Saturday 22 February 1975

The Sontaran Experiment

It’s cold and rainy this weekend, and so we’ve decided to catch up with Mark McManus and spend the day larking around Devonshire, falling down holes, and generally hiding from Kevin Lindsay while he brings the Sontarans to the screen for the second time.

As we discuss right off the bat, much of the TV of this period was shot on videotape in the studio and on film on location, giving it a very distinctive look. This look is remarked on by Graham Chapman in this sketch from Monty Python’s Flying Circus.

Naturally, Nathan mentions El Sandifer about fifteen mintues in. This time, it’s her essay on The Time Warrior, surprisingly. (And although Nathan doesn’t mention it, her essay on The Sontaran Experiment has a lot to say about the use of video cameras on location in this story.)

Every imaginable detail of the history of the screening of Doctor Who on ABC-TV is recorded on the BroadDWCast website, which chronicles the history of the broadcast of Doctor Who round the world. Go to this page to learn about the airdates that were so formative for Simon, Peter, Todd, Richard, Nathan during the 1970s and 80s.

Flight Through Entirety discussed The Sontaran Experiment in Episode 34: Choc Bit Breast Plates.

Nathan is on Bluesky at @nathanbottomley.com, Mark is @quarkmcmalus.bsky.social, Simon is @simonmoore.bsky.social, and James is @ohjamessellwood.bsky.social. The 500 Year Diary theme was composed by Cameron Lam.

500 Year Diary shares a social media presence with Flight Through Entirety, which means you can follow us on Mastodon and Bluesky, as well as on X (for now) and Facebook. Our website is at 500yeardiary.com. Please consider rating or reviewing us on Apple Podcasts, or we’ll call up your boss and tell him about all the Balatro you’ve been playing during work hours.

You can find links to all of the podcasts we’re involved in on our podcasts page. But here’s where we’re up to right now.

The next episode of The Second Great and Bountiful Human Empire will be out on Monday: we’ll be trying keep it together as we discuss The Interstellar Song Contest.

Yesterday we released an episode of our Space: 1999 commentary podcast Startling Barbara Bain, in which Helena’s long-dead husband returned to life to warn the crew not to settle on that nearby idyllic planet and start eating all its antimatter vegetables. With only moderate success.

And finally there’s our Star Trek commentary podcast, Untitled Star Trek Project, featuring Nathan and friend-of-the-podcast Joe Ford. This week, we watched a gentle and hilarious Star Trek: Lower Decks episode called Fully Dilated.