Summary: 8/10 The Sontarans' never ending war with the Rutans bring them to the solar yacht Tiger Moth in this video based off of one of Doctor Who's most successful aliens. Terrance Dicks provides the screenplay and it stars familiar faces Jan Chappell, Brian Croucher, Carole Ann Ford, Sophie Aldred, and Michael Wisher.
Shakedown: Return of the Sontarans is a successful fix for those who want new Doctor Who in visual form. It finally features an encounter between the Sontarans and the Rutans, something that has been hinted in every one of their appearences, but never seen before now.
The story is somewhat of a Horror of Fang Rock in space, with the Rutan slowly working it's way through the Sontarans and humans that are aboard the Tiger Moth. However, with the introduction of the Sontarans, the "enemy" of the piece has a surprising ambiguity that was a nice twist. The dialog is acceptable, with the exception of some painful dialog avoiding mentioning the Doctor by name -- while I'm aware there are legal reasons for not mentioning him by name, it would have been better if Dicks had not tried corny fake names like "the Physician" or "the Dentist". Legal amnesia is usually annoying, and it would have perhaps been better just to refer to him as some scientist, or not at all. [I assume we're likely to see a Kurt/Doctor meeting in the the upcoming New Adventure based on this story.]
As far as the human cast goes, Jan Chappell does a good job as Captain Lisa Deranne and Brian Croucher as the somewhat Doctorish Kurt. On the other hand, both Carole Ann Ford and Sophie Aldred have had better days, even if their characters here are unlikeable, giving them an additional burden.
The Sontarans makeup is new for this adventure, and while I think it's better than their last appearance in The Two Doctors, it's still a case that their original look from twenty years ago is still the best. We have more evidence that even though they breed by cloning, Sontarans do have significant differences. Commander Steg(Toby Aspin) is a fairly good Sontaran, but Lieutenant Vorn (Tom Finnis) is a little bit too much at times, and clearly he's suffering from being an nth generation copy; he's as dumb as an Ogron.
The direction by Kevin Davies was quite good most of the time, except for some rather oddly comical shots of the Steg when he first appears, looking like he might fall over at any time. The special effects were more than acceptable, and were much better than I expected. I laughed a little bit when sunglasses-as-VR-Goggles are used as a way to drive the space ship, but it's actually a rather nice and interesting idea, and a classic Doctor Who move of using low budgets as a reason to do inventive things.
I have been extremely disappointed with the audio quality of many of the Bill Baggs [The Stranger] videos, so I was pleased when this production (by a different group, of course) turned out to be quite a bit better on that front. I thought the soundtrack was marvelous, with the main theme providing an effective mood-setting work.
Overall, Shakedown may actually be better than some of the Doctor Who episodes the Sontarans originally appeared in, but I'd have to re-see Invasion of Time to be completely fair on that subject. It's a nice tribute to the two people that created the Sontarans, Robert Holmes and Kevin Lindsay, and worthwhile for Doctor Who fans to check out. It's a little bit of a steep price, running at about $30 if you order it through 1-800-TREKKER, and so I can't say that it's immediately worth springing the cash for, it's certainly worth watching if you can get a chance. After all, this is as close to a new television Doctor Who as we can get right now. You almost expect to see a Police Box appear. 8/10