Season 11, Episode 1 | 4 parts | First broadcast: 15 December 1973 – 5 January 1974 | Writer: Robert Holmes | Director: Alan Bromly
Cast
- Jon Pertwee as the Doctor
- Elisabeth Sladen as Sarah Jane Smith
- Nicholas Courtney as Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart
- Kevin Lindsay as Linx
Summary
Investigating the mysterious disappearance of leading scientists, the Doctor traces the cause to a stranded Sontaran warrior named Linx, who has crash-landed in medieval England and is trading advanced weaponry to a local warlord in exchange for help repairing his ship. Accompanied by resourceful journalist Sarah Jane Smith, who stows away aboard the TARDIS, the Doctor must stop Linx’s meddling with history before it plunges the era into chaos.
Interesting Facts
- This serial introduces both the Sontarans, who would become one of Doctor Who’s most enduring recurring adversaries, and new companion Sarah Jane Smith.
- Sarah Jane Smith would go on to become one of the most beloved companions in the show’s history, later headlining her own spin-off series decades later.
- It is the first Doctor Who serial to use “Part One,” “Part Two,” and so on for episode titles instead of unique individual episode names, a convention the series retained from this point forward.
- Writer Robert Holmes designed the squat, aggressive Sontarans partly as a deliberate contrast to the more elegant alien races that had populated the series previously.
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