Doctor Who: the Sun Makers

When Doctor Who is bad it can be interminable, but when all the ingredients work you can well understand why people are happily shelling out $30 for an episode of a program more than thirty years old. And The Sunmakers has great ingredients.

The Doctor and Leela land on Pluto which turns out to a habitable Megropolis run by “The Company” warmed by Nine Suns. They meet Cordo one of the drones on Pluto who has been taxed so much that he wants to jump off the roof; the Doctor decides something is wrong and decides to take a look around. In the process they meet Gather Hade, the tax man of this bureaucracy, a small rebellion of huddled masses yearning to be free and The Collector; the alien who runs the entire operation. There are the usual mistaken identities (everyone thinks the Doctor is an Ajak, he doesn’t know what that is but goes along with it anyway.) There is the Doctor fighting for an enslaved humanity which is of course a recurring theme in Doctor Who, lots of running up and down corridors and who doesn’t like a good public steaming?

Script by legendary Doctor Who writer Robert Holmes (think of any great original series episode and I’ll give you a donut if it wasn’t written by Robert Holmes). Tom Baker probably at the height of his powers and let me tell you that is something to behold. It’s far from perfect, as with almost any Doctor Who, the lack of budget is sometimes painfully obvious.  For example, “Pluto” looks like...well like the roof of an English building and most of the other sets aren’t much better. But it’s got it where it counts; great ideas, great acting and it’s actually funny.  Not necessarily laugh out loud funny but you certainly don’t find yourself wincing at the attempts at comedy that you find in other episodes that I could mention.

Video:  Looks pretty good considering its age, you can easily make out the fact that most of the sets are made out of photographic blow ups of AMD computer chips.

Audio: Mix is good but no one is going to get excited about stereo anymore.

Special Features:  Making of “Running from the Tax man”, commentary and a feature about Australian Doctor Who composer Duddley Simpson who wrote much of the music for Doctor Who from the early 70’s to the early 80’s fairly interesting but much more about the man than the music.