The Sun Makers

Last updated

095 –The Sun Makers
Doctor Who serial
Cast
Others
Production
Directed by Pennant Roberts
Written by Robert Holmes
Script editorRobert Holmes and Anthony Read (both uncredited)
Produced by Graham Williams
Executive producer(s)None
Music by Dudley Simpson
Production code4W
Series Season 15
Running time4 episodes, 25 minutes each
First broadcast26 November – 17 December 1977
Chronology
← Preceded by
Image of the Fendahl 		Followed by →
Underworld
List of Doctor Who episodes (1963–1989)

The Sun Makers is the fourth serial of the 15th season of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who , which was first broadcast in four weekly parts on BBC1 from 26 November to 17 December 1977.

Contents

The serial is set on Pluto. In the serial, the alien time traveller the Fourth Doctor (Tom Baker) and his travelling companions Leela (Louise Jameson) and K9 (John Leeson) start a revolution among the humans against an alien corporation which has an economic hold over humanity.

Plot

The Fourth Doctor and Leela arrive on the planet Pluto just in time to prevent one of its citizens, Cordo, from committing suicide over his tax bill. The monopolistic energy company on Pluto is using its economic stranglehold to extract ever growing taxes and those who refuse to pay are forced to live in the dark tunnels of the Undercity. The Doctor, Leela and Cordo venture to the Undercity, where they encounter thieves and dropouts led by the brutal Mandrel. Mandrel tells the Doctor that he must use a stolen card to obtain money from a cashpoint or Leela will be killed. When the Doctor tries the stolen card, he trips a security system which floods the cashpoint chamber with noxious gas and he falls unconscious.

When the Doctor awakes, he is in a Correction Centre alongside another detainee, Bisham. The Doctor is released by Gatherer Hade, who wants his movements tracked, believing the Doctor will lead him to the heart of a conspiracy against the Company. Leela, Cordo and K9 attack the Correction Centre and are taken prisoner by the Collector's personal guard.

The Doctor, Cordo, Bisham, and K9 return to the Undercity and persuade the Undercity dwellers to revolt. Their first target is the main control area where the Company engineers PCM, a fear-inducing drug piped into the air supply which helps keep the population servile.

Leela is presented to the Collector, who orders her steamed to death. The Doctor saves Leela, but the microphones set up to relay her death screams instead broadcast 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. Gatherer Hade, investigating reports of citizens going onto the roof to look at the city's sun, 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 the Doctor sabotages the computer system. The Collector arrives and is challenged by the Doctor, who discovers that he is a Usurian, a seaweed-like sentient poisonous fungus, from the planet Usurius. The Doctor denounces his operation on Pluto, which had consumed Mars as well after the Earth had become non-viable. Before the Collector can implement a plan to exterminate the population of Pluto with poison gas, 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.

Production

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. 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. The pamphlet inside the 2011 DVD of this Serial revealed that the writers briefly considered killing off Leela in this story. Leela ultimately was allowed a non death exit, getting together with the Gallifreyan Andred in 1978's The Invasion of Time .

Outside references

Robert Holmes intended the serial to be a satire of his own experiences with the Inland Revenue services. However, much of the political content was toned down by order of producer Graham Williams, who feared it would be controversial among viewers. Many of the letters and numbers used to denote the labyrinth of corridors in the city, for example P45, allude to well-known tax and Governmental forms, and the abbreviation used to refer to the suppressant gas 'PCM' also stands for Per Calendar Month. The actor who played the Collector, Henry Woolf, had deep bushy eyebrows, very reminiscent of the then-Chancellor of the Exchequer, Denis Healey. However, Holmes presented the villains of the piece as working for a private corporation rather than a government.

The director had originally intended that the giant credit cards featured in the story should resemble Barclaycards. This was vetoed by producer Graham Williams who said that it would be free publicity for the bank. [1]

Near the end of Part Two, when prompted by Mandrel for a story, the Doctor begins, "Once upon a time, there were three sisters..." mirroring the same story he started telling Sarah Jane Smith near the end of Part Three of The Android Invasion (1975).

The Doctor refers to Galileo Galilei in passing, saying, "Galileo would have been impressed." When one of the rebels rhetorically asks the Doctor, "What have we got to lose?" he replies, "Only your claims!" This is a playful paraphrase of the famous slogan derived from the last lines of The Communist Manifesto .

K-9 refers to Pluto as "the ninth planet." It was regarded as such at the time the programme was written and broadcast; in 2006, Pluto lost that distinction when it was redefined as a dwarf planet.

In this episode, Leela and the Doctor are identified as "terrorists." In real life, Leela's character was partially based on Palestinian revolutionary Leila Khaled.[ citation needed ] [2]

Broadcast and reception

EpisodeTitleRun timeOriginal air dateUK viewers
(millions)  [3]
1"Part One"24:5926 November 1977 (1977-11-26)8.5
2"Part Two"24:573 December 1977 (1977-12-03)9.5
3"Part Three"24:5710 December 1977 (1977-12-10)8.9
4"Part Four"24:5717 December 1977 (1977-12-17)8.4

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. [4]

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. [5] The Report also found that audiences rated the production values and Jameson's performance as Leela highly, while K9 was popular with younger viewers. [5]

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." [6] In The Television Companion (1998), David J. Howe and Stephen James Walker praised the "high level of sophisticated humour" that satirized the tax system. [5] 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. [7] 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. [8] 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." [9]

Commercial releases

In print

Doctor Who and the Sunmakers
Author Terrance Dicks
Cover artist Andrew Skilleter
Series Doctor Who book:
Target novelisations
Release number
60
Publisher Target Books
Publication date
18 November 1982
ISBN 0-426-20059-4

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. [10] In March 2024, the story was released again in an upgraded format for Blu-ray, being included with the other stories from Season 15 in the Doctor Who - The Collection Box Set. [11]

Soundtrack

Doctor Who: The Sun Makers
Soundtrack album by
Dudley Simpson
Released1 May 2020 [12]
Genre Soundtrack
Label Silva Screen
Doctor Who soundtrack chronology
Doctor Who: Series 12
(2020)		Doctor Who: The Sun Makers
(2020)		 Doctor Who: The Visitation
(2020)

The February 2020 issue of Doctor Who Magazine announced that Dudley Simpson's score for this serial would be released on CD and vinyl. [13] Release date and track listing were announced on 1 May 2020. [12]

Track listing

All tracks are written by Dudley Simpson, except where noted

No.TitleLength
1."Doctor Who Opening Title Theme" (Ron Grainer arr. Delia Derbyshire at the BBC Radiophonic Workshop)0:46
2."Death and Taxes"0:28
3."Mahogany"0:51
4."One Thousand Metres"2:12
5."Six Suns"1:53
6."The Others"1:29
7."Subway 13"0:36
8."Subway 13 (Continued)"1:07
9."A Heart as Big as your Mouth"0:30
10."A Little Hop"0:23
11."Jelly Babies"0:31
12."Something in the Air"0:24
13."K9, Bite!"0:54
14."Humbug"1:25
15."The P45 Return Route"1:08
16."The P45 Return Route (Reprise)"0:55
17."Morton's Fork"1:09
18."I’ve Heard That One, Too"1:05
19."The Rebellion Begins"0:46
20."Static Loop"3:20
21."The Steaming"1:18
22."The Steaming Continued"1:10
23."Gentlemen, Good Luck"0:40
24."Nobody Works Today"2:11
25."The Gatherer Excised"0:43
26."Doctor Who Closing Title Theme (53" Version)" (Ron Grainer arr. Delia Derbyshire at the BBC Radiophonic Workshop)0:55

Related Research Articles

The Robots of Death is the fifth serial of the 14th season of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast in four weekly parts on BBC1 from 29 January to 19 February 1977.

Horror of Fang Rock is the first serial of the 15th season of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast in four weekly parts on BBC1 from 3 to 24 September 1977.

The Invasion of Time is the sixth and final serial of the 15th season of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast in six weekly parts on BBC1 from 4 February to 11 March 1978. It features the final appearance of Louise Jameson as the companion Leela.

K9 (<i>Doctor Who</i>) British sci-fi character, created 1977

K9, occasionally written K-9, is the name of several fictional robotic canines in the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who, first appearing in 1977. K9 has also been a central character in three of the series' television spin-offs: the one-off K-9 and Company (1981), The Sarah Jane Adventures (2007–2011) and K9 (2009–2010). Although not originally intended to be a recurring character in the series, K9 was kept in the show following his first appearance because he was expected to be popular with younger audiences. There have been at least four separate K9 units in the series, with the first two being companions of the Fourth Doctor. Voice actor John Leeson has provided the character's voice in most of his appearances, except during season 17 of Doctor Who, in which David Brierley temporarily did so. The character was created by Bob Baker and Dave Martin, to whom rights to the character still belong; consequently, Baker's spin-off series K9, which is not BBC-produced, could not directly reference events or characters from Doctor Who, though it attempted to be a part of that continuity.

Leela (<i>Doctor Who</i>) Fictional character in the TV series Doctor Who

Leela is a fictional character played by Louise Jameson in the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who. She was a companion of the Fourth Doctor and a regular in the programme from 1977 to 1978. Leela appeared in nine stories.

Planet of the Spiders is the fifth and final serial of the 11th season of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast in six weekly parts on BBC1 from 4 May to 8 June 1974. It was Jon Pertwee's final regular appearance as the Third Doctor, the last regular appearance of Mike Yates, and marks the first, uncredited appearance of Tom Baker as the Fourth Doctor. This serial introduces the term "regenerate" to explain the Doctor's transformation into another appearance. It also contains the first mention in the series of future companion Harry Sullivan.

The Ribos Operation is the first serial of the 16th season of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast in four weekly parts on BBC1 from 2 to 23 September 1978. This serial introduces Mary Tamm as the companion Romana.

The Stones of Blood is the third serial of the 16th season of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast in four weekly parts on BBC1 from 28 October to 18 November 1978. Part 4 was broadcast during the week of the show's fifteenth anniversary.

The Visitation is the fourth serial of the 19th season of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who. It was first broadcast in four twice-weekly parts on BBC1 from 15 to 23 February 1982.

The Face of Evil is the fourth serial of the 14th season of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast in four weekly parts on BBC1 from 1 to 22 January 1977. This serial marked the debut of Louise Jameson as companion Leela. It was also the first of three stories written for the series by Chris Boucher and the first of five directed by Pennant Roberts.

Image of the Fendahl is the third serial of the 15th season of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast in four weekly parts on BBC1 from 29 October to 19 November 1977.

The Invisible Enemy is the second serial of the 15th season of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast in four weekly parts on BBC1 from 1 to 22 October 1977. The serial introduced the robot dog K9, voiced by John Leeson. In the serial, an intelligent virus intends to spread across the universe after finding a suitable spawning location on the moon Titan.

Underworld is the fifth serial of the 15th season of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast in four weekly parts on BBC1 from 7–28 January 1978.

Destiny of the Daleks is the first serial of the 17th season of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast in four weekly parts on BBC1 from 1 September to 22 September 1979. The story introduces Lalla Ward as the newly regenerated Romana.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fourth Doctor</span> Fictional character from Doctor Who

The Fourth Doctor is an incarnation of the Doctor, the protagonist of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who. He is portrayed by Tom Baker.

Nightmare of Eden is the fourth serial of the 17th season of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast in four weekly parts on BBC1 from 24 November to 15 December 1979.

Kinda is the third serial of the 19th season of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast in four twice-weekly parts on BBC1 from 1 to 9 February 1982.

<i>Doctor Who</i> season 15 Season of television series

The fifteenth season of British science fiction television series Doctor Who began on 3 September 1977 with the episode Horror of Fang Rock, and ended with The Invasion of Time. The fourth series for the Fourth Doctor, new producer Graham Williams became producer for this series, while Robert Holmes left script editing for Anthony Read midway through.

In 2012, Big Finish Productions began producing audio dramas featuring Doctor Who's fourth Doctor, as portrayed by Tom Baker. Baker had previously declined to feature in any Big Finish releases, but after recording a trilogy of full cast audio boxsets for BBC Audiobooks, he decided to participate. This was also part of a spin off series of the Monthly range.

References

  1. ↑ "Pennant Roberts – Doctor Who Interview Archive". drwhointerviews.wordpress.com.
  2. ↑ Viner, Katharine (26 October 2001). "I made the ring from a bullet and the pin of a hand grenade". The Guardian . Retrieved 18 March 2007.
  3. ↑ "Ratings Guide". Doctor Who News. Retrieved 28 May 2017.
  4. ↑ doctorwhonews.net. "Doctor Who Guide: broadcasting for The Sun Makers".
  5. 1 2 3 Howe, David J & Walker, Stephen James (1998). Doctor Who: The Television Companion (1st ed.). London: BBC Books. ISBN   978-0-563-40588-7.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  6. ↑ Cornell, Paul; Day, Martin; Topping, Keith (1995). "The Sun Makers". The Discontinuity Guide . London: Virgin Books. ISBN   0-426-20442-5.
  7. ↑ Braxton, Mark (7 November 2010). "Doctor Who: The Sun Makers". Radio Times . Retrieved 10 November 2013.
  8. ↑ Jane, Ian (16 August 2011). "Doctor Who: The Sun Makers". DVD Talk . Retrieved 10 November 2013.
  9. ↑ Golder, Dave (29 July 2011). "Doctor Who: The Sun Makers – DVD Review". SFX . Retrieved 10 November 2013.
  10. ↑ "Sun Makers goes Solo". 28 January 2011. Retrieved 29 January 2011.
  11. ↑ Doctor Who – The Collection Season 15 Blu-Ray. Release date: 18 March 2024. BBC Video. ASIN: B0CRZ88MYK
  12. 1 2 "Soundtrack releases for The Sun Makers and The Visitation".
  13. ↑ "Gallifrey Guardian: Revisiting Vinyl". Doctor Who Magazine . No. 547. Tunbridge Wells, Kent: Panini UK Ltd. February 2020. p. 4.
Wikiquote-logo.svg
Wikiquote has quotations related to Fourth Doctor .

Target novelisation

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.