The Sontarans are engaged in a 50,000-year war with the Rutans (The Sontaran Stratagem/The Poison Sky). The Rutan Host are green blobby amphibious creatures that can shape-shift into other organisms. A Rutan scout arrived on Earth in Victorian times and infiltrated a lighthouse (Horror of Fang Rock). However, the Fourth Doctor and Leela were able to defeat the Rutans using the lighthouse. But the fight between the Rutans and the Sontarans goes on (The Gunpowder Plot)!

Horror of Fang Rock

★★★★☆

TX: 03/09/1977 – 24/09/1977

Written by Terrance Dicks    Directed by Paddy Russell

The Fourth Doctor and Leela arrive at a lighthouse in the Victorian age. The lighthouse has been observing strange lights in the sky. Things get even more complicated when a shipwreck washes up four aristocratic survivors. A murderer is afoot within the lighthouse and the Doctor doesn’t know who it is. It turns out that a shape-shifting alien creature called a Rutan has infiltrated the lighthouse and has disguised itself as a human called Reuben. The Rutan Host are engaged in a long-running war with the Sontarans, their mortal enemies! The Doctor and Leela use some diamonds taken from the aristocrats to reflect the ray of the Rutan spaceship using the lighthouse so that it destroys the Rutan scout. The flash of the explosion causes a pigmentation dispersal in Leela’s eyes, which makes them change colour. It would be nice if the CGI Rutans returned to Doctor Who to fight the Sontarans onscreen in the modern series.