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.