Sontarans

Sontarans
Doctor Who alien
The 2008 redesign of the Sontarans
Type	Cloned humanoids
Affiliated with	Sontaran Empire, The Alliance
Home planet	Sontar
First appearance	The Time Warrior (1973)

The Sontarans are a fictional extraterrestrial agendered race of humanoids from the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, and also seen in spin-off series The Sarah Jane Adventures. A warrior race who live to kill, they are characterised by their ruthlessness and fearlessness of death.

They were created by writer Robert Holmes. During rehearsals for their first appearance, actor 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 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 a Sontaran named 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 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 skistreat 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 the Rutan Host, an equally militaristic race with whom the Sontarans have been at war for thousands of years though the Rutans were not shown until the 1977 serial Horror of Fang Rock.