The Sontaran Experiment - Part 1
The Doctor, Sarah, and Harry arrive on Earth by transmat beam. There are no signs of civilization. Sarah and Harry go for a walk. The Doctor stays at the site where they materialized and works on the receptors which seem a bit scrambled.
Sarah thinks she hears something after they have gone a ways but Harry thinks she's imagining things. Harry steps into a trap and falls into a crevasse. He can't climb out. Sarah goes to find the Doctor but he has disappeared.
While Sarah and Harry are gone the doctor hears a noise. He sees a human in a space suit running from a robot. The human falls off a cliff. The Doctor arrives at the body just before the dead man's friends do. They shoot the Doctor which knocks him out and take him back to their camp.
Harry finds a way out of the crevasse and explores a bit. Sarah meets Roth, another human, who saves her from the robot. He tells her about the alien in the rocks. Roth also tells her about how he was captured by the alien, along with two of his companions. They were all tortured. His friends were killed but he escaped.
The Doctor is interrogated by the men who captured him. They are soon joined by a third man, Vurrul, the leader of the group. The Doctor tries explaining that they came from Space Station Nerva but the men don't believe him. His explanations make them angrier. They tell him that their space ship was vaporized when they disembarked and now some of their group has vanished.
Roth doesn't want to go near the others because Vurrul is there. Roth explains to Sarah that Vurrul is working for the alien. That's why he doesn't trust him. Roth helps Sarah by creating a distraction which lures Vurrul and the other two away from the Doctor. She cuts the Doctor loose and they take off. They meet up with Roth.
Sarah and Roth take the Doctor to the crevasse into which Harry fell. The doctor attempts to climb down into it but he slips and falls and is knocked out by the impact of his landing. The robot shows up and captures Sarah and Roth. It takes them to the alien, a Sontaran.
Thoughts
I like how this story is organized. The three main characters get separated early on and then the story alternates between their individual experiences. Harry's part of the story consists of him walking around solo so there isn't any dialogue or much in the way of developments until the end of the episode when he sees the robot deliver Sarah and Roth to the Sontaran.
The was the first episode of Doctor Who that I ever saw. I think it must have been in 1979 or 1980 that I saw this one. It would have been a Saturday night around 6 PM, just before dinner time on channel 26, WETA.
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