Heroes of Sontar, by the reliable Alan Barnes, is the better story of the two. At first it seems a rather peculiar and not necessarily successful attempt at a humorous twist on the Sontarans, as a bunch of deadbeat veterans are sent on a mysterious mission to a planet deep in Rutan space. But this being Alan Barnes, all is not what it seems, and Janet Fielding and Mark Strickson in particular get some good moments as Tegan and Turlough as the Tardis team work out the awful truth behind the apparent absence of sentient life on the planet. Poor Sarah Sutton is not as well served as the older Nyssa, though she gets some sentimental moments with tegan near the end, and I was not wild about the characterisation of the Doctor. But I was much more impressed by Barnes' ringing of the changes on the Sontarans here than by, say, Colin Brake's retake on the Judoon. ( )