Doctor Who:
The Sun Makers
By Robert Holmes
“You blood-sucking leech!
You won't stop until you own the entire galaxy, will you? Don't you think commercial imperialism is as
bad as military conquest?”
The Doctor and Leela land
on the planet, well it was when this story was produced, Pluto. There they stop Cordo from committing
suicide. He was all depressed that he
works two work cycles and was told 85 credits would be enough for his fathers
death but now it is 115 credits and he can’t work another work cycle to pay it
off.
It appears the workers of
Pluto are over taxed and over worked by the Collector and his people in the Company. They are all for making a profit and do not
care how they achieve it. The Doctor,
Leela and Cordo make their way to the under city where they meet up with those
who have dropped out of the society above. It appears that they want to start a
revolution and take the government down and to get rid of all the taxes. So its up to The Doctor and Leela to help
over throw the ruling party and get the people united in the cause.
Unfortunately every writer
comes up with a clunker. The Sun Makers
is that clunker for Robert Holmes. The
story is mainly based on Robert Holmes and his dispute with the British tax
system. Apparently he was having trouble
with his taxes or what Great Britain was doing with taxes that he came up with
this satire of a story to poke fun at it.
Unfortunately he wrote a very boring story that lacked in excitement.
There were some good
moments in the story most notably the dialog between The Doctor and the
Collector. In fact there was a lot of
good dialog in this story and that has always been a trademark for a Robert
Holmes penned story. Leela was a bit
savage more than usual. I don’t think
she was handled well in this story. You
can tell they don’t know what to do with her that much because when she started
out The Doctor was trying to teach her and make her better and now she is just
a savage idiot and she is more than that.
The Sun Makers isn’t the
best of Robert Holmes and fairly enough it isn’t the worst as the dubious honor
goes to The Space Pirates. But it is a story
that could have been a whole lot more and it also had a great guest appearance
by Michael Keating who played Villa on Blake’s 7. It is also a story that makes you think a
little bit about taxes and the way people are treated.
Grade C -
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