The next Sontarans vs. Rutans story has a lot in common with the first one as it also uses a Doctor / companion combination we haven’t heard from in a long long time, in this case the Sixth Doctor and Charley, back when she thought the Eighth Doctor was dead and ended up travelling with an earlier incarnation. This works out well as she now has prior knowledge of Sontarans and Rutans so the whole “she can’t let on how she knows this stuff” plot works well. How is it in general though? Well, let’s take a look!
The Doctor (Colin Baker) and Charley (India Fisher) end up on Taxodon, a jungle planet where the local wildlife is rarely seen thanks to evolving a near perfect stealth system… except when they arrive a whole herd of them run by, followed by someone screaming. On inspection it’s a Sontaran, who soon dies just as other Sontarans, led by one called Trax (Christopher Ryan), arrive and therefore place the blame on our lead duo. The Doctor in a panic remembers the “Sunset law” where he’s allowed until sunset to prove his innocence and while Trax says it’s just for Sontarans The Doctor points out its not worded to say that. Begrudgingly The Doctor and Charley are brought back to camp where the leader, Skein (Jon Culshaw) agrees to let The Doctor investigate until sundown but only if he keeps Charley locked up and if young soldier Skole (Dan Starkey) accompanies him.
Charley Pollard and blue coat Sixie, really does bring back the memories of the Charley / Six arc… some day I’ll get round to revisiting it!
This sets up the majority of the story as The Doctor and Skole inspect the body only to find the surgeon dying in the exact same way, while Charley breaks out with the help of one of the local creatures, where they find another of its kind getting its blood drained and a mysterious green goo added to it. Unsurprisingly the two plot threads end up connecting as the mystery in unveiled.
It’s a fun hour honestly, like all these Sontaran vs. Rutan stories and really shows the different personalities these war-bred clones can have (somehow…) If this was released as a boxset like intended then it would already have an extremely high hit-rate, and with one story left to come, too!
The Continuity:
For the third of four times: the overall cover to the boxset that never got released! Hooray!
Again beyond using Sontarans and Rutans the story has no direct connection, well apart from the other Sontarans vs. Rutans stories, specifically “The Battle of Giant’s Causeway” which featured Charley meeting both Sontarans and Rutans which in this story is her past but The Doctor’s future…
Overall Thoughts:
“Born to Die” is another really fun hour of Who, with a tight plot and some Sontarans that display a great variety of personalities that help flesh out the cast. They even had time to add in a scene or two of The Doctor suspecting something being up with Charley as she nearly lets her past slip, should you even listen to all those stories in a row and insert this one in the middle of it. Three out of four all good? Can they make it a full four? I guess we’ll see next month!
As The Doctor and Skole meet up with Charley the two compare notes and The Doctor believes that whatever is killing the Sontarans is viral in nature. Meanwhile Skein tells the Sontarans higher-ups that the synthetic liquid created from the Taxodon creatures has successfully given them stealth abilities and says he will be shipping it to Sontar itself as soon as possible. This leads to the Charley showing The Doctor the lab and he figures out the green goo being mixed in with Sontarans blood and isn’t anything to do with Taxodon and is instead Rutan blood, and that the Sontarans who died in agony did so because they were injected with it and the fact it made them go against their very nature and side with the Rutans made them essentially commit suicide, albeit unknowingly.
The Doctor, Charley and Skole confront Skein and find out he is a Rutan created in the image of a Sontaran trained to blend in with them until a time to take them down presented itself, such as sending a Rutan-blood infected serum to Sontar. From here Skole and Skein take each other out and the serum is destroyed, before The Doctor and Charley enjoy the sunset with their lives intact…
Hogan Reviews 