This year marks 50 years since the Sontarans debuted on screen and therefore 50 years since the Rutans were mentioned as well, so Big Finish have decided to cash in/celebrate this with what was clearly meant to be a boxset release but for whatever reason has become four separate releases over four months. Since they’re all different Doctors I would’ve had to review them separately anyway, so this works well enough for me! Most importantly in my mind though is this is the first time the TARDIS team of the Eighth Doctor, Charley and C’rizz have reunited as a “new story in an old period”, and while the era is not a favourite I can’t say the reunion didn’t make me smile when I heard. So let’s take a look at what is actually an extremely rare Sontaran and Rutan story! (though I guess won’t be rare once the four months are up…)
As so many stories have before it “The Battle of Giant’s Causeway” starts with the TARDIS being hit by a temporal anomaly and taken off-course and crash landing, in this case on the Giant’s Causeway in Ireland, 55 BC. The Doctor (Paul McGann), Charley (India Fisher) and C’rizz (Conrad Westmaas) exit the now drained time ship and find the corpses of Sontarans all around, but oddly Sontarans dressed Roman legionnaires. It doesn’t take long for a still very much alive band of Sontaran Romans to arrive led by General Ignatius Antias Salutio (John Banks), who capture The Doctor and Charley but miss C’rizz, who instead meets a local Celt called Noorie (Michelle Fox) who thinks due to C’rizz’s chameleon-like skin that he is some sort of deity come from the ocean to punish her mother Valmoira (Amanda Hurwitz) for using magic to revive the dead (which happened in a pre-credit sequence) but all that happens is C’rizz is disturbed by strange creatures in the hexagonal rocks while Valmoira is interested in the idea of the TARDIS and its time and space travel capabilities.
Nice work on the Roman Sontaran, not so much photoshopping McGann… stupid TV Movie picture rights issues!
While this is going on The Doctor and Charley are brought in front of the head Roman Sontaran Commander Caecilius Crassus Procullus (Dan Starkey) and The Doctor notices two odd things: firstly the alien device in the middle of camp leaking chronon energy, which is why the Sontarans have come to believe they’re Romans, and the fact that Salutio has begun to echo phrases and opinions Charley has stated in the recent past. Eventually The Doctor, Charley and a confused but oddly loyal Salutio leave the camp and head back to the Causeway to find C’rizz, but while they don’t immediately find their companion The Doctor does take a sample of the Causeway rock and analyses it in the TARDIS, Salutio oddly claiming he remembers being booted out of the craft in the past despite the fact it clearly hadn’t happened yet. The Doctor recognises the rock as having been altered to match the compound used by Rutans on their homeworld and puts two-and-two together, realising it was the massive amount of energy in the Causeway and pulled and drained the TARDIS, and that the local Celts were probably Rutans themselves and therefore the local battle between Celts and Romans were actually just another battleground in the endless Sontaran-Rutan war, even if one side no longer remembers the conflict…
It’s a really fun story, it has that perfect blend of Sontaran light comedy but also making sure the race of clones bred to kill in war aren’t made out to be only jokes, plus seeing how the Rutans might actually often combat them and hearing them face-off in general was a fun way to spend an hour.
The Continuity:
What was at one point the overall boxset cover…. with an even worse Eighth Doctor photoshop effort! Why has he got a double chin?!
Obviously beyond Sontarans, Rutans and C’rizz, all of whom have made enough appearances that there isn’t one story to point at, I will point out that in order to try and jog the Sontarans’ memories The Doctor mentions the Kaveetch, who were the race who created the Sontarans in the Sixth Doctor Lost Story “The First Sontarans”.
Overall Thoughts:
“The Battle of Giant’s Causeway” is a really fun hour featuring a great and often amusing take on the Sontarans and good (and still quite rare) Rutan story to boot! If this is a sign of things to come with the former boxset then I’m happy to have subscribed.
As The Doctor, Charley and Salutio exit the TARDIS they meet C’rizz and Valmoira, with C’rizz once again being naively helpful to the enemy, though The Doctor soon corrects him and says the creatures in the hexagonal stone pods are Rutans being bred and bred only for war. Before anything else could happen Procullus and his men ride into view and a full scale battle erupts, complete with baby Rutans being birthed too early but trying to attack anyway. In the chaos Valmoira kills her host’s daughter but in the process accidentally explodes one of the hexagonal pods and kills herself in the process. As more and more Rutans start emerging The Doctor realises he has to stop the battle as soon as possible so tells his companions and even the Sontarans to get as far away from the Causeway as they can before causing the whole thing to explode at once with the TARDIS.
The Doctor reappears in front of Charley and C’rizz and is confused to hear that even though they were away from the blast all the Sontarans died at the same time anyway. The Doctor ends up just saying that it’s a mystery they’ll probably never know the answer to (though I assume we will in a later story in this series!)
Hogan Reviews 