The Sun Makers

All you need is a wily accountant.

Certain Doctor Who stories are fairly well known for their source material or own back story. The Sun Makers is one of those stories as it became rather well known that Robert Holmes was embroiled with the British tax service at the time and took out his frustration in the form of this biting satire. In fact, some points were a bit too on the nose and Graham Williams had to step in and edit a few things to make sure the show didn't get in trouble as well.

Plot Summary

The story opens with a worker named Cordo checking in on his father's death. After receiving news that it went well, he is instructed to head to the Gatherer's office to pay the death taxes. He pays but Gatherer Hade informs him that the tax had been increased recently. The worker protests that he will be unable to pay and Gatherer Hade dismisses him with suggestions of working more to make up the difference.

On the TARDIS, the Doctor and K-9 are playing chess with Leela moving the pieces at K-9's direction. The time rotor stops and the Doctor dematerializes. He is confused as the instruments indicate they are on Pluto but it has an Earth-like environment. Heading out to investigate, the Doctor and Leela find themselves on a building in the middle of a major plant. Cordo arrives on the roof and prepares to jump off. Leela and the Doctor manage to get him away from the edge and find out what his troubles are.

Gatherer Hade is alerted to an illegal landing on the roof of one of the buildings and heads up with his assistant Marn to collect the fines. Cordo, seeing their approach, pulls the Doctor and Leela into the building while the Collector and Marn attempt to gain access to the TARDIS. Upon failing to do so, they plant a tracker on it.

With no prospects, Cordo decides to join the outlaws who live under the city. The Doctor and Leela accompany him. Entering the tunnels, they are captured by the outlaws and brought to the leader, Mandrel. Mandrel is convinced that the Doctor is a miner and he develops a plan to use the Doctor. He is to take a card to a distribution point and collect the money it pays out. If he does not, he will kill Leela.

Curious about the Doctor's lack of return, K-9 emerges from the TARDIS and scans for the Doctor. The tracker Gatherer Hade left on the TARDIS picks up K-9 and Gatherer Hade and Marn track him over the city cameras. K-9 meets up with the Doctor and Cordo emerging from the tunnels. K-9 offers to come with the Doctor but the Doctor shoos him off.

Gatherer Hade also believes that the Doctor is a miner based on his appearance and immediately assumes that an armed rebellion is being plotted. He leaves to consult with the Controller, the overall leader.

The Doctor and Cordo continue to the bank booth but when the Doctor attempts to withdraw money, the booth seals itself and fills with gas. Cordo runs to get help but observes a security detail come to the booth and take the now semi-conscious Doctor away to the correction facility.

At the office of the Controller, Gatherer Hade informs him of his belief that a rebellion is forming among the miners. He requests additional guards to put down the rebellion. The Controller is reluctant due to the offset in profit, but Gatherer Hade suggests offsetting the cost with additional taxes. He also points out how a full rebellion would be very damaging to the overall bottom line. The Controller agrees but also orders that control gas emissions be increased as additional compensation.

The Doctor wakes up in a straightjacket with another prisoner named Bisham who had been arrested for breaching top level security information and taking an antidote to the control gas, although he wasn't aware of the full effects, just that it made him feel clear-headed and more curious. The Doctor manages to get up and move around and booby traps the controls. He returns to his gurney when a guard enters. The guard hooks them up to control helmets and prepares to activate them. The Doctor warns him not to and the guard is electrocuted when he pulls the switch.

Back in the rebel lair, Mandrel's allotted time has run out and he orders his men to kill Leela. One comes at her but she flips him aside and draws her knife. No one else attacks and Mandrel steps in. She fends him off for a time when Cordo returns informing them that the Doctor was captured. Mandrel immediately forgets about Leela and rages at the woman who converted the stolen card. Leela asks for help to rescue the Doctor but all refuse except Cordo. He and Leela emerge from the lair to find K-9 waiting for the Doctor's return. Leela has K-9 come with them to rescue the Doctor.

The Doctor and Bisham observe technicians fixing the controls when Marn enters and releases the Doctor. She escorts him to see Gatherer Hade. Gatherer Hade gives the Doctor the money he tried to extract earlier and plants a tracker on him, all while pretending that this was a great mix up. The Doctor goes along with it and upon his release, heads back down to the under-city tunnels where he gives the money to Mandrel. He also learns that Leela and Cordo left to rescue him.

Leela, Cordo and K-9 break into the corrections facility. Leela notes that she feels fear and K-9 informs her that a gas has been released into the air to produce a fear response. They find Bisham with a bag of jelly babies who tells them that the Doctor was taken to Gatherer Hade's office. They leave together and Cordo suggests they use the subway tunnels to escape. Gatherer Hade however has used the Controller's men to set up check points at the various under-city entrances. The group runs into one and a patrol car spots them while trying to hide. K-9 moves to the side and stuns the guards as they try to arrest them. The group takes the car and smashes through the barrier but Leela is shot and falls out as they drive away. She is immediately arrested.

Mandrel believes that the Doctor has made a deal to sell them out to Gatherer Hade. The Doctor denies this but Mandrel doesn't believe him. He prepares to torture the Doctor, although the Doctor doesn't believe he has the stomach to do it. But before it can start, Cordo and Bisham enter and stop things. They inform the Doctor of what happened and Leela's arrest. The Doctor decides that to save her, they will formant a full rebellion.

Leela is examined by the Controller personally due to her lack of worker mark or scar indicating she removed it. She informs the Controller of her tribe and that she came with the Doctor in the TARDIS and that the Doctor is a Time Lord. With that information, the Controller dismisses her, ordering her execution for sometime later.

The Doctor, using information from Bisham and Mandrel, plans to destroy the gas containers that keep the populace under control. He has Cordo pull two cameras out of the wall which the Doctor then modifies and has Cordo place back. He then has Mandrel and Bisham come with him to destroy the gas distribution while the rest of the outlaws disperse through the city to inform the populace of what is going on.

The Controller informs Gatherer Hade that the man he released is not a rebel miner but instead a Time Lord. He orders Gatherer Hade to issue a reward to be paid by Hade personally for the capture of the Doctor, dead or alive. He also sets terms for Leela's execution, to take place at the start of the first shift.

The Doctor uses the modified cameras to fool the tracker as to his location. This distracts Gatherer Hade, who comes down personally to capture the Doctor so as to not pay out his own money. The group then breaks into the central boiler room. They convince the two workers to join their revolution and then shut down the gas distribution. As the air clears, pockets of resistance to the rules begin forming, fanned by the other outlaws spread throughout the city.

While waiting in the boiler room, the Doctor's group sees a broadcast of Leela's upcoming execution by steaming (roasting her alive). As the steam room is right above them, the Doctor has K-9 disable one of the pressure ducts. He then has Mandrel shut down the steam flow so he can crawl into the tube to rescue her. He does so but the pressure climbs high that Mandrel is forced to give the Doctor a warning over his communicator which is overheard by the Collector. The Collector orders the guards to put down the strikes that are being reported throughout the city. However, most of the guards are outnumbered and easily overpowered by the populace.

To fully push the rebellion, the Doctor and Leela leave the others in charge of the boiler room while they sneak into the palace to send a broadcast of revolt. With most of the guards spread through the city or guarding the Collector, they easily get in and send out the message. Hearing reports of workers out on the roof, Gatherer Hade goes to confront them. The populace grabs him and pitches him off the roof.

After sending the message, the Doctor and Leela open the Collector's safe. A secondary system knocks Leela unconscious. The Doctor attends to her and investigates the contents when the Collector arrives back into the control room. Talking with the Collector, the Doctor learns that he is also an alien whose race is exploiting the planets and humanity. Upon depleting Pluto, they will abandon humanity to their death.

The guard the Doctor had knocked out earlier comes to and seizes the Doctor while the Collector plans to release a deadly gas that will kill all humans in the city, leaving him alive. Leela awakes and throws her knife, wounding the guard and freeing the Doctor. They then pull the Collector away, preventing him from releasing the gas. Upon seeing economic changes the Doctor instituted, the Collector's humanoid appearance breaks down and he disappears into a hole in his chair. The unstability of the situation caused him to lose control and revert back to his normal form, now hidden in the well of his life support chair. The citizens, breaking in to the control room, seal him in.

Under the Doctor's encouragement, the people begin to make plans to return to Earth. The Doctor, Leela and K-9 depart in the TARDIS, although the Doctor introduces a jolt which overturns the chessboard, ruining the game that K-9 had announced he was going to win in six moves.

Analysis

This is a story that I'm pretty sure I would have like better if I were British. Granted, irritation with Byzantine tax codes and social revolution play pretty well across all cultures, but I get the strong feeling that there are nuances in this story that are lost on me as an American (not the first time I've felt that). One joke I know that is lost on me is the naming of corridors after various tax forms. I appreciate the joke, but it's full effect is lost on me.

As far as the story overall, I'd have to say it was fairly middling. The performances of the Doctor and Leela as well as some of the other characters was quite good. But others were not so good. Hade was enjoyable in his sycophantic style and I also liked the Controller, but I think the Controller would have been a bit better if he had not affected his voice quite so much. I think the actor's intent was to convey alien menace, but it lost something for me. I think a quieter and more deadpan approach would have seemed more sinister.

This story had a lot of location shooting mixed in with the normal set work and there was something odd about that. One part may have been the jump between film and tape but I've not had much of a problem with that before. I think the problem may have been that they did not alter the location shoots in any significant way. There was a bit of an otherworldliness in the sets with black backdrop and blinking lights of computers. The location shoots were standard clean corridors, a normal building roof and a utility basement that looked quite normal for the 1970's. For me, I think the jump created a disconnect that was hard to get around.

I'm also going to blame the format in which I watched, which interrupted the story every four minutes or so. It's hard to get invested in the plot when you get a break that often. That being said, there were points where an interruption would happen and I would be genuinely annoyed as I was getting invested in the story. So there was plenty in here to keep my attention and make me want more.

Being a Robert Holmes story, it was filled with plenty of witty dialogue that was very pleasant on the ears. A little bit is always lost because of the speed at which people seemed to be talking but there was more than enough left over to bring a good bit of amusement when it got going. I actually wish there had been more of that. Being a story about a revolution, there was a lot of moving to action rather than sit down word play as there might be in other stories. But the absence did make me appreciate the moments where the witty word play did come in that much more.

Overall, there is not much else to say about this story. It was fine and reasonably entertaining, but it did not jump up and grab me the way I was hoping it would based on what I had heard about it. Again, maybe that was somewhat due to the format in which I was watching but I couldn't help that. Still, it gives me enough pause and I enjoyed it well enough that I'd like to try and watch it again without all the interruptions and see if that makes a difference in my appreciation of it; and to say that you're willing to watch a story again is always a good sign that the positive elements outweigh the negative.

Overall personal score: 3 out of 5