The First Sontarans (audio story)

The First Sontarans was the sixth release in the third series of The Lost Stories. It provided the Sontarans with an origin story, something which, unlike many of the Doctor's other recurring enemies, had not been provided before. This was only the second full cast audio story to feature the Rutans the first was the Bernice Summerfield audio story The Bellotron Incident was released in 2003.

Publisher's summary
1872. After finding a strange signalling device on the moon, the Doctor and Peri travel to the depths of the English countryside to track down the source of its transmissions. But they're not the first aliens to arrive on the scene.

Old enemies of the Doctor are drawing their battle lines in the forest and the local humans will be lucky to escape the conflagration unscathed.

For hidden within this village is a deadly secret - a secret that could destroy the entire Sontaran race... and reveal the terrible mystery of their creation.

Plot
to be added

Cast

 * Sixth Doctor - Colin Baker
 * Peri Brown - Nicola Bryant
 * Fleet Marshal Jaka - Dan Starkey
 * Jacob Gilley / Meredid Roath - Anthony Howell
 * Jane Ross / Leandra Roath - Lizzie Roper
 * Gentleman / Lork / Barclay - John Banks
 * Major Thessinger - Cameron Stewart

Cultural references from the real world

 * Peri refers to the fictional detective.
 * The Doctor refers to Neil Armstrong and the Apollo 11 moon landing on 20 July 1969.

Individuals

 * When he erroneously believes that Peri has been killed by the Sontarans, the Doctor describes her as "the bravest of souls."
 * Major Thessiger's father fought in the Battle of Waterloo on 18 June 1815. Furthermore, Thessiger claims that he himself fought in the Battle of Inkerman on 5 November 1854 during the Crimean War.

Timeline

 * Meredid and Leandra Roath have been on Earth since the early 1860s.

Species

 * The Doctor refers to the Sontarans' sworn arch-enemies the Rutan Host. The two species have been at war for millennia.
 * A Sontaran patrol numbers seven.
 * The Kaveetch were natives of Sontar. Thousands of years earlier, after the war with the Rutan Host had reached a stalemate, Meredith Roath proposed the creation of a clone army, namely the Sontarans. Within weeks, the clones were not only fighting on the front lines but had turned the tide of the war firmly in the Kaveetch's favour. However, the Sontarans turned on their creators due to their supposedly inferior nature and unique knowledge of Sontaran physiology. The surviving Kaveetch, who numbered only in the hundreds, employed their rudimentary time travel and arrived in various locations throughout Mutter's Spiral in the early 1860s.

TARDIS

 * The Doctor is able to preserve Leandra's life using the Zero Room.

Continuity

 * The Doctor and Peri would return to the Moon when they visited the Gogglebox in the far future. (AUDIO: The Reaping)
 * The Doctor refers to the disappearance of the crew of the Mary Celeste in 1872. The Doctor refers to the Daleks' involvement in the incident. The First Doctor and his companions Ian Chesterton, Barbara Wright and Vicki Pallister were indirectly involved in the crew's disappearance. (TV: The Chase) By his fifth incarnation, the Doctor was aware of his involvement as he told Alan Fitzgerald, a student summer intern at the Gogglebox, that he was "sort of" responsible for the disappearance of its crew. (AUDIO: The Gathering)
 * The Doctor and Peri previously encountered the Sontarans in Seville, Spain in 1985. (TV: The Two Doctors)
 * The Doctor tells Roath and Fleet Marshal Jaka that he is aware that the Sontarans possess rudimentary time travel technology as he once witnessed it in operation. (TV: The Time Warrior)