Doctor who - the sontarans?

Question

the old ones were great, but russel T davies ruined the new ones in my opinion.

the new faces were terrible, and the suit was even worse

what's your opinion on the new seires sontarans???

Answer 1

I agree they were somehow less scary than the originals. The originals had a very weird alien quality, the new version just looked like ugly deformed humans.

Answer 2

I thought the updated Sontarans weren't too bad, and were pretty well realised actually. They had all the recognisable elements that we're familiar with from the classic series. The dome shaped heads, stilted militaristic dialogue, the probic vent, wand shaped guns, three fingers (unlike the early pictures of the new Sontarans released last year), their signature spherical space ships (although this was the first time we've seen the mother ship), a hypnotised workforce (as in "The Time Warrior"), and of course they're still at war with the Rutans.

The one thing that annoyed me a bit about them in the new series was that the actor playing Commander Skorr didn't sound like a Sontaran at all and didn't play the part particularly convincingly. And I would certainly agree with you that his face wasn't at all convincing either. I thought Christopher Ryan was great as General Staal though. His voice and face were both perfect for the part. Since they're a cloned species, I don't see any reason why they couldn't have had him playing all the Sontaran speaking parts. With today's technology I would have thought that would have been relatively easy to do.

I think the fact that the Sontarans are considerably shorter than in the classic series makes sense. In the old series they were referred to quite a few times as being "short and stalky" due to their natural high gravity environment, but they never really were.

I suppose Kevin Lindsey (in "The Time Warrior and "The Sontaran Experiment") was a bit shorter than Jon Pertwee and considerably shorter than Tom Baker, but I seem to remember that all the others were quite tall. I reckon that is actually a discontinuity in the old series, and is a point that has been corrected in the new series. Also interesting that the scale of height difference between Tennant and Ryan is roughly the same as that between the much taller Tom Baker and Kevin Lindsey.

So yes, I like the updated Sontarans. It's just a pity about the actor playing Skorr. I suppose at a push we could make the excuse that it's a deliberate nod towards the Doctor Who tradition of actors giving rubbish performances as second string Sontarans (remember the one with the cockney accent in "The Invasion of Time").

The worst portrayal of the Sontarans is still the two who appeared in the 6th Doctor story "The Two Doctors" in my opinion, and Kevin Lindsey from "The Time warrior" and "The Sontaran Experiment" is still quite easily the best.