146-492: The Sontarans ( / s ɒ n ˈ t ɑːr ən / son- TAR -ən ) are a fictional race of extraterrestrial humanoids principally portrayed in the British science fiction television programme Doctor Who and its spin-off series The Sarah Jane Adventures . A warrior race characterised by their ruthlessness and fearlessness of death, they were conceived by writer and future story editor Robert Holmes and first appeared in
292-515: A Sontaran trait: interested only in the strongest fighters in any group or race. Despite this, Strax appeared perfectly comfortable with the prospect of wearing dresses in " The Battle of Demon's Run - Two Days Later "; he ultimately dressed in human gentleman's attire, nevertheless. In The Time Warrior , when Linx examines Sarah Jane, he comments on how the human reproduction system is 'inefficient' and that humans 'should change it'. As multiple genders are foreign to them, Sontarans are known to confuse
438-416: A basic component of the development of a potential extraterrestrial technological civilization, as it is on Earth. Fossil fuels may likely be generated and used on such worlds as well. The abundance of chlorofluorocarbons in the atmosphere can also be a clear technosignature, considering their role in ozone depletion . Light pollution may be another technosignature, as multiple lights on the night side of
584-611: A catalog of microorganisms, with the way each one reacts to sunlight. The goal is to help with the search for similar organisms in exoplanets, as the starlight reflected by planets rich in such organisms would have a specific spectrum, unlike that of starlight reflected from lifeless planets. If Earth was studied from afar with this system, it would reveal a shade of green, as a result of the abundance of plants with photosynthesis. In August 2011, NASA studied meteorites found on Antarctica, finding adenine , guanine , hypoxanthine and xanthine . Adenine and guanine are components of DNA, and
730-590: A colony world where Tzun technology has been hidden. In The Infinity Doctors by Lance Parkin , an apparently alternate version of the Doctor negotiated a peace between the Sontarans and the Rutan Host when two of them were left trapped in a TARDIS for several hours and got to talking due to their inability to kill each other. General Sontar also made an appearance in that novel. In The Crystal Bucephalus by Craig Hinton ,
876-808: A far future Earth. Their third appearance is in The Invasion of Time , where they successfully invade Gallifrey , but are driven out again after less than a day. They appeared for the final time in the original series in The Two Doctors . The Sontarans also appeared in a skit for the BBC children's programme Jim'll Fix It titled " A Fix with Sontarans ", along with Colin Baker as the Sixth Doctor and Janet Fielding as Tegan Jovanka . References are made in Sontaran episodes to
1022-533: A gluttonous alien species who are conspiring with the Sontarans to take over the station. The ship's Androgum cook, Shockeye, drugs the crew's dinner to give the Sontarans an opportunity to invade. In the TARDIS, the Sixth Doctor has a vision of his second incarnation being put to death. He decides to consult his old friend Dastari to see if he can help. The Doctor and Peri arrive on the station and are taken prisoner by
1168-414: A highly developed artistic culture, but have put it on hold for the duration of the war, while the opening chapter of the novelisation of The Time Warrior , based on Holmes' incomplete draft, refers to Linx listening to the Sontaran anthem while his spaceship is in flight. The Sontarans depicted in the series have detached, smug personalities, and a highly developed sense of honour; on multiple occasions,
1314-472: A jet of flames very briefly. Group Marshal Stike was also seen carrying a baton. It would not be until The Sontaran Stratagem that General Staal would show that the baton can fire an orange beam that could stun the target. In The Poison Sky , Commander Skorr and his troops carry large laser rifles into battle. These rifles are the Sontaran gun of the Tenth Sontaran Battle Fleet. Each rifle has
1460-573: A laser beam that kills instantly and is designed for a three-fingered grip. In The Invasion of Time , their armour is shown to be resistant to Time Lord stasers and K-9's blaster. However, their armour is vulnerable to standard human firearms in "The Poison Sky", but the Sontarans in that episode used a 'cordolane signal' which caused the copper-lined bullets to expand, jamming most firearms instantly. UNIT troops overcame this by switching to steel-lined bullets. The Sarah Jane Adventures story The Last Sontaran showed further technological advancements of
1606-478: A living entity must have the capacity to replicate itself, the capacity to avoid damage/decay, and the capacity to acquire and process resources in support of the first two capacities. Life on Earth started with an RNA world and later evolved to its current form, where some of the RNA tasks were transferred to DNA and proteins . Extraterrestrial life may still be stuck using RNA, or evolve into other configurations. It
SECTION 10
#17330859453041752-446: A major cultural impact, especially extraterrestrials in fiction . Science fiction has communicated scientific ideas, imagined a range of possibilities, and influenced public interest in and perspectives on extraterrestrial life. One shared space is the debate over the wisdom of attempting communication with extraterrestrial intelligence. Some encourage aggressive methods to try to contact intelligent extraterrestrial life. Others – citing
1898-524: A math equation, none of its values were known at the time. Although some values may eventually be measured, others are based on social sciences and are not knowable by their very nature. This does not allow one to make noteworthy conclusions from the equation. Based on observations from the Hubble Space Telescope , there are nearly 2 trillion galaxies in the observable universe. It is estimated that at least ten per cent of all Sun-like stars have
2044-429: A military reason." In fact, to die heroically in battle is their ultimate goal. Aside from a ritualistic chant ("Son-tar-ha!") in "The Sontaran Strategem"/" The Poison Sky ", they are never seen to engage in any activity that would be considered recreation, though a few offhand comments by Commander Skorr in "The Poison Sky" suggest they do consider hunting a sport. According to their creator Robert Holmes, Sontarans do have
2190-466: A mixed aromatic - aliphatic structure") that could be created naturally, and rapidly, by stars . It is still unclear if those compounds played a role in the creation of life on Earth, but Sun Kwok, of the University of Hong Kong, thinks so. "If this is the case, life on Earth may have had an easier time getting started as these organics can serve as basic ingredients for life." In August 2012, and in
2336-593: A new life form that was psychically tortured by the pain of the Sontarans' victims, forcing the Doctor to destroy the colony in the hope that the non-corporeal entity will reform into something more benevolent. They also appear in the 2014 story The Sontaran Ordeal as part of the Classic Doctors New Monsters range. In this story, the Eighth Doctor ( Paul McGann ) comes against a group of Sontarans led by General Stenk ( Christopher Ryan ) who try to get into
2482-627: A planetary system formed by a star at the center, the Sun , and the objects that orbit it: other planets, moons, asteroids, and comets. The sun is part of the Milky Way , a galaxy . The Milky Way is part of the Local Group , a galaxy group that is in turn part of the Laniakea Supercluster . The universe is composed of all similar structures in existence. The immense distances between celestial objects
2628-462: A potential explanation to the Fermi paradox. If extraterrestrial life exists, it could range from simple microorganisms and multicellular organisms similar to animals or plants, to complex alien intelligences akin to humans . When scientists talk about extraterrestrial life, they consider all those types. Although it is possible that extraterrestrial life may have other configurations, scientists use
2774-431: A probic vent. Sontarans reproduce asexually and all the Sontarans depicted in the television series are of one gender; referred to with masculine pronouns, however it is not known if they possess distinctly male physiologies. General Staal comments that "words are the weapons of womenfolk" and that the clone of Martha Jones performed well "for a female" as commentary on the gender inequalities of other species. This typifies
2920-566: A reasonable scientific explanation for any gathered data. In 1961, astronomer and astrophysicist Frank Drake devised the Drake equation as a way to stimulate scientific dialogue at a meeting on the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI). The Drake equation is a probabilistic argument used to estimate the number of active, communicative extraterrestrial civilisations in the Milky Way galaxy . The Drake equation is: where: and Drake's proposed estimates are as follows, but numbers on
3066-443: A result has been conceived, even if hypothetical. Evolution requires life to be divided into individual organisms, and no alternative organisation has been satisfactorily proposed either. At the basic level, membranes define the limit of a cell, between it and its environment, while remaining partially open to exchange energy and resources with it. The evolution from simple cells to eukaryotes, and from them to multicellular lifeforms,
SECTION 20
#17330859453043212-448: A rocky planet can be a sign of advanced technological development. However, modern telescopes are not strong enough to study exoplanets with the required level of detail to perceive it. The Two Doctors The Two Doctors is the fourth serial of the 22nd season of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who , which was first broadcast in three weekly parts on BBC1 from 16 February to 2 March 1985. The serial
3358-468: A scale. Life on Earth is quite ubiquitous across the planet and has adapted over time to almost all the available environments in it, extremophiles and the deep biosphere thrive at even the most hostile ones. As a result, it is inferred that life in other celestial bodies may be equally adaptive. However, the origin of life is unrelated to its ease of adaptation, and may have stricter requirements. A celestial body may not have any life on it, even if it
3504-470: A series of factors that range from the location in the galaxy and the configuration of the Solar System to local characteristics of the planet, and that it is unlikely that all such requirements are simultaneously met by another planet. The proponents of this hypothesis consider that very little evidence suggests the existence of extraterrestrial life, and that at this point it is just a desired result and not
3650-563: A solvent other than water. The low temperatures required would add an extra problem, the difficulty to kickstart a process of abiogenesis to create life in the first place. Norman Horowitz , head of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory bioscience section for the Mariner and Viking missions from 1965 to 1976 considered that the great versatility of the carbon atom makes it the element most likely to provide solutions, even exotic solutions, to
3796-407: A squash ball aimed at that point (" The Sontaran Stratagem "), contact by the heel of a shoe (" The Last Sontaran "), or a blow from a hammer or a wok (" War of the Sontarans ") is capable of incapacitating them temporarily. They are also vulnerable to "coronic acid" ( The Two Doctors ). While the Sontarans wear protective helmets in battle, to fight without their helmets, or to be "open-skinned,"
3942-440: A star's light and heat, and so its lifeforms would not grow beyond a certain complexity. There is also research in assessing the capacity of life for developing intelligence. It has been suggested that this capacity arises with the number of potential niches a planet contains, and that the complexity of life itself is reflected in the information density of planetary environments, which in turn can be computed from its niches. It
4088-651: A system of planets, i.e. there are 6.25 × 10 stars with planets orbiting them in the observable universe. Even if it is assumed that only one out of a billion of these stars has planets supporting life, there would be some 6.25 billion life-supporting planetary systems in the observable universe. A 2013 study based on results from the Kepler spacecraft estimated that the Milky Way contains at least as many planets as it does stars, resulting in 100–400 billion exoplanets. The apparent contradiction between high estimates of
4234-461: A world first, astronomers at Copenhagen University reported the detection of a specific sugar molecule, glycolaldehyde , in a distant star system. The molecule was found around the protostellar binary IRAS 16293-2422 , which is located 400 light years from Earth. Glycolaldehyde is needed to form ribonucleic acid , or RNA, which is similar in function to DNA. This finding suggests that complex organic molecules may form in stellar systems prior to
4380-402: Is life that originates from another world rather than on Earth . No extraterrestrial life has yet been scientifically conclusively detected. Such life might range from simple forms such as prokaryotes to intelligent beings , possibly bringing forth civilizations that might be far more advanced than humans. The Drake equation speculates about the existence of sapient life elsewhere in
4526-585: Is a difficulty for the study of extraterrestrial life. So far, humans have only set foot on the Moon and sent robotic probes to other planets and moons in the Solar System. Although probes can withstand conditions that may be lethal to humans, the distances cause time delays: the New Horizons took nine years after launch to reach Pluto . No probe has ever reached extrasolar planetary systems. The Voyager 2 has left
Sontaran - Misplaced Pages Continue
4672-501: Is also conceivable that there are forms of life whose solvent is a liquid hydrocarbon , such as methane , ethane or propane . Another unknown aspect of potential extraterrestrial life would be the chemical elements that would compose it. Life on Earth is largely composed of carbon, but there could be other hypothetical types of biochemistry . A replacement for carbon would need to be able to create complex molecules, store information required for evolution, and be freely available in
4818-518: Is an honour for the Sontarans. In the episode "The Poison Sky", it is revealed that the Sontaran Empire have been at war with the Rutan Host for more than 50,000 years, and which, at a time around 2008, they are losing. The war is still raging at least 20,000 years later, in the serial The Sontaran Experiment . It was joked that the two species have been at war for so long, they had almost forgotten
4964-471: Is aware of how this confrontation will end from her own histories; this audio serves as the Doctor's chronologically earliest encounter with the Sontarans. The audio Terror of the Sontarans saw the Seventh Doctor ( Sylvester McCoy ) and Mel Bush ( Bonnie Langford ) meet the Sontarans on an old mining colony that had been used as a Sontaran outpost, until a complex chain of events unintentionally created
5110-416: Is being carried out both directly and indirectly. As of September 2017 , 3,667 exoplanets in 2,747 systems have been identified , and other planets and moons in the Solar System hold the potential for hosting primitive life such as microorganisms . As of 8 February 2021, an updated status of studies considering the possible detection of lifeforms on Venus (via phosphine ) and Mars (via methane )
5256-403: Is common knowledge that the conditions on other planets in the solar system, in addition to the many galaxies outside of the Milky Way galaxy , are very harsh and seem to be too extreme to harbor any life. The environmental conditions on these planets can have intense UV radiation paired with extreme temperatures, lack of water, and much more that can lead to conditions that don't seem to favor
5402-485: Is complex and defined by several factors. Being in the habitable zone is not enough for a planet to be habitable, not even to actually have such liquid water. Venus is located in the habitable zone of the Solar System but does not have liquid water because of the conditions of its atmosphere. Jovian planets or gas giants are not considered habitable even if they orbit close enough to their stars as hot Jupiters , due to crushing atmospheric pressures. The actual distances for
5548-509: Is embodied in the Copernican principle , which states that Earth does not occupy a unique position in the Universe, and the mediocrity principle , which states that there is nothing special about life on Earth. Other authors consider instead that life in the cosmos, or at least multicellular life, may be actually rare. The Rare Earth hypothesis maintains that life on Earth is possible because of
5694-597: Is enough to completely wipe out Earth. The Sontarans have a variety of weapons. Their distinctive weapon is a small rod with two handles and a plunger at one end, giving it a syringe style. This is so it can be held and fired using three fingers. This weapon fires a disabling beam that can temporarily render a person useless and emits an energy pulse that can repair systems like the teleport, and has appeared in every Sontaran story except The Sontaran Experiment . When first used by Commander Linx in The Time Warrior , it shows
5840-439: Is likely devoid of life. However, Venus is still of interest to astrobiologists, as it is a terrestrial planet that was likely similar to Earth in its early stages and developed in a different way. There is a greenhouse effect , the surface is the hottest in the Solar System, sulfuric acid clouds, all surface liquid water is lost, and it has a thick carbon-dioxide atmosphere with huge pressure. Comparing both helps to understand
5986-444: Is no guarantee that it is transmitting radio communications in the direction of Earth. The length of time required for a signal to travel across space means that a potential answer may arrive decades or centuries after the initial message. The atmosphere of Earth is rich in nitrogen dioxide as a result of air pollution , which can be detectable. The natural abundance of carbon, which is also relatively reactive, makes it likely to be
Sontaran - Misplaced Pages Continue
6132-657: Is not guaranteed. The Cambrian explosion took place thousands of millions of years after the origin of life, and its causes are not fully known yet. On the other hand, the jump to multicellularity took place several times, which suggests that it could be a case of convergent evolution , and so likely to take place on other planets as well. Palaeontologist Simon Conway Morris considers that convergent evolution would lead to kingdoms similar to our plants and animals, and that many features are likely to develop in alien animals as well, such as bilateral symmetry , limbs , digestive systems and heads with sensory organs . Scientists from
6278-442: Is set on an alien space station and in and around Seville. In the serial, the alien time traveller the Sixth Doctor ( Colin Baker ), his former travelling companion Jamie McCrimmon ( Frazer Hines ) and his current companion Peri Brown ( Nicola Bryant ) work to save the younger Second Doctor ( Patrick Troughton ) from the biogeneticist Dastari ( Laurence Payne ), who intends to steal the knowledge of how to travel in time from
6424-466: Is that the chemical elements that make up life, such as carbon and water, are ubiquitous in the universe. The third is that the physical laws are universal, which means that the forces that would facilitate or prevent the existence of life would be the same ones as on Earth. According to this argument, made by scientists such as Carl Sagan and Stephen Hawking , it would be improbable for life not to exist somewhere else other than Earth. This argument
6570-421: Is that there are natural sources of such signals as well, such as gamma-ray bursts and supernovae, and the difference between a natural signal and an artificial one would be in its specific patterns. Astronomers intend to use artificial intelligence for this, as it can manage large amounts of data and is devoid of biases and preconceptions. Besides, even if there is an advanced extraterrestrial civilization, there
6716-447: Is unclear if our biochemistry is the most efficient one that could be generated, or which elements would follow a similar pattern. However, it is likely that, even if cells had a different composition to those from Earth, they would still have a cell membrane . Life on Earth jumped from prokaryotes to eukaryotes and from unicellular organisms to multicellular organisms through evolution . So far no alternative process to achieve such
6862-815: Is unrecognizable to Captain Kirk and crew), prompting the Doctor to urgently warn the crew to flee the area. They appear in 2009, in the novella The Sontaran Games by Jacqueline Rayner , featuring the Tenth Doctor and appeared in the New Series Adventures (Doctor Who) book The Taking of Chelsea 426 by David Llewellyn , featuring the Tenth Doctor , fighting both times against the Rutan Host . In 2008, as part of Character options first series 4 2008 wave of action figures, they released some Sontaran action figures. These include General Staal, Commander Skorr and several Sontaran soldiers. The Sontarans are mentioned in
7008-623: The Doctor Who: The Adventure Games episode, "The Gunpowder Plot". Big Finish Productions first used the Sontarans for their audio drama Heroes of Sontar , a 2011 Fifth Doctor ( Peter Davison ) story, depicting the Doctor and his companions being forced to aid a Sontaran attack squad against a dangerous enemy that has threatened the Sontaran race by compromising their strategic methods. They next featured in The Five Companions and were stuck in an alternative version of
7154-482: The Jim'll Fix It sketch A Fix with Sontarans . The DVD contains a full-length commentary provided by director Peter Moffatt and actors Colin Baker, Nicola Bryant, Frazer Hines, and Jacqueline Pearce. The DVD was subsequently incorporated into the box set Bred for War , along with The Time Warrior , The Sontaran Experiment and The Invasion of Time . Following the sexual abuse accusations regarding Jimmy Savile ,
7300-750: The Rio Tinto river in Spain. NASA officials soon distanced NASA from the scientists' claims, and Stoker herself backed off from her initial assertions. In November 2011, NASA launched the Mars Science Laboratory that landed the Curiosity rover on Mars. It is designed to assess the past and present habitability on Mars using a variety of scientific instruments. The rover landed on Mars at Gale Crater in August 2012. A group of scientists at Cornell University started
7446-537: The Rutan Host , an equally militaristic race with whom the Sontarans have been at war for thousands of years; a Rutan is seen in Horror of Fang Rock (1977), which does not feature the Sontarans, but have not featured in the television series again. Sporting an updated design, Sontarans returned to the revived series in the Series 4 episodes " The Sontaran Strategem " and " The Poison Sky " (2008). The Sontarans plan to terraform
SECTION 50
#17330859453047592-497: The Tenth Doctor episode " Blink "), the Ninth Doctor has a rooftop sword fight with two Sontarans in 21st century Istanbul , defeating them with the help of spy Sally Sparrow, apparently before the events of " Rose " in his personal timeline. The Sontaran homeworld was destroyed in the future during the events of the Seventh Doctor strip Pureblood (DWM #193-196) but the Sontaran race pool survived, allowing for further cloning;
7738-459: The hydrothermal vents found on the ocean floor are known to support many chemosynthetic processes which allow organisms to utilize energy through reduced chemical compounds that fix carbon. In return, these reactions will allow for organisms to live in relatively low oxygenated environments while maintaining enough energy to support themselves. The early Earth environment was reducing and therefore, these carbon fixing compounds were necessary for
7884-1085: The "Tenth Sontaran Battle Fleet". Military titles include Commander, Group Marshal, Field Major, and General. Agnomens include "the Undefeated", "the Bloodbringer", "the Avenger", and "the Slayer". The Sontarans are a monogender - asexual (a "male gender-only" species); they reproduce by means of cloning rather than sexual reproduction , and thus for the most part are extremely similar in appearance. Human characters in both The Sontaran Experiment and " The Sontaran Stratagem " comment on how closely individual Sontarans resemble one another; however, their height, skin tone, facial features, vocal timbre and accent, hair, spacing of teeth and even number of fingers have varied from story to story, and sometimes within stories. When Luke Rattigan asks how they can tell each other apart in "The Sontaran Stratagem", General Staal remarks that they say
8030-485: The 15th century, acknowledged the possibility Jesus could have visited extraterrestrial worlds to redeem their inhabitants. Nicholas of Cusa wrote in 1440 that Earth is "a brilliant star" like other celestial objects visible in space; which would appear similar to the Sun , from an exterior perspective, due to a layer of "fiery brightness" in the outer layer of the atmosphere. He theorised all extraterrestrial bodies could be inhabited by men, plants, and animals, including
8176-421: The 1973 Doctor Who serial The Time Warrior . The Sontarans are a race of humanoids with a stocky build, a distinctive dome-shaped head, and they have only three fingers on each hand, though some members of their species do have five fingers. Their musculature is designed for load-bearing rather than leverage, because of the high gravity on their home planet. Ross Jenkins in " The Sontaran Stratagem " describes
8322-583: The Bane (2008). In Doctor Who ' s " The End of Time, Part Two " (2010), a Sontaran sniper ( Dan Starkey ) briefly appears pursuing the Doctor's former companions Mickey Smith ( Noel Clarke ) and his wife Martha Jones ( Freema Agyeman ), but is defeated by the Doctor before he can assassinate them. Alongside the Eleventh Doctor ( Matt Smith ), Sontaran battle fleets are seen in Series 5 finale episode, " The Pandorica Opens " (2010), as part of an alliance of
8468-507: The DVD was withdrawn from sale but has since been rereleased with the offending sketch removed. The BBC has made the serial available for download on Apple iTunes . It was released in issue 45 of Doctor Who DVD Files . It was released as part of the ‘Doctor Who The Collection: Season 22’ blu-ray box set on 20 June 2022. An extended cut of Part One was included as an extra on the set with a runtime of 47:33, running 3 minutes and 11 seconds longer than
8614-567: The Death Zone with the Fifth Doctor and various companions. In 2012, The First Sontarans was released. A Sixth Doctor Lost Story from the mid-1980s, written by Andrew Smith, it features the Sontarans and the Rutans on nineteenth century Earth, tracking down a scientist named Jacob, who escaped through time and space. It is revealed that Jacob is from Sontar, and was responsible for genetically creating
8760-555: The Doctor " (both 2013), and " Deep Breath " (2014). A troop of Sontarans is also shown among Trenzalore's invaders in the 2013 Christmas special " The Time of the Doctor ". A Sontaran appears briefly in the 2015 episode " Face the Raven " as a refugee. The appearance of the Sontarans was redesigned for the Thirteenth Doctor's final season, ' Flux ', where they reappeared in their first major antagonistic role since 2008. First appearing in
8906-600: The Doctor and Peri helping Jacob and his wife fake their deaths so that they can go into hiding on a primitive, isolated planet to get away from their need for revenge on the Sontarans. The Sontarans also feature in the Early Adventures audio The Sontarans , which depicts the First Doctor ( William Hartnell ), Steven Taylor and Sara Kingdom encountering the Sontarans during an invasion of an asteroid colony at some point before Sara's time, prompting Sara to observe that she
SECTION 60
#17330859453049052-567: The Doctor as he adopts the alias of 'Supreme Coordinator', which is shortened to 'Supremo' by his Ogron bodyguards. In 1982, Jean Airey 's novella The Doctor and the Enterprise featured a crossover between the universes of Doctor Who and Star Trek , in which the Fourth Doctor ( Tom Baker ) finds himself on the USS Enterprise . The Enterprise is attacked by a Sontaran fleet (which
9198-405: The Doctor has used his knowledge of their pride in their species to manipulate them. In "The Sontaran Stratagem", the Doctor nevertheless referred to them as "the finest soldiers in the galaxy". Although physically formidable, the Sontarans' weak spot is the "probic vent" at the back of their neck, through which they draw nutrition. It is also part of their cloning process. In Earthlike atmospheres,
9344-457: The Doctor" used a two-man craft with an invisibility field. During rehearsals for their first appearance, Kevin Lindsay , who portrayed the original Sontaran, Linx, pronounced the race's name as " son-TAR-an ." Alan Bromly, the director, tried to correct him by saying it should be pronounced with the stress on the first syllable. Lindsay declared "Well, I think it's "son-TAR-an" , and since I'm from
9490-575: The Doctor's enemies. Series 6 episode " A Good Man Goes to War " (2011) introduces Commander Strax (Starkey), a Sontaran nurse who has been assigned this role as a means of making penance. He fights on the side of the Doctor and his allies, which include the Silurian warrior Madame Vastra ( Neve McIntosh ) and her wife, Jenny Flint ( Catrin Stewart ). Strax then appears alongside Vastra and Jenny in " The Snowmen " (2012), " The Crimson Horror ", " The Name of
9636-508: The Doctor. In The Outsider (DWM #25-26), by Steve Moore and David Lloyd , a Sontaran named Skrant invaded the world of Brahtilis with the unwitting help of Demimon, a local astrologer . The Fourth Doctor faced the Sontarans in Dragon's Claw (DWM #39-#45), by Steve Moore and Dave Gibbons , where a crew of Sontarans menaced China in 1522 AD. In Steven Moffat 's short story "What I Did on My Christmas Holidays by Sally Sparrow" (the basis for
9782-538: The Earth into a new clone world, but their plans are averted by the Tenth Doctor ( David Tennant ). It is also revealed that the race was excluded from the Last Great Time War of the revived series' backstory. In " Turn Left " (2008), the same events are depicted in a parallel universe, where Rose Tyler ( Billie Piper ) describes their plan as foiled by Torchwood (characters from the spin-off show of that name ), at
9928-606: The Flux ', where they invade and take over earth during the flux crisis thanks to the intervention of their ally the Grand Serpent. In ' Chapter Six: The Vanquishers ', the Doctor and her allies learn the Sontarans plan to trick the Cybermen and Daleks into being consumed by the flux while staying safe themselves by hijacking the Lupari ships, however the Doctor hijacks the ships herself and uses
10074-527: The Second Doctor and Peri, but Jamie throws a knife at her wrist, making her drop the gun. Chessene goes into the module, hoping to escape, but the sabotaged module explodes, killing Chessene and reverting her back to her Androgum self. Jamie and the Second Doctor depart in their TARDIS, whilst the Sixth Doctor tells Peri they're both going on a vegetarian diet from now on. Robert Holmes, a vegetarian , wrote
10220-405: The Second Doctor into an Androgum instead. They also intend to eliminate the Sontarans. Dastari implants the Second Doctor with a 50 per cent Androgum inheritance. The Second Doctor and Shockeye go to a restaurant and order gargantuan amounts of food. When the restaurant's owner, Oscar, demands that they pay, Shockeye fatally stabs him, just as the Sixth Doctor and the others arrive. Shockeye leaves
10366-611: The Second Doctor's genetic make-up. This serial marks Troughton's final appearance as the Second Doctor before his death in 1987. The Second Doctor and Jamie McCrimmon land the TARDIS on board Space Station Camera, where they talk to Dastari, the Head of Projects. The Doctor tells Dastari that the Time Lords want the time experiments stopped, but Dastari refuses. Also on board are the Androgums,
10512-441: The Second Doctor, who slowly reverts to normal. Chessene and Dastari take them back to the hacienda at gunpoint. The Sixth Doctor frees himself and kills Shockeye. Chessene sees the Doctor's blood and starts licking it. Dastari realises that no matter how augmented she may be, Chessene is still an Androgum, and decides to free the Second Doctor, Peri, and Jamie. When Chessene sees this, she shoots and kills Dastari. She tries to shoot
10658-471: The Solar System at a speed of 50,000 kilometers per hour, if it headed towards the Alpha Centauri system, the closest one to Earth at 4.4 light years, it would reach it in 100,000 years. Under current technology such systems can only be studied by telescopes, which have limitations. It is estimated that dark matter has a larger amount of combined matter than stars and gas clouds, but as it plays no role on
10804-447: The Sontaran armour suit requires a change of gasses every 27 hours, also conducted through the probic vent. The vent also provides an incentive to continue moving forward in battle since retreat would expose this area to their enemies. They have been killed by targeting that location with a knife ( The Invasion of Time ), a screwdriver (" Shakedown: Return of the Sontarans "), and an arrow ( The Time Warrior ). Even something as simple as
10950-538: The Sontarans "), Linx ( The Time Warrior ), Varl ( The Two Doctors ), Jask (" The End of Time ") and Kaagh ( The Sarah Jane Adventures ). Elements of the Sontaran military structure mentioned in the series include the "Sontaran G3 Military Assessment Survey" and the "Grand Strategic Council", the Ninth Sontaran Battle Group, the "Fifth Army Space Fleet of the Sontaran Army Space Corps", and
11096-467: The Sontarans as a defence against a Rutan invasion. They were first developed on Sontar's gravity-heavy moon and quickly proved themselves to be at least on par with the unstoppable Rutan horde. However, believing themselves to be superior, the Sontarans turned on their creators to prevent their knowledge of Sontaran weaknesses being discovered and exploited by their enemies, conquering the planet Sontar and changing it to suit their biology. The audio ends with
11242-465: The Sontarans. The ship lands in Seville, Spain, where the Androgums and Sontarans take over a local hacienda to use as a base of operations. Dastari reveals his plan to dissect the Second Doctor's cell structure to isolate his symbiotic nuclei and give them to Chessene, an Androgum technologically augmented to genius levels. Upon discovering there are two Time Lords on the ship, Chessene asks Dastari to turn
11388-475: The Sun. Descartes wrote that there was no means to prove the stars were not inhabited by "intelligent creatures", but their existence was a matter of speculation. When considering the atmospheric composition and ecosystems hosted by extraterrestrial bodies, extraterrestrial life can seem more speculation than reality, due to the harsh conditions and disparate chemical composition of the atmospheres, when compared to
11534-616: The University of Oxford analysed it from the perspective of evolutionary theory and wrote in a study in the International Journal of Astrobiology that aliens may be similar to humans. The planetary context would also have an influence: a planet with higher gravity would have smaller animals, and other types of stars can lead to non-green photosynthesizers . The amount of energy available would also affect biodiversity , as an ecosystem sustained by black smokers or hydrothermal vents would have less energy available than those sustained by
11680-440: The ability to fire a beam which can disarm by knocking the weapon out of the wielder's hand, hypnotise, as well as cutting through wood, disabling limbs and killing. In The Sontaran Experiment , Field Major Styre instead used a small red laser pistol which only killed (although it did not kill the Doctor, because of a small metal plate the Doctor had been keeping in his inside pocket). The Invasion of Time saw Commander Stor using
11826-410: The area surrounding these hydrothermal vents which can suggest that some form of life can be supported even in the harshest of environments like the other planets in the solar system. The aspects of these harsh environments that make them ideal for the origin of life on Earth, as well as the possibility of creation of life on other planets, is the chemical reactions forming spontaneously. For example,
11972-568: The atom speeds, either too fast or too slow, make it difficult for specific ones to meet and start chemical reactions. A liquid medium also allows the transport of nutrients and substances required for metabolism. Sufficient quantities of carbon and other elements, along with water, might enable the formation of living organisms on terrestrial planets with a chemical make-up and temperature range similar to that of Earth. Life based on ammonia rather than water has been suggested as an alternative, though this solvent appears less suitable than water. It
12118-462: The audio book Wraith World , when Clyde Langer ( Daniel Anthony ) remarks he cannot understand why Luke Smith ( Tommy Knight ) and Rani Chandra ( Anjli Mohindra ) would want to read about made up adventures, when they have faced Sontarans. The Sontarans have also appeared several times in the Doctor Who Magazine comic strip, both as adversaries of the Doctor and in strips not involving
12264-532: The back of a Sontaran's neck, suggesting that the vent is not unlike the human navel , albeit clearly more complex. The Tenth Sontaran Battle Fleet in the new series consists of a Command Ship and a number of capsules that can be moved into position when Battle Status is enjoined. Sontaran ships are impervious to nuclear missiles, however in War of the Sontarans they are vulnerable to both ramming by another Sontaran ship and also to explosions of barrels of gunpowder. In both
12410-456: The brief revised to feature the Second Doctor and Jamie, but the setting had to be changed to Spain instead when the expected funding for location filming in the United States fell through. In his 1986 interview for Starburst , script editor Eric Saward said he thought this story was "poorly directed". This story marked the final appearance of Patrick Troughton as the Second Doctor and
12556-483: The charge of the Sontaran High Command, each warrior is immediately given a rank and dispatched on a battle mission. From day one, the Sontarans are sent to battle. The audio The King of Sontar introduces a unique occasion where one Sontaran is the only result of a clone batch, the resulting Sontaran being essentially a million Sontarans in one, making him far taller than the average for his species and lacking
12702-414: The classic and new series, Sontarans are depicted using spherical or semi-spherical single-occupant spacecraft known as capsules. Each capsule is small enough to avoid detection by radar and is piloted by an individual Sontaran. The Sontaran Stratagem also saw the introduction of a large mothership from which the small Sontaran capsules could be seen to originate. The Doctor notes that the one ship by itself
12848-402: The cold temperatures would make such chemistry take place at a very slow pace. Water is rock-solid on the surface, but Titan does have a subsurface water ocean like several other moons. However, it is of such a great depth that it would be very difficult to access it for study. The science that searches and studies life in the universe, both on Earth and elsewhere, is called astrobiology . With
12994-708: The continuity errors in the original broadcast. With a gold foil-embossed cover, it was billed on release as the 100th novelisation and featured an introduction by John Nathan-Turner. The Two Doctors was released on VHS in November 1993. It was released on DVD in the UK in September 2003 in a two-disc set as part of the Doctor Who 40th Anniversary Celebration releases, representing the Colin Baker years, with many extra features, including
13140-626: The cost of their lives, with Torchwood leader Captain Jack Harkness ( John Barrowman ) being captured by the Sontarans. In " The Stolen Earth " (2008), UNIT is revealed to have developed a teleportation device based on Sontaran technology. A lone survivor from the events of "The Poison Sky", Commander Kaagh ( Anthony O'Donnell ), next appears in The Last Sontaran (2008), from spin-off series The Sarah Jane Adventures . Kaagh appears again in Enemy of
13286-469: The creation or maintenance of extraterrestrial life. However, there has been much historical evidence that some of the earliest and most basic forms of life on Earth originated in some extreme environments that seem unlikely to have harbored life at least at one point in Earth's history. Fossil evidence as well as many historical theories backed up by years of research and studies have marked environments like hydrothermal vents or acidic hot springs as some of
13432-444: The difficulty for life to appear was not the temperature, but the scarcity of free heavy elements. Planetary systems emerged, and the first organic compounds may have formed in the protoplanetary disk of dust grains that would eventually create rocky planets like Earth. Although Earth was in a molten state after its birth and may have burned any organics that fell in it, it would have been more receptive once it cooled down. Once
13578-413: The end, the star blows much of its content back into the stellar medium, where it would join clouds that would eventually become new generations of stars and planets. Many of those materials are the raw components of life on Earth. As this process takes place in all the universe, said materials are ubiquitous in the cosmos and not a rarity from the Solar System. Earth is a planet in the Solar System ,
13724-499: The final on-screen appearance of Frazer Hines as Jamie. Veteran actress Aimee Delamain appears in a cameo role as the ill-fated hacienda owner the Doña Arana. The Two Doctors was one of several stories from this era to provoke controversy over its depiction of violence. In 1985, Australasian Doctor Who Fan Club president Tony Howe criticised the murder of Oscar with a kitchen knife as being an instance of "sick, shock violence" that
13870-403: The first hominids appeared 60 million years ago. Life on other planets may have started, evolved, given birth to extraterrestrial intelligences, and perhaps even faced a planetary extinction event millions or even billions of years ago. The brief times of existence of Earth's species, when considered from a cosmic perspective, may suggest that extraterrestrial life may be equally fleeting under such
14016-462: The first places that life could have originated on Earth. These environments can be considered extreme when compared to the typical ecosystems that the majority of life on Earth now inhabit, as hydrothermal vents are scorching hot due to the magma escaping from the Earth's mantle and meeting the much colder oceanic water. Even in today's world, there can be a diverse population of bacteria found inhabiting
14162-425: The flux event to destroy the Sontaran army as well. The origins of the Sontarans have not been revealed in the television series. The Doctor Who role-playing game published by FASA claimed that they were all descended from the genetic stock of General Sontar (or Sontaris), who used newly developed bioengineering techniques to clone millions of duplicates of himself and annihilated the non-clone population. He renamed
14308-410: The formation of planets, eventually arriving on young planets early in their formation. In December 2023, astronomers reported the first time discovery, in the plumes of Enceladus , moon of the planet Saturn , of hydrogen cyanide , a possible chemical essential for life as we know it, as well as other organic molecules , some of which are yet to be better identified and understood. According to
14454-451: The giant planets themselves are highly unlikely to have life, there is much hope to find it on moons orbiting these planets. Europa , from the Jovian system, has a subsurface ocean below a thick layer of ice. Ganymede and Callisto also have subsurface oceans, but life is less likely in them because water is sandwiched between layers of solid ice. Europa would have contact between the ocean and
14600-564: The greatest of all wars: the Time War . Other appearances by the Sontarans include the spin-off videos Mindgame , Shakedown: Return of the Sontarans and Do You Have A License To Save This Planet? ; three audio plays by BBV : Silent Warrior , Old Soldiers and Conduct Unbecoming ; the Faction Paradox audio The Shadow Play ; and a cameo appearance in Infidel's Comet . Shakedown marks
14746-404: The habitable zones vary according to the type of star, and even the solar activity of each specific star influences the local habitability. The type of star also defines the time the habitable zone will exist, as its presence and limits will change along with the stars stellar evolution. The Big Bang took place 14 billion years ago, the Solar System was formed 4 and a half billion years ago, and
14892-571: The hierarchy of lifeforms from Earth for simplicity, as it is the only one known to exist. The first basic requirement for life is an environment with non-equilibrium thermodynamics , which means that the thermodynamic equilibrium must be broken by a source of energy. The traditional sources of energy in the cosmos are the stars, such as for life on Earth, which depends on the energy of the sun. However, there are other alternative energy sources, such as volcanoes , plate tectonics , and hydrothermal vents . There are ecosystems on Earth in deep areas of
15038-416: The human male and female sexes; Strax routinely addresses young women as "Boy" and vice versa, and claims not to have known that River Song was a woman. In "The Sontaran Stratagem", the Sontarans are seen to create human clones by growing them in tubs of green fluid. Enemy of the Bane confirms that Sontarans are cloned in the same way. In a human clone, the umbilical corresponds to the probic vent on
15184-416: The inherent joy of having Troughton and Hines back, the location filming around the hacienda and up and down the alleys in Seville is evocative, and the guest cast is brilliant". The novelisation of this serial, by Robert Holmes, was published in hardback and paperback in August 1985 as the 100th Doctor Who release by Target Books . This was Holmes's only complete novelisation and seeks to clear up some of
15330-440: The life-abundant Earth. However, there are many extreme and chemically harsh ecosystems on Earth that do support forms of life and are often hypothesized to be the origin of life on Earth. Hydrothermal vents , acidic hot springs, and volcanic lakes are examples of life forming under difficult circumstances, provide parallels to the extreme environments on other planets and support the possibility of extraterrestrial life. Since
15476-405: The main Sontaran villain, General Staal, as resembling "a talking baked potato", whilst in sequel episode " The Poison Sky ", Colonel Alan Mace likens the Sontarans to "trolls". Sontarans come from a large, dense planet named Sontar in the "southern spiral arm of the galaxy" which has a very strong gravitational field, which explains their compact stocky form. They are far stronger than humans and, in
15622-543: The medium. To create DNA , RNA , or a close analog, such an element should be able to bind its atoms with many others, creating complex and stable molecules. It should be able to create at least three covalent bonds: two for making long strings and at least a third to add new links and allow for diverse information. Only nine elements meet this requirement: boron , nitrogen , phosphorus , arsenic , antimony (three bonds), carbon , silicon , germanium and tin (four bonds). As for abundance, carbon, nitrogen, and silicon are
15768-478: The mid-20th century, active research has taken place to look for signs of extraterrestrial life, encompassing searches for current and historic extraterrestrial life, and a narrower search for extraterrestrial intelligent life . Depending on the category of search, methods range from analysis of telescope and specimen data to radios used to detect and transmit communications. The concept of extraterrestrial life, and particularly extraterrestrial intelligence, has had
15914-412: The modern Sontarans. Commander Kaagh, a surviving pilot from the Tenth Sontaran Battle Fleet, had slightly different armour due to being from the special forces. His suit featured no gloves, so his bare hands were visible, and on his left arm was a control panel for his suit and ship. His helmet could fold up and retract and both his suit and ship featured cloaking devices, turning them both invisible. While
16060-566: The most abundant ones in the universe, far more than the others. On Earth's crust the most abundant of those elements is silicon, in the Hydrosphere it is carbon and in the atmosphere, it is carbon and nitrogen. Silicon, however, has disadvantages over carbon. The molecules formed with silicon atoms are less stable, and more vulnerable to acids, oxygen, and light. An ecosystem of silicon-based lifeforms would require very low temperatures, high atmospheric pressure , an atmosphere devoid of oxygen, and
16206-662: The name of their planet was given as Sontara. The Sontarans also briefly appear in The Eight Doctors , sent to the Eye of Orion by an agent of the Celestial Intervention Agency to kill the Fifth and Eighth Doctors . The novel Warmonger sees the Sontarans join an alliance of alien races assembled by the Fifth Doctor to defeat the mercenary army of renegade Time Lord Morbius, although the Sontarans are unaware that they follow
16352-497: The native planet that may not be caused by natural causes. There are three main types of techno-signatures considered: interstellar communications , effects on the atmosphere, and planetary-sized structures such as Dyson spheres . Organizations such as the SETI Institute search the cosmos for potential forms of communication. They started with radio waves , and now search for laser pulses as well. The challenge for this search
16498-418: The ocean that do not receive sunlight, and take energy from black smokers instead. Magnetic fields and radioactivity have also been proposed as sources of energy, although they would be less efficient ones. Life on Earth requires water in a liquid state as a solvent in which biochemical reactions take place. It is highly unlikely that an abiogenesis process can start within a gaseous or solid medium:
16644-593: The only occasion in which the Sontarans and their Rutan foes appear on screen together, and was adapted into a Virgin New Adventures novel where the Seventh Doctor must prevent the Sontarans gained a clear advantage in the conflict. They have also appeared in several spin-off novels, including Lords of the Storm by David A. McIntee , where the Fifth Doctor and Turlough have to stop a Sontaran scheme to take control of
16790-568: The origin of extraterrestrial life. The Solar System has a wide variety of planets, dwarf planets, and moons, and each one is studied for its potential to host life. Each one has its own specific conditions that may benefit or harm life. So far, the only lifeforms found are those from Earth. No extraterrestrial intelligence other than humans exists or has ever existed within the Solar System. Astrobiologist Mary Voytek points out that it would be unlikely to find large ecosystems, as they would have already been detected by now. The inner Solar System
16936-468: The others are used in other biological processes. The studies ruled out pollution of the meteorites on Earth, as those components would not be freely available the way they were found in the samples. This discovery suggests that several organic molecules that serve as building blocks of life may be generated within asteroids and comets. In October 2011, scientists reported that cosmic dust contains complex organic compounds ("amorphous organic solids with
17082-544: The place, I should know." His preferred pronunciation was retained. The Sontarans made their first appearance in 1973 in the serial The Time Warrior by Robert Holmes, where Linx is stranded in the Middle Ages. Linx uses a projector to bring back human scientists from the future to fix his spacecraft. Another Sontaran named Styre appears in The Sontaran Experiment (1975), experimenting on captured astronauts on
17228-547: The planetary core ceased to generate a magnetic field, solar winds removed the atmosphere and the planet became vulnerable to solar radiation. Ancient life-forms may still have left fossilised remains, and microbes may still survive deep underground. As mentioned, the gas giants and ice giants are unlikely to contain life. The most distant solar system bodies, found in the Kuiper Belt and outwards, are locked in permanent deep-freeze, but cannot be ruled out completely. Although
17374-511: The precise differences that lead to beneficial or harmful conditions for life. And despite the conditions against life on Venus , there are suspicions that microbial life-forms may still survive in high-altitude clouds. Mars is a cold and almost airless desert, inhospitable to life. However, recent studies revealed that water on Mars used to be quite abundant, forming rivers, lakes, and perhaps even oceans. Mars may have been habitable back then, and life on Mars may have been possible. But when
17520-452: The probability of the existence of extraterrestrial civilisations and the lack of evidence for such civilisations is known as the Fermi paradox . Dennis W. Sciama claimed that life's existence in the universe depends on various fundamental constants. Zhi-Wei Wang and Samuel L. Braunstein suggest that a random universe capable of supporting life is likely to be just barely able to do so, giving
17666-476: The probe to study ocean water. Still, Cassini detected complex organic molecules, salts, evidence of hydrothermal activity, hydrogen, and methane. Titan is the only celestial body in the Solar System besides Earth that has liquid bodies on the surface. It has rivers, lakes, and rain of hydrocarbons, methane, and ethane, and even a cycle similar to Earth's water cycle . This special context encourages speculations about lifeforms with different biochemistry, but
17812-438: The problems of survival of life on other planets. However, he also considered that the conditions found on Mars were incompatible with carbon based life. Even if extraterrestrial life is based on carbon and uses water as a solvent, like Earth life, it may still have a radically different biochemistry . Life is generally considered to be a product of natural selection . It has been proposed that to undergo natural selection
17958-527: The race after himself and turned the Sontarans into an expansionist and warlike society set on universal conquest. However, this origin has no basis in anything seen in the television series. The Sontarans have also appeared as a character in the PC game Destiny of the Doctors released on 5 December 1997, by BBC Multimedia. They can be defeated by firing the occupants of an angry beehive at them. The Sontarans appear in
18104-539: The reason why. ( The Two Doctors ) Most of the Sontarans depicted in the television series have had short names, many beginning with an initial 'st' sound. Examples include Styre ( The Sontaran Experiment ), Stor ( The Invasion of Time ), Stike ( The Two Doctors ), Staal (" The Sontaran Stratagem " / " The Poison Sky "), Stark (" The Pandorica Opens "), Strax and Stenck (" The Vanquishers "); others are Skorr ("The Sontaran Stratagem" / "The Poison Sky"), Ritskaw and Kragar (" The Halloween Apocalypse "), Skaak (" War of
18250-464: The recent series, are shorter than the average human male. The Sontarans have an extremely militaristic culture which prizes discipline and honour as its highest virtues; every aspect of their draconian society is geared toward warfare, and every experience is viewed in terms of its martial relevance. In The Sontaran Experiment , the Fourth Doctor comments that "Sontarans never do anything without
18396-433: The researchers, "these [newly discovered] compounds could potentially support extant microbial communities or drive complex organic synthesis leading to the origin of life ." Although most searches are focused on the biology of extraterrestrial life, an extraterrestrial intelligence capable enough to develop a civilization may be detectable by other means as well. Technology may generate technosignatures , effects on
18542-426: The right conditions on Earth were met, life started by a chemical process known as abiogenesis . Alternatively, life may have formed less frequently, then spread – by meteoroids , for example – between habitable planets in a process called panspermia . During most of its stellar evolution stars combine hydrogen nuclei to make helium nuclei by stellar fusion, and the comparatively lighter weight of helium allows
18688-405: The right side of the equation are agreed as speculative and open to substitution: 10,000 = 5 ⋅ 0.5 ⋅ 2 ⋅ 1 ⋅ 0.2 ⋅ 1 ⋅ 10,000 {\displaystyle 10{,}000=5\cdot 0.5\cdot 2\cdot 1\cdot 0.2\cdot 1\cdot 10{,}000} The Drake equation has proved controversial since, although it is written as
18834-422: The rocky surface, which helps the chemical reactions. It may be difficult to dig so deep in order to study those oceans, though. Enceladus , a tiny moon of Saturn with another subsurface ocean, may not need to be dug, as it releases water to space in eruption columns . The space probe Cassini flew inside one of these, but could not make a full study because NASA did not expect this phenomenon and did not equip
18980-481: The same of humans. In The Time Warrior , Linx states that "at the Sontaran Military Academy we have hatchings of a million cadets at each muster parade." The Doctor also comments in The Invasion of Time that Sontarans can mass-clone themselves at rates up to a million embryos every four minutes. Thereafter the clones take just ten minutes to grow to adulthood. When the Sontaran reach adulthood, under
19126-528: The same samples suggests that a non-biological reaction is a more likely hypothesis. In February 2005 NASA scientists reported they may have found some evidence of extraterrestrial life on Mars. The two scientists, Carol Stoker and Larry Lemke of NASA's Ames Research Center , based their claim on methane signatures found in Mars's atmosphere resembling the methane production of some forms of primitive life on Earth, as well as on their own study of primitive life near
19272-438: The season premiere, 'Chapter 1: The Halloween Apocalypse', the Sontarans plan to exploit the Flux crisis to take over Earth in its various time periods. They sent a group back in time to Crimean War -era Sevastopol in 'Chapter 2: The War of the Sontarans' as a trial run, only to be defeated by the Doctor while Dan and Karvanista take out the main fleet. The Sontarans reappear in the cliffhanger for ' Chapter Five: Survivors of
19418-615: The serial as an allegory about meat-eating, hunting and butchering. "Androgum" is an anagram of "gourmand". Holmes's original brief from producer John Nathan-Turner was to write a serial taking place in New Orleans , involving the Sontarans, the First Doctor portrayed by Richard Hurndall and the Doctor's granddaughter Susan Foreman , played by Carole Ann Ford , reprising their roles from " The Five Doctors ". Hurndall's death in April 1984 saw
19564-519: The small rod again, but also in episode six, a Sontaran trooper uses a short black rifle-like laser to try to burn through a lock on a door inside the TARDIS. The Two Doctors introduced a weapon called the Meson Gun (as named in the Jim'll Fix It sketch, " A Fix with Sontarans "), a large silver rifle with a red fuel tank in the centre which was used by Group Marshal Stike and Varl in the third episode. It seemed to be some kind of flamethrower as it fired
19710-508: The soldiers of the Tenth Fleet were armed with large laser rifles, Kaagh has a smaller laser carbine. Rather than hypnotising humans (as Sarah pointed out they usually do), instead, Kaagh fixed neural control devices to the back of the necks of his human agents. A red light flashes when it is operational, and Kaagh can activate and deactivate them when he wants with his control panel. A pair of Sontarans that tried to invade Trenzalore in "Time of
19856-399: The star to release the extra energy. The process continues until the star uses all of its available fuel, with the speed of consumption being related to the size of the star. During its last stages, stars start combining helium nuclei to form carbon nuclei. The higher-sized stars can further combine carbon nuclei to create oxygen and silicon, oxygen into neon and sulfur, and so on until iron. In
20002-482: The stellar evolution of stars and planets, it is usually not taken into account by astrobiology. There is an area around a star, the circumstellar habitable zone or "Goldilocks zone", where water may be at the right temperature to exist in liquid form at a planetary surface. This area is neither too close to the star, where water would become steam, nor too far away, where water would be frozen as ice. However, although useful as an approximation, planetary habitability
20148-597: The strip introduced the concept of "pureblood" Sontarans not born of cloning. The Sontarans also feature in the Kroton solo strip Unnatural Born Killers (DWM #277) and the Tenth Doctor 's comic strip debut The Betrothal of Sontar (DWM #365-#368), by John Tomlinson and Nick Abadzis , where a Sontaran mining rig on the ice planet Serac comes under attack by a mysterious force. This list does not include Strax who has his own list . Extraterrestrial life Extraterrestrial life , or alien life (colloquially, alien ),
20294-508: The study of Earth's life, the only known form of life, astrobiology seeks to study how life starts and evolves and the requirements for its continuous existence. This helps to determine what to look for when searching for life in other celestial bodies. This is a complex area of study, and uses the combined perspectives of several scientific disciplines, such as astronomy , biology , chemistry , geology , oceanography , and atmospheric sciences . The scientific search for extraterrestrial life
20440-539: The survival and possible origin of life on Earth . With the little amount of information that scientists have found regarding the atmosphere on other planets in the Milky Way galaxy and beyond, the atmospheres are most likely reducing or with very low oxygen levels, especially when compared with Earth's atmosphere. If there were the necessary elements and ions on these planets, the same carbon fixing, reduced chemical compounds occurring around hydrothermal vents could also occur on these planets' surfaces and possibly result in
20586-631: The tendency of technologically advanced human societies to enslave or destroy less advanced societies – argue it may be dangerous to actively draw attention to Earth. Initially, after the Big Bang the universe was too hot to allow life. 15 million years later , it cooled to temperate levels, but the elements that make up living things did not exist yet. The only freely available elements at that point were hydrogen and helium . Carbon and oxygen (and later, water ) would not appear until 50 million years later, created through stellar fusion. At that point,
20732-603: The universe. The science of extraterrestrial life is known as astrobiology . Speculation about the possibility of inhabited worlds beyond Earth dates back to antiquity. Early Christian writers discussed the idea of a "plurality of worlds" as proposed by earlier thinkers such as Democritus ; Augustine references Epicurus 's idea of innumerable worlds "throughout the boundless immensity of space" in The City of God . Pre-modern writers typically assumed extraterrestrial "worlds" are inhabited by living beings. William Vorilong , in
20878-445: The unusual properties of the meteorite were eventually explained as the result of inorganic processes, the controversy over its discovery laid the groundwork for the development of astrobiology. An experiment on the two Viking Mars landers reported gas emissions from heated Martian soil samples that some scientists argue are consistent with the presence of living microorganisms. Lack of corroborating evidence from other experiments on
21024-417: Was habitable. It is unclear if life and intelligent life are ubiquitous in the cosmos or rare. The hypothesis of ubiquitous extraterrestrial life relies on three main ideas. The first one, the size of the universe allows for plenty of planets to have a similar habitability to Earth, and the age of the universe gives enough time for a long process analog to the history of Earth to happen there. The second
21170-589: Was present for "cheap shock value only". Patrick Mulkern of Radio Times awarded the serial two stars out of five, stating: " The Two Doctors wasn't dire, but the actors and audience deserved better." In Doctor Who: The Complete Guide , Mark Campbell awarded The Two Doctors seven out of ten, describing it as "a Doctor Who version of Last of the Summer Wine as sponsored by the Vegetarian Society ." Television historian Marcus Harmes says of it "Besides
21316-399: Was reported. Scientists search for biosignatures within the Solar System by studying planetary surfaces and examining meteorites . Some claim to have identified evidence that microbial life has existed on Mars. In 1996, a controversial report stated that structures resembling nanobacteria were discovered in a meteorite, ALH84001 , formed of rock ejected from Mars . Although all
#303696