A Soldier's Education

"Victory is your birthright."

Writer: Dave Rudden

Format: Short Story

Released: October 2018

Printed in: Twelve Angels Weeping 06

Featuring: Strax

Synopsis 

On every planet that has existed or will exist, there is a winter...

Many of the peoples of Old Earth celebrated a winter festival. A time to huddle together against the cold; a time to celebrate being half-way out of the dark.

But shadows are everywhere, and there are some corners of the universe which have bred the most terrible things, lurking in the cold between the stars.

Here are twelve stories – one for each of the Twelve Days of Christmas – to remind you that to come out of the darkness we need to go into it in the first place.

We are not alone. We are not safe. And, whatever you do: don't blink.

Verdict 

A Soldier's Education was an excellent story to continue my reading through the Twelve Angels Weeping collection! The Sontarans were a necessity to include in this book and I must admit that as I started reading, I said to myself that I do hope the Doctor features to do battle with them. What we got was so much better though and an incredible insight into the birth of Sontarans and the first few minutes of their lives. The first seven minutes of this Sontaran to be precise. I was a little worried initially when we had another audio file pulled up and I thought the style was going to be very similar to the preceding story of Student Bodies, but thankfully that wasn’t the case and we had a story listening to an interface from the point of view of the newly-born Sontaran all of the way through the adventure. The Sontaran Subliminal Education Matrix was our home for the twenty-six pages or so and it turned out to be magnificent. This is where newly born Sontaran clones could learn all about the glory of Sontar and the Sontaran Empire. A lot of ground was covered with the different data entries. There were some tongue and cheek references with related data entries that we didn’t get to explore, such as the inconsistencies of Sontaran fingers and being referred to as baked potatoes. The data entry on art simply being to state that it was pointless was hilarious, and I also loved pondering on whether nurses were a necessity or cowardly. Given the incredible revelation at the end of the story that this particular Sontaran was actually Strax, that was really well done. A huge smile crossed my face when the name designation was chosen as getting a full origin story for a Sontaran we know very well was an absolute delight. The Sontarans were obviously very high on honour and battle, and I loved how they sold their weakness of the probic vent as their strength in always facing the enemy. Their height was also turned into a strength in being compact which meant there were more resources for ammunition instead of armour. It was hard to argue with that! Sontarans hoping to murder other races who did mock their height was neat though. Their thoughts on the Daleks were fascinating as they did appreciate they were the right height, but that their hatred for all others unlike them had consumed them beyond the point of honour. For even the Sontarans to recognise that says a lot about the natives of Skaro. The Sontarans having a respect for the Cybermen was amusing as well as they liked how they recognised they needed upgrading, but said this should be done before birth like they did. The enemy they had hatred for the most was obviously the Rutan Host with their comments about them being expectedly disparaging. Of course, there was one other single alien who had caused them a great deal of trouble and that was the Doctor. The Sontaran’s own files acknowledging the events of The Time Warrior with the same title but it applying to the Third Doctor was terrific, and I also enjoyed the reference to The Sontaran Experiment and them believing the Fourth Doctor to be colour blind because of his scarf was magnificent. The data entry on the Doctor’s companions referring to them as pets was marvellous and it was nice to get a little entry for Sarah Jane in particular. The entry describing the events of The Sontaran Stratagem/The Poison Sky was excellent too and the Sontarans seemed pretty happy with that plan before the Doctor’s interference. Other than the reveal of Strax being the Sontaran whose birth we were following, the highlight for me was how the Sontarans spun all of their defeats into them actually achieving their goal of dying in battle with honour. Glorious stuff. Overall, this was just a wonderful read and something brilliant to compliment the Sontarans. A magnificent read. 

Rating: 9/10