N.B. there might (or might not) be spoilers in this article!
The Sun Makers might well be the best indicator so far of where Doctor Who was headed under Graham Williams’s watch.
True, the violence is still present: there’s torture and public execution, an attempted suicide (for the second week in a row no less) and revolutionary murder on display, but they’re treated with a lot less seriousness and, although The Sun Makers is perhaps atypical in the amount of humour included, there’s a lot more fun to be had here, not least in the jokes at the taxman’s expense.
That said, for a short while at least, it does feel as though Doctor Who has dropped into an episode of Blake’s 7, especially when Michael Keating turns up as one of the rebels. (Not that Blake’s 7 was above having a bit of fun at times: it wasn’t all bleak corridors and grim factory roofs.)
“Perhaps everyone runs from the tax man.”
Leela, The Sun Makers:
Part One
But perhaps the most joyous moments of The Sun Makers are to be found in the performances of Richard Leech as Gatherer Hade and Henry Woolf as The Collector – each falling just the right side of over-the-top (so in other words – the top!). Indeed Gatherer Hade’s obsequity gives Robert Holmes the chance to show off the breadth of his lexicon once more. (Either that or Holmes’s Roget earned its place on the shelf that day.)
It’s hard to pick a favourite bit of unctuosity, but ‘your Supernal Eminence’, for one, had me reaching for the dictionary. It’s even more fitting that Hade’s shameless toadying has seemingly no effect on The Collector, whose myopic number-crunching and nasal whine put you in mind of the worst kind of bureaucratic bean-counter. (Or less charitably, thanks to Mike Myers and Vern Troyer, Mini-Me.)
“Don’t you think commercial imperialism is as bad as military conquest? “
The Doctor, The Sun Makers:
Part Four
Indeed, Gatherer Hade and the Collector are such good villains that they tend to overshadow the heroes: the somewhat unlikeable underground rebels and the almost-too-nice Cordo and Bisham. Their performances are certainly enough for you to forgive The Sun Makers its budgetary-induced shortcomings. Those guns look a bit flimsy and I’m not entirely convinced that the transport vehicles could get up enough speed to roll over the guards’ dead bodies.
But all in all, whilst The Sun Makers might look a bit cheap at times, its wit and humour more than outweigh its flaws.
To end, here’s a full list of Gatherer Hade’s terms of address for the Collector (let me know if I’ve missed any):
If nothing else, it makes you feel sorry for the Gatherer’s Python-esque demise.
"Again, the Doctor asks 'would you like a jelly baby?' when offering something different."
"So Leela, Bisham and Cordo were pretty mean when they shot two people and then ran over them with a cart."
"The Collector is also pretty mean. When he was watching Leela's execution, he said 'I get a real feeling of job satisfaction.'"
Son of UT Rating: 8/10
"In Part One, there was a man who was weird because he was going to jump into a 1000m hole." [That's a different way of looking at it, for sure! – UT]
"In Part Two, there was a cool leaf that tasted like cherries."
"In Part Four, it looked like Leela was in a steam train." [I'd forgotten about the death by sauna scene – UT']
