The next set of Ninth Doctor Adventures goes from Earth-based to space-based, putting a title on … well, what Doctor Who does all the time anyway. Salvation Nine is a good example of taking a simple idea of “The Ninth Doctor meets the Sontarans” and giving it a bigger spin than you’d otherwise have to, taking a deeper dive into the clone race than perhaps has ever been taken…
Salvation Nine opens with a framing scene where The Doctor has already had the adventure he’s about to have during the first half of the episode and appears to stop soldier Navarch Al-Hanin (Pooja Shah) and his space fleet from destroying a colony of Sontarans because he had the most amazing experience while on the surface of the planet. We then see, or erm, hear that experience and basically The Doctor confronts a group of Sontarans who are wearing regular clothes, farming and generally acting extremely nice to him. One such Sontaran, Lopps (Dan Starkey, naturally. Same goes for all but one other Sontaran in the story!), tells him he’s never heard of the name Sontarans and only knows himself and his fellow people as “Niners” due to being on the ninth moon of planet Salvation. The Doctor is even more confused when a female Sontaran appears called Gaznak (Josie Lawrence), we later find out from another Sontaran that female features can appear in older Sontarans but due to so few ever getting old it’s rarely seen, The Doctor later adds that Sontaran clone DNA must contain both male and female DNA but the male expresses itself when they’re younger to keep them fit and aggressive. A fun little wrinkle in the race.
That’s the handy thing about Sontarans: You can reuse any bit of art for them and it can be a new character!
When Lopps shows The Doctor an old temple that depicts “some catastrophic event” to “some old civilization” and that they are fascinated by it The Doctor storms off in a mood due to recognising the aggressive figures as Sontarans, meaning the descendants of the Niners wiped out an entire race here before somehow getting stuck and eventually changing as new generations were created. Although this is the very thing that changes The Doctor’s mind back to helping them as he finds himself in a bog where baby Sontarans are being grown (a lot like potatoes, funnily enough…) and is told that it’s a rare event when one makes it to life and celebrated by the Niners. This fundamental non-Sontaran thing convinces him to try and save them from Navarch and his army leading to the opening scene, but even when hearing The Doctor’s story he’s still unconvinced and goes ahead with the plan to attack anyway…
The story is light-hearted and genuinely funny in places but also has some heart and story backbone as well. The final few scenes are good too, though the idea of such a lovely and well-developed “race” as the Niners just getting completely wiped out was clearly not going to be the way the story ends there were a few times I felt jeopardy for few characters.
The Continuity:
The overall cover for the boxset, focusing on no doubt the two strongest stories in the set… (There’s a spoiler for the next review…)
Later in the story The Doctor reveals he still has some Sontaran armour from when some boarded his TARDIS but due to the effects of a De-Mat Gun the incident is hazy. This is all a reference to the Fourth Doctor TV story “The Invasion of Time”.
Also the idea of a friendly Sontaran has obviously been explored through the character Strax, who has appeared in the Eleventh Doctor’s era (and a little bit of the Twelfth) since the story “A Good Man Goes to War”.
Overall Thoughts:
Salvation Nine is a fun story that looks at both the idea of never judging a race due to past actions and does it in a dramatic but light-hearted way. The Sontarans are still Sontarans, but the Niners are something else entirely so it doesn’t trample of any lore, just adds a little to it. Good stuff all round.
In order to convince Navarch that the Niners aren’t Sontarans any more The Doctor, Lopps and Gaznak head to a Sontaran battlefield to capture a Sontaran commander and bring him to the Niners and have his reaction prove The Doctor’s point before its too late. This leads to Lopps and Gaznak having to don Sontaran armour and act like war hungry brutes despite the former expressing worry about the idea of harming another living thing and the latter being female. A few war wounds and a successful kidnap later and they bring “Field Marshall Henks” to the Niner settlement just as Navarch and his Exo-Marine robots arrive.
Henks refuses to play The Doctor’s games and instead hopes that a battle with the robots will allow the former Sontarans to “die in glory” but just seconds later Gaznak pulls a newly born baby out of the ground to sounds of singing and praising, leading to Henks declaring the Niners aren’t Sontarans in disgust, which causes Navarch to shut down his robots and leave… though not before Henks tries to attack them and “dies in glory” himself. The Doctor tells the Niners to always remember who they used to be so they can never fall down the same path as he then heads back off…
Hogan Reviews 