to go down surprisingly well with the other council members until the man formally known as The Doctor (Jonathan Carley) arrives and points out that declaring war on the Time Lords while in the middle of your centuries-long war against the Sontarans doesn’t make any tactical sense and that there must be more to this than is being let on. The War Doctor heads out to investigate and arrives in a top Sontaran stronghold and meets a Captain called Vrell (Christopher Ryan) before meeting the bigwig Grix (John Banks), where he does his best to convince the head honcho to help stop the plot as surely this tactic by the Time Lords would be an insult to his race and when he doesn’t seem that bothered The Doctor says how it’s possible Rutans have invaded his ship based on the technology from previous story “Born to Die” but Grix claims not to know of such an incident, and the planet Taxodon isn’t on any database.
*GASP!* A young War Doctor not in a painted art style?!
The Doctor finds his old “buddy” Skole (Dan Starkey) from that day and asks to meet with him to collaborate his Taxodon story but as they meet up they’re attacked by Sontarans with Rutan abilities led by Grix. Despite his reluctance to attack his fellow Sontarans Skole helps fight them off as The Doctor heads back to the TARDIS, but Skole doesn’t make it back as when he meets The Doctor it turns out to be Grix in disguise. Grix boards the TARDIS disguised as Skole as they head off to the early days of the Ruta III to stop the Time Lord attack, as the paradox-blocking technology they’re using won’t be enough to stop this much damage to the timeline…
It’s a really fun story, with some good twists and turns that play up both races unique abilities and characteristics and good acting all round. Nice to have a good spread of Sontaran voice actors too!
The Continuity:
One last look at the unused Boxset cover, including weird double-chin McGann!
Beyond ties to the previous three Sontaran vs. Rutan stories (i.e. “The Battle of Giant’s Causeway”, “The Children of the Future” and “Born to Die”) there isn’t much. The Paradox Cage the Time Lords use I’m pretty sure is a reference to a previous War Doctor story, or at least another story in general, but I can’t find it out right now. There was a “Paradox Machine” in the Tenth Doctor TV story “The Sound of Drums / Last of the Time Lords” but that was made using the Doctor’s TARDIS rather than a machine within it…
Overall Thoughts:
“In Name Only” was once again a really fun hour, with some good twists and turns that satisfyingly connected to the previous Sontarans vs. Rutans stories as well. If this did end up a boxset like original intended it would’ve knocked it out of the park with four good-to-great stories, but as it is I’ll take a mini-series of really good stories anyway!
As The Doctor arrives above the Ruta III he recognises the Sontaran not as Skole but the confused Sontaran calling himself “Salutio” from the incident at the Giant’s Causeway. He remembers not just the confused Sontarans but how they vanished alongside the Rutans when he destroyed the latter, and now it makes sense: they were all these Sontaran/Rutan hybrids. This news in combination with the idea that Sontarans wouldn’t accept wiping out the Rutans in the past via the Time Lords a true victory for them makes him realise that Blaxill must be a Sontaran/Rutan in disguise and therefore this whole attack is just a Sontaran plan using the Taxodon Rutan/Sontaran body as a way to reverse-engineer their own breed of shape-changing Sontarans.
The jig being up Blaxill and a handful of other troops disguised as Time Lords then attack the remaining actual Time Lords on board and begin attempting to break through the barrier above Ruta III but The Doctor arrives on board via his TARDIS and eventually knocks out the tech holding back the paradox energy and escapes, leaving the Sontaran/Rutans to get swept up into the Vortex and deposited in the past. The incident at Giant’s Causeway and on Taxodon are isolated in pockets of time to make sure no more Sontaran / Rutan hybrids can be created, and with that The Doctor heads off on his way.
Hogan Reviews 