Doctor Who: War Of The Sontarans Review - 7 Ups & 5 Downs

We loved Dan last episode but this time around things were… iffy. John Bishop is charming and funny, and we aren’t going mark down average acting in Doctor Who (he would not be the first), but we aren’t sure this character can hold up an invasion plot on his own yet.

Dan seems to take everything just a little too much in his stride, not really being too fazed by what must have been a fairly traumatic 24 hours for him, and now we’ve met his parents, we know exactly where he gets that from. Dan’s parents get so little focus in this episode that they barely seem worth including, with them showing up to drop some handy exposition and to casually mention the small matter of a planet-wide alien invasion with the same level of concern that they would if they’d run out of milk. Then they hop in the car and drive to the Sontaran base whilst the world seems to be under house arrest. That was easy.

Most egregious, perhaps, is the laughable scene in which Dan heads off to take on a Sontaran fleet armed with his wok, announcing confidently that he has some experience with aliens, and his parents just let him. Dan is very much still just some plasterer bloke who briefly went to space - he is so under-qualified for this, having no real experience saving planets with The Doctor, and no understanding whatsoever of what a Sontaran even is. This was way too early for a companion hero moment and we couldn’t help but laugh at how silly the entire scene was.