Who Review: The Sun Makers
The TARDIS crew land on Pluto, and much to the Doctor’s surprise, it is inhabited. Not just inhabited, but developed, with tall buildings and multiple suns. However, the citizens of Pluto are not happy with their taxes, and are oppressed by the Company that rules them. It was this Company that made the suns that give Pluto its habitable environment, though the majority of the population is forced to stay inside and work, so few people have ever actually seen these suns. There is a small rebel group living underground that would like to overthrow their overlords, but consider the task too overwhelming. Captured by these rebels, the Doctor needs to convince them he and Leela can help lead their rebellion, but the suspicious-minded rebels will take some convincing that the Doctor isn’t a Company spy. Meanwhile, the Company tax gatherers have their eyes on the newcomers, and soon begin to see them as a threat to sustained profitability. The Doctor and Leela need to find a way to help the rebels, before they are liquidated…
SPOILER ALERT!! My comments may (and likely will) contain spoilers for those that haven’t seen this serial. If you want to stay spoiler-free, please watch the story before you continue reading!
“The Sun Makers” has to be Robert Holmes’s wittiest Doctor Who script. Holmes always managed to get humor into his stories, but this one is laced with jabs at the late 70s British tax system–some clear, and others more subtle. It seems Holmes had recently been audited by the tax man, and was feeling the sting of the assessment. Naturally, as a writer, this was the easiest vehicle for him to express his displeasure.
But the witty lines aren’t just at the expense of the Inland Revenue. At one point, the Doctor asks Leela if someone insulted him. Leela shoots back, “With a face like his, he wouldn’t dare!” At another, Leela instructs K-9 to shoot some guards. After successfully complying, K-9 asks Leela if his performance was satisfactory. “Yes!” says an exasperated Leela. “What? Do you want a biscuit?” One might object that, given Leela’s background, she wouldn’t know about dog biscuits. However, I can imagine this being something she had heard the Doctor say. Initially, the Doctor didn’t want K-9 to follow them out of the TARDIS. “Pluto,” he tells K-9, “is not a planet for…!” (Some Disney humor, there.)
A good Doctor Who serial can’t survive on gags and parody alone. There has to be a story, a plot, characters, maybe some world-building, and drama. Thankfully, Robert Holmes is more than capable of mixing all these elements, as is evident from his previous stories (e.g., “Spearhead from Space,” “The Time Warrior,” “The Ark in Space,” and “The Talons of Weng-Chiang”). There’s the pompous Gatherer, the oily Collector, and the hapless and hopeless workers. Then there are the underground rebels, ready to fight, but with a leader who doesn’t have it in him to rouse the necessary force, so they stagnate in the underground tunnels. The Doctor gives them purpose and a plan, making their impossible dream achievable. But with such a small force of fighters, the odds are definitely against him.
The rebellion the Doctor incites is, actually, quite brutal and violent. The rebels have no qualms about shooting their former oppressors. The climax of the insurgency is when they take hold of the Collector and throw him off the side of the building. The rebels watch him fall to his death, and cheer at his demise. When it’s all over, they see the Doctor off with waves and a cheerio, as if they’d all just been for a walk in the park. Quite surreal, and yet quite typical of 1970s Doctor Who.
At the end, the Gatherer turns out to have been a Usurian (word play on usury, no doubt), a creature whose natural form resembles seaweed. He had taken humanoid form to avoid suspicion, but the stress of his shrinking profit margin causes him to revert back to his original state. As the Gatherer shrinks and descends into his chair, the Doctor explains what’s happening to those gathered around him. He then plugs the hole in the Gatherer’s chair, securing him in place, and asks the crowd, “Would you take orders from a lump of seaweed?” I wonder how those people, trapped inside their buildings, who had never seen sunlight, would know what a lump of seaweed is, let alone whether they would be ruled by one!
All in all, this is good Who. It’s a lot of fun, with some great lines and an interesting story. It sounds like Robert Holmes had a lot of fun writing it. The props suffer from a very limited budget, but the performances are excellent. Maybe just shy of Must-See status, but not by much.
