Into the Stars: Salvation Nine

"Why would anyone want to save the Sontarans?"

Writer: Timothy X Atack

Format: Audio

Released: August 2022

Series: Ninth Doctor Adventures 6.01

Featuring: Ninth Doctor

Synopsis

The Doctor happens upon an unusual outpost – and discovers it is about to be annihilated. 

To save Salvation Nine, he must rally a people for whom war is an alien concept and protect the future of the Sontaran race!

Verdict

Salvation Nine was an excellent start to the Into the Stars sixth volume of Ninth Doctor Adventures! I am absolutely delighted to get a Sontaran story with the Ninth Doctor and just hearing them opposite Christopher Eccleston was a delight and the best way to start a new series. However, here we had Sontarans of a very different kind! So much so that the entire plot focused on a race against time to ensure that the Field Marshall actually renounced them as Sontaran kind and they were almost their own entirely new species. That was really fun. Eccleston delighted at the start as he was caught by Lobbs and rather than be threatened to death and proclaimed for the glory of Sontar, the Sontaran warned the Doctor of the path ahead! His reaction to that was incredible and the humour that came from Lobbs also putting his hands in the air was tremendous. The Doctor was laughing in disbelief and this played out well in a flashback as to why these Sontarans needed saving. That seemed a bit of a surprise at the start with Navarch after a comic reaction from the Doctor after running down an incredibly long (and intentionally cliche) corridor. I thought her position as also having honour was fun to match against the Sontarans, but those present on this outpost were far from ordinary Sontarans. The Doctor had his confirmation that it was no trap (it was way too complex to be one for the Sontarans!) and that meant he had to save them which was lovely. The very idea of peaceful Sontarans is fun to play with and I don't think it has been presented on a scale such as this adventure. The batch of them was fun and even having a female version in the form of Gaznak was brilliant. The way she and Lobbs were used to try and trick a Field Marshall and get their form of the species renounced was brilliant and was just a very fun mission. The excuse for Gaznak's female voice being a wound to the larynx was brilliant and Henk (I won't list all of his credentials!) didn't want an apology for a war wound. The rehearsal of announcing the capture of the Doctor and his TARDIS was really well done and I loved how the only description needed of the time machine was that it was blue. The simplicity of the Sontarans never ceases to amaze me but that's why they can work so well. It was nice to not really have any Rutan involvement and having the Doctor explain the lengths the Sontarans went to just to power their cloning system by using whole planets was fantastic. I liked the reaction of Lobbs and Gaznak in not really understanding why their ancestors acted as such. The birthing fields on the outpost were very different and I appreciated the Doctor's stunned silence reaction to them. These were very different Sontarans indeed. The Niners were a strong element in the story and it was good to just have the Doctor fighting against them to save Sontarans from being wiped out. The use of the Field Marshall there was brilliant and the reluctant reaction of Navarch to not destroy them in the end was very good. The suggestion of Sontarans becoming female with old age was really intriguing too and a fun concept to play with. Gaznak was a fine representation of that ancient side of the Sontarans, and it just showed how many fell in battle! Overall, a fantastic audio!

Rating: 9/10