The Sun Makers

Plot

The inhabitants of Pluto in the far future are taxed to desperation, including the functionary Cordo, who is so overwhelmed by the size of his tax bill that he decides to take his own life. He is interrupted by the arrival of the Doctor and Leela from the TARDIS, who save him and discover that false suns have been created around Pluto to provide the ability for some of mankind to live. However, the Company which owns the suns and the buildings on Pluto is using its economic stranglehold to extort ever growing taxes through extreme usury. The Doctor is concerned at this economic and social structure, where each Megropolis is ruled by a taxation Gatherer, and the entire operation on the planet reports to a malevolent Collector. Some citizens have rejected this social order and live in the dark tunnels of the Undercity. The Doctor, Leela and Cordo venture there and encounter the renegades of the undercity, vicious thieves and dropouts led by the brutal Mandrel. He tells the Doctor that he must use a stolen consum-card to obtain money from a cashpoint or Leela will be killed.

The Gatherer of Megropolis One, Hade, is alerted to the arrival of the TARDIS. He uses an electronic tracker to follow K9, who has departed the craft in search of his master. K9 finds the Doctor and Cordo at a cashpoint where the Gatherer sees them and suspects they must be arms dealers. He orders his private guard, the Inner Retinue, to deal with them. When the Doctor tries the stolen card, he is overpowered by noxious gas and falls unconscious.

When the Doctor awakes, he is in a Correction Centre alongside a similarly incarcerated man named Bisham. They are likely to be tortured, but the Doctor is concerned for Leela, whom Mandrel threatened to kill if the Doctor did not return. Leela has defended herself, though, and Cordo, who evaded capture, returns to the Undercity with news of the Doctor’s capture. This increases Leela’s standing with the thieves, and the threat over her life diminishes. The Doctor’s lot improves when he is released for questioning by Gatherer Hade, but Hade orders his movements tracked, believing the Doctor will lead him to the heart of a conspiracy against the Company. Not knowing about this change in fortunes, Leela, Cordo and K9 attack the Correction Centre to try to rescue the Doctor. He has left, but they free Bisham. As they depart the Centre, they find their travel routes blocked by Inner Retinue troopers.

Leela leads her friends in an attack on the guards, but she is injured and falls from a troop transporter they have commandeered. The Doctor has returned to the Undercity to find Mandrel, who refuses to believe he could have been simply released after such a crime. Cordo returns with Bisham and K9 and explains what has happened to Leela. He also uses a stolen blaster to force Mandrel to stop threatening the Doctor. He persuades the Undercity dwellers to revolt against the Company. Their first target is the main control area where the Company engineers PCM, a fear-inducing drug which helps keep the population servile and is being added to the air.

Leela is presented to the Collector, an odious humanoid in a life-support wheelchair. The Collector deduces that Hade’s conspiracy theory was unfounded and orders that Leela will be steamed to death. The Doctor saves Leela, but the microphones set up to relay her death screams instead relay the sound of Mandrel warning the Doctor of how little time he has left to rescue her. The Collector is incensed and even more troubled when the revolution starts spreading quickly. Gatherer Hade is thrown to his death from the top of his Megropolis, and his underling, Marn, joins the revolution.

Leela and the Doctor head for the Collector’s Palace, where he sabotages the computer system. The Collector arrives and is challenged by the Doctor, who discovers the being is a Usurian from the planet Usurius. He is a seaweedlike being like a sentient poisonous fungus. The Doctor denounces his operation on Pluto, which consumed Mars as well as the population were moved from Earth. Before the Collector can implement a plan to gas the population of Pluto, Cordo and the lead rebels help the Doctor defeat the remaining members of the Inner Retinue. The Collector checks his computer to find the Doctor’s input has resulted in projected bankruptcy, and the shock causes the Collector to revert to his natural state in a compartment at the base of his wheelchair. The Doctor seals him in, and he and Leela depart with K9, leaving Cordo, Mandrel and the others to contemplate recolonising the Earth.

Continuity

Part Two contains a rare false cliffhanger, where Cordo, Bisham, Leela and K9 spot an oncoming guard vehicle and Cordo says, "It's no good, they've seen us." The reprise at the beginning of Part Three omits Cordo's remark, and continues with Leela ordering K9 to hide, allowing it to easily disable the guards.

Leela refers to her tribe, the Sevateem, seen in The Face of Evil. The Company computer correctly guesses the etymology of the name. The Usurians are aware of the Time Lords and Gallifrey, having graded the former as Grade 3, of low potential commercial development, in their "latest market survey."

Cast notes

Michael Keating also appeared in the audio play The Twilight Kingdom as Major Koth and in Year of the Pig as Inspector Chardalot. See also List of guest appearances in Doctor Who. Louise Jameson stated in the DVD commentary of the story and on the commentary for The Talons of Weng-Chiang that The Sun Makers was her favourite serial.

Broadcast and reception

The story was repeated on BBC1 on consecutive Thursdays from 10 - 31 August 1978, achieving viewing figures of 3.2, 6.5, 6.5 and 7.1 million viewers respectively.

The BBC's Audience Research Report recorded a positive reaction from contemporary viewers, who were pleased the story and characters were more realistic, as well as finding the serial entertaining and well-developed. However, a "substantial minority" were less positive, finding it average science fiction and not strange enough. The Report also found that audiences rated the production values and Jameson's performance as Leela highly, while K9 was popular with younger viewers.

Paul Cornell, Martin Day, and Keith Topping wrote of the serial in The Discontinuity Guide (1995), "A clever script is balanced by a straight-forward plot, although the subtlety of some of the jokes will be lost on a younger audience." In The Television Companion (1998), David J. Howe and Stephen James Walker praised the "high level of sophisticated humour" that satirized the tax system. In 2010, Mark Braxton of Radio Times also gave The Sun Makers a positive review, calling it very successful in terms of the writer's objectives and described it as "playful, witty, ingenious". In addition, he praised the performances, design, and music, and only noted minor faults such as the improbability that the Plutonians had never questioned their society. DVD Talk's Ian Jane gave the serial four out of five stars, saying that it "may not rank up there with the best that the series has to offer but it sure is a fun diversion". While he noted the high production values, he felt that the serial's strength was its script and performances. Dave Golder of SFX was less positive, giving The Sun Makers two and a half out of five stars. He wrote, "The satire is rather blunt, and the gags don't make up for a story that's even more about running down corridors than normal. And these ones are really boring corridors (the concept of set-dressing clearly having eluded the designer). Some good performances and an on-form Tom Baker keep it watchable."

In print

A novelisation of this serial, written by Terrance Dicks, was published by Target Books in November 1982. Dicks chose to tone down the scene in which revolutionaries cheer as they hurl one of their former oppressors from a roof, reducing the apparent horror so that the rebels concerned feel that their actions have gone "a bit too far".

Home media

This story was released on VHS in July 2001. The Sun Makers was released on region 2 DVD on 1 August 2011.