The Aussie Sontaran

I like the new, slicker Doctor Who, but I do prefer the older, cheaper series. One factor swaying my preference is my affection for facial deformity. Burns, scars, deep fissures resulting from violent blows, birth defects, cranial aberrations, and general alien hideousness; these are a few of my favorite things. In grade school, I was very fond of a little girl who sported a terrific facial scar. Her left eye, too, was a whisper lower than her right eye. What a beauty she was!

My favorite Doctor Who villains are The Sontarans because, well, they're the ugliest. I don't like using the word ugly because it sounds terribly judgmental. But I need to use it because it conveys something most people understand. If I say that a scarred person is beautiful, I may confuse the reader. Most scarred people are beautiful, of course, and I have known a few and been turned on by many.

The cheaper Doctor Who embraced deformity and what some humans call ugliness. The Sontarans are a favorite because they're still partially humanoid. Other faves like the Zygons are gloriously "ugly", too, but because they're kind of reptilian (as are the Silurians and Sea Devils) they don't rate as highly on my ugly scale as the Sontarans do.

The first Sontaran to visit Earth (in The Time Warrior) was Linx (pictured directly below). He arrived on John Pertwee's watch.

As you can see, he's a striking fellow, a real piece of work. I've always considered him to be a slightly wrong Humpty Dumpty. When I used to recite that famous nursery rhyme, a tale of a fallen egg man, I'd picture him looking very much like our handsome hero above.

I urge you to closely examine this photo and appreciate the deep facial fissures and oddball skull. Such a face has the power to take one's breath away.

The Sontarans returned a couple of year's later in the form of Field Major Steyr. This militant Humpty tangled with Tom Baker, the fourth doctor, and his pretty assistant Elizabeth Sladen. Again, the make-up geniuses behind Doctor Who's finest monsters had a field day with the field major and made ugliness respectable, as it should be.

I feel compelled to relate an event involving Linx and an old schoolteacher. When I was attending a dysfunctional private school for boys, a teacher who bore some resemblance to Linx took our class for a week of special mathematics (algebra). Whenever he'd turn and face the class, I'd notice his strange and uncanny Sontaran features. In retrospect, I'm not sure whether it was his face shape, eyes, or general monster demeanor, but he definitely gave old Linx a run for his money in the Sontaran lookalike sweepstakes.

The black and white shot above is scanned from my beloved Dr. Who Monster Book, a publication put out by Target Books that collected the Doctor's enemies into one manageable literary menagerie.

I was well known for carrying this book with me at all times. You never knew when you'd need to consult it.

During one of our endless mathematics classes, I began to circulate copies of Linx's pic...

The actual pic

Unfortunately, the pic found its way to the desk of our teacher, the Linx lookalike. He snapped up the photo and seemed genuinely affronted by it. He stared at it angrily -- wincing, I imagine, at its uncanny proximity to his own unfortunate features. When he was done staring, he looked up and said: "Whose is this?"

I stuck my hand up. "It's mine, sir."

"I should have known it was yours, Mr. Savage. You seem a great deal more interested in monsters than mathematics."

I grinned. I couldn't argue with him.

"And who is this fellow?"

"Linx, sir," I said.

"Excuse me?"

"It's Linx, sir. From Doctor Who."

My teacher didn't seem satisfied with my answer. I couldn't understand why. I'd identified my Sontaran hero. Why did teacher's dirty look linger?

"His name's Linx, is it?"

I nodded.

"Really? Why don't you show me where it says his name is Linx."

My teacher flipped the photocopy over and gestured at me to stand.

All eyes were raised as I approached the desk.

He handed me the page and pointed. "Does that say Linx?"

I looked down. Then I felt the back of my neck get real hot.

I hesitated.

"Well?"

"No, sir."

"Then what does it say?"

I read what I'd written -- what I'd forgotten I'd written.

"Um--"

"You can read, can't you?"

"Yes, sir."

"Then go ahead and read exactly what it says."

I took a deep breath and rubbed my sizzling hot neck. The heat was quickly spreading to the rest of my body, too.

"It says 'Mr. Arnold is the Australian Linx', sir."

The class erupted into laughter for about one second. Mr. Arnold's cold, injured glare cut the festivities short.

Mr Arnold turned the page over and stared Linx in the face.

Linx stared straight back.

Then Linx was crushed and balled up in Mr. Arnold's hand.

The crushed Linx picture was then placed in my hand. "Take this rubbish to Father Cooper (the school principal) and ask him for appropriate detention. Can you do that, Mr. Savage?"

"Yes, sir."

I returned, without Linx, fifteen minutes later with a detention schedule.

Mr. Arnold, the Linx lookalike, never mentioned the incident again, but he did tell me a year later that he watched Doctor Who "occasionally"... and found it "amusing".

Good bless that ugly Sontaran educator!

Where is he now?

Probably back on his home planet. Retired on an Earthman's pension.

Sontaran Therapy

Can one love a Sontaran?

Can affection transcend repulsion?

I did.

And of course it can.

My initial attraction to horror was that it was populated with people who were as ugly as me. I fitted in with them. Their problems were possibly worse than my own. There was comfort in that.

Between the ages of four and eleven, I wore a grotesque, oversized, cloth eye patch. It went on when I rose and came off when I retired. Its purpose was to cover my right eye (the good eye) entirely so that my left eye, which was yielding just 25% vision, would be forced to pick up its game. To help it do that, I was fitted with thick, black-rimmed spectacles with the magnification properties of an observatory telescope.

My name was promptly changed to "Cyclops" and my preferred fashion accessory became a blue, plastic Batman helmet that was all the rage at the time and is now a collector's item.

I was no junior beefcake.

In our house, Dr. Who was a Sunday afternoon tradition. I joined the show when Patrick Traughton was coming to the end of his doctoring. The first time I saw him, he was fighting Sea Devils. My immediate dilemma was that I supported The Doctor, but sympathized with the monsters, even when they were taking lives on a grand scale.

No matter what villainy these so-called "devils" embraced, they had my unconditional backing.

And so did The Doctor, of course.

The Time Warrior marked the introduction of Elizabeth Sladen as "Sarah Jane Smith" (now going strong in The Sarah Jane Chronicles); she was The Doctor's new companion (after Jo).

It also marked the first appearance of a Sontaran, one of the first Dr. Who creatures since the Cybermen and the Daleks to possess real staying power. The Sontaran to beat in this episode announced his hideous credentials in a dramatic headwear removal scene that may have given Darth Vader ideas.

This fellow's name was -- wait for it -- Linx! (rhymes with sphinx). Sure that nobody was watching him, the shy spaceman ducked into a corner and took off his bulky, steel helmet, revealing a grotesque mug that could best be described as Humpty Dumpty Gone Terribly Wrong.

What made Linx special to me was his attitude. His optimism. His self-confidence. I had none of the latter at the time, so Linx became a square screen mentor to me, at least for the four weekends this episode took to play out. Finally, I was watching an ugly guy on TV who had plans, intelligence, a spaceship, cool facial scars, and a rude head that he'd learned to live with.

At eleven years of age, I was having a shocking time living with my own head, my eye patch, and those gruesome glasses, so it was enormously comforting to watch this Sontaran warrior give the humans a run for their money.

And NOT be concerned with his appearance.

That's the part that worked for me. You could be ugly and still have a life. In the Middle Ages. In space. Or, as in my case, in a small, quiet suburb of Melbourne.

When Jon Pertwee's Doctor defeated Linx, I was bummed, but I was happy for the human race, too. I was sure that the Sontarans would return again one day.

My optimism was rewarded two years later when one of Linx's countrymen, Field Major Steyr, arrived on Earth to get right what poor old Linx had gotten wrong. This would be Tom Baker's first but not last encounter with the outer space Humpty Dumpties (which I write with the greatest respect, of course), and it was a classic.

The Sontaran Experiment, just a two-parter, takes place entirely on location, giving the Sontaran military man a chance to appreciate the windy British countryside.

In a clever development that keeps the gene pool pure, the same actor who portrayed Linx (Kevin Lindsay) also portrayed the Field Major.

One wouldn't think it possible, but the Field Major was even uglier than his compatriot. His head looked like a semi-punctured dirigible and he had dark circles under his eyes. I worried that he'd been spending too much time talking to his Sontaran mates back home on the interplanetary TV screen he'd installed in a rock face.

Like Linx, Steyr could give two shits about his appearance. He had bigger and better things to focus on than his hairstyle or acne. Admittedly, acne was becoming a focus of mine, but thanks to TV mentors like Linx and Steyr, the demons of teenage stress never did manage to wrestle me to the canvas of self destruction.

A bunch of Sontarans returned to avenge the annihilation of their brothers in The Invasion of Time. They didn't count on meeting a guy (Tom Baker) who'd already tangled with their kind, so they failed miserably in their effort to do wrong once again.

These jokers were also butt ugly, confirming once and for all that there was something nasty in the water on their distant planet.

Today, I have Linx and his brethren to thank for the self confidence I do possess.

I never did get a whole lot better looking, but I certainly got a whole lot of free therapy to deal with that reality from those homely, Sontaran go-getters.

As a token of thanks, I'm prepared to send each of them a stolen set of sonic screwdrivers for Xmas.

If anybody has their mailing address, please PM me.