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Doctor Who race
Sontarans
Type	Cloned humanoids
Affiliated with	Sontaran Empire
Home planet	Sontar (in spin-off media)
First appearance	The Time Warrior

The Sontarans are a fictional extraterrestrial race from the British science fiction television series Doctor Who.

The Sontarans made their first appearance in 1973 in the serial The Time Warrior by Robert Holmes. There, it was explained that they are a race that reproduces by means of cloning rather than by means of sexual reproduction. They live in a militaristic society obsessed by war. Sontarans are humanoid, with a squat build and distinctive dome-shaped head. They come from a high-gravity world named Sontar in the "southern spiral arm of the galaxy", and are far stronger than humans. They recharge their energy through a "probic vent" at the back of the neck rather than by eating food; they also use this vent in their reproduction process. The Sontarans have been at war with the Rutan Host for thousands of years. At one point the Sontarans successfully invaded Gallifrey itself, but were driven out again after less than a day, in the episode (The Invasion of Time).

Although physically formidable, the Sontarans' weak spot is the probic vent at the back of their neck; a warrior was killed by a well-aimed knife at that spot (The Invasion of Time) and an arrow (The Time Warrior). They are also vulnerable to "coronic acid" (The Two Doctors).

At some point, the Sontarans encountered the equally expansionist Rutan Host. The war between the Sontarans and the Rutans continued for several millennia, with both sides remaining fairly evenly matched and neither side interested in negotiating for peace. It was still ongoing at the time of The Sontaran Experiment, which takes place at least 10,000 years beyond the 30th century. The episode Horror of Fang Rock, set during the early 20th century, hinted the Sontarans had gained the upper hand, but this proved merely a temporary setback for the Rutans.

On October 2, 2007 the BBC's official Doctor Who site revealed that the Sontarans will return in series 4, with Christopher Ryan playing the Sontaran leader, General Staal.^[1] This will be in a two-part story, with the first episode titled "The Sontaran Stratagem".^[2]. The BBC later revealed promotional images which featured the new Sontaran design.^[3]

The new 2008 design of a Sontaran, beside the Tenth Doctor and Martha Jones

The origins of the Sontarans have not been revealed in the television series. The Doctor Who role-playing game published by FASA claimed that they were all descended from the genetic stock of General Sontar (or Sontaris), who used newly developed bioengineering techniques to clone millions of duplicates of himself and annihilated the non-clone population. He renamed the race after himself and turned the Sontarans into an expansionist and warlike society set on universal conquest. However, this origin has no basis in anything seen in the television series and is not considered canonical.

Other appearances by the Sontarans include the spin-off videos Mindgame, Shakedown: Return of the Sontarans and Do You Have A License To Save This Planet?; three audio plays by BBV: Silent Warrior, Old Soldiers and Conduct Unbecoming; the Faction Paradox audio The Shadow Play; and a cameo appearance in Infidel's Comet. Shakedown marks the only occasion in which the Sontarans and their Rutan foes appear on screen together, and was adapted into a Virgin New Adventures novel.

The Sontarans appeared in a skit for the BBC children's programme Jim'll Fix It titled, "A Fix with Sontarans", along with Colin Baker as the Sixth Doctor and Janet Fielding as Tegan Jovanka. They have also appeared in several spin-off novels, including Lords of the Storm by David A. McIntee and The Infinity Doctors by Lance Parkin. In The Infinity Doctors, the Doctor negotiated a peace between the Sontarans and the Rutan Host when two of them were left trapped in a TARDIS for several hours and got to talking due to their inability to kill each other. General Sontar also made an appearance in that novel. In The Crystal Bucephalus by Craig Hinton, the name of their planet was given as Sontara.

The Sontarans have also appeared several times in the Doctor Who Magazine comic strip, both as adversaries of the Doctor and in strips not involving the Doctor. In The Outsider (DWM #25-26), by Steve Moore and David Lloyd, a Sontaran named Skrant invaded the world of Brahtilis with the unwitting help of Demimon, a local astrologer. The Fourth Doctor faced the Sontarans in Dragon's Claw (DWM #39-#45), by Steve Moore and Dave Gibbons, where a crew of Sontarans menaced China in 1522 AD. Like all non-live action sources, this story is of an unclear canonicity.

In Steven Moffat's short story "What I Did on My Christmas Holidays by Sally Sparrow" (the basis for the Tenth Doctor episode "Blink") the Ninth Doctor has a rooftop sword fight with two Sontarans in 21st century Istanbul, defeating them with the help of spy Sally Sparrow, apparently before the events of "Rose" in his personal timeline.

The Sontaran homeworld was destroyed in Seventh Doctor strip Pureblood (DWM #193-196) but the Sontaran race pool survived, allowing for further cloning; the strip introduced the concept of "pureblood" Sontarans not born of cloning. The Sontarans also feature in the Kroton solo strip Unnatural Born Killers (DWM #277) and the Tenth Doctor's comic strip debut The Betrothal of Sontar (DWM #365-#368), by John Tomlinson and Nick Abadzis, where a Sontaran mining rig on the ice planet Serac comes under attack by a mysterious force.

They are mentioned in Eye of the Gorgon, an episode of The Sarah Jane Adventures. Sarah Jane Smith meets Bea Nelson-Stanley, an elderly lady suffering from Alzheimer's disease who recalls her husband describing the Sontarans as looking like potatoes and that they were "quite the silliest creatures in the galaxy".