Blind Terror

"He would meet his agent face to face and he would defeat it."

Writer: Justin Richards

Format: Short Story

Released: July 2008

Series: Doctor Who Files 13

Featuring: Sontarans

Synopsis

On the trail for the final of four attacked Rutan ships, Commander Churl and Lieutenant Stavv are on the hunt. For victory! For Sontar! 

Verdict

Blind Terror was an excellent little short story to continue my way through the Doctor Who Files! I’m keeping my local library busy with this one as I requested to reserve the copy of the Sontarans purely for this adventure. They got it out of reserve stock and it seems that despite being released some seventeen years ago, I am the first borrower! To tell you something about the age range for the target audience from this collection, the librarian thought I was taking the book out for my newborn daughter who was strapped to me. Six weeks old she was when I took this out of the library! To be fair, I can’t fault her for thinking this book wasn’t for the twenty-eight year old man in the room but content is content and I’m a massive fan of the Sontarans so I was keen to read an adventure where they were the main focus. It’s an easy and obvious route to go down, but I was thoroughly delighted to be reading them on the hunt for Rutans! The endless war between the Sontarans and Rutans was established way back in The Time Warrior and reaffirmed in the modern era during The Sontaran Stratagem, so to actually get a taste of it in the modern era feels important. Just getting a description of the Rutans was delightful and I’m sure the first time any modern only viewers could get an impression of the Sontarans’ eternal enemy. I do wonder how many will have watched Horror of Fang Rock to see the Doctor take on the Rutans? I must say they did feel a little inferior to the Sontarans here but given the focus of the book that’s not massively surprising. It also tailed the back of the Sontarans taking down three of four ships and them finishing the job. I thought the unnamed but titular blind girl was a fascinating character and it was excellent for Churl to think her dishonourable and not worthy for losing her sight to illness. That was no battle wound! She did know about the Rutan ‘animal’ though and that worked nicely in saving her life. I thought the attack on Stravv was good and the girl shooting the Rutan was unexpected! Churl was quite satisfied with what went down though which was a nice way to finish things purely from a Sontaran perspective! Back to war he went as the Rutan scum lived on. I thought that was a nice touch as he didn’t seem like the main Sontaran in command from the off. There was definitely something of the Zygons in the Rutan’s new gained ability of metamorphosis. Just needing a little bit of tissue to replicate was definitely the orange sucker speciality! The blind girl having lost her dad to the Rutan was a shame and I was almost laughing at the lack of Sontaran sympathy. The idea of Sontarans being aware of human girls from their combat training is also quite incredible! There’s a lot to love about them and exploring them in detail here was a delight. I’m all for them hunting Rutans and I still can’t believe that war hasn’t been depicted on screen. We’ve had a Big Finish series and now this short story here from the modern era, but still nothing on screen. Maybe one day. For now though, this was a fantastic little read!

Rating: 9/10