Doctor Who: Sontarans VS Rutans: Born to Die from Big Finish Review

In the third entry to the Sontarans VS Rutans range, the Sixth Doctor, paired with Charley Pollard having enjoyed a popular TARDIS team amongst Big Finish listeners arrives on an alien world only to find that the Sontarans have occupied it but to make things worse, they stumble across the body of a murdered Sontaran and are then captured believed to be the perpetrators.

Born to Die sees a newcomer to Big Finish Tiegan Byrne making her writing debut. Her story takes place on a planet called Taxodon and sees the Sontarans, played with relish by Christoper Marshall, Dan Starkey and Jon Culshaw. The pair have to find out what the Sontarans are doing on this planet and what it has to do with their continuing war with the Rutans.

One might think it’s an odd choice to give Culshaw a role as a Sontaran, especially as his voice isn’t quite as Sontaran as the other actors. But Byrne gives the Sontarans something interesting to do though listeners to the previous entries into this range might cotton onto what’s going on long before all is revealed. However, she deserves to be praised because doing something new with these monsters isn’t something easy to do.

Of course one of the main selling factors of this story is the inclusion of the Sixth Doctor and Charley Pollard who haven’t been heard together since 2019’s The Avenues of Possibility. I’ll be honest I’ve understood the love for these two together, Charley works a lot better with the Eighth Doctor than she does with the Sixth, but a lot of their relationship is because she is trying to hide the fact she knows a future Doctor. I liked that Byrne kept the character’s frisson because she is trying to hide future knowledge and she keeps slipping up.

We know that from the opening story of this series, she’s met the Sontarans and the Rutans but she has to hide this from the Sixth Doctor because, at this point in their travels, she can’t reveal who she is just yet.

The story starts as a murder mystery and Byrne handles things well, introducing some nice mythos into the Sontaran’s backstories, but she quickly begins to add other themes including colonisation and the ethics of invading other places, something which is very topical in today’s world. I also appreciated that the story didn’t shy away from some of the nastier aspects of the Sontaran way of life.

As a debut, Born to Die is a great start for Tiegan Byrne and another strong entry into the Sontaran vs. Rutans series and while there are still a lot more questions than answers, hopefully with the fourth and final episode on its way, the plot threads left hanging from the previous outings will finally get wrapped up.

You can pick up Doctor Who: Sontarans VS Rutans: Born to Die from Big Finish on both digital and CD now.