John Torrance

 was an old mentor of Petronella Osgood who used to work for the Minister of Defence. He worked with Christine Colley on a cloning project, being a specialist in gene cloning. He wanted to recruit Osgood for a specific project to grow viable Sontaran clones and used an alien pathogen on her to try and make her subservient. He essentially tortured Merx for his work. (AUDIO: The Sontaran Project)