{"id":156,"date":"2013-09-08T17:19:24","date_gmt":"2013-09-08T22:19:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/keithgoodnight.com\/blog\/?p=156"},"modified":"2013-09-08T17:19:24","modified_gmt":"2013-09-08T22:19:24","slug":"dr-who-the-sunmakers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/keithgoodnight.com\/blog\/2013\/09\/08\/dr-who-the-sunmakers\/","title":{"rendered":"Dr Who: The Sunmakers"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"review-3617-classic-doctor-who-the-sun-makers-L-0ifvNB\"<\/a>The only good thing about Robert Holmes’ departure as script editor of Dr Who is that it freed him up to write more episodes himself. Here he pens more proof that he was born to create Dr Who stories\u2014 and ironically, in part writes it only because he thought it was the last time he\u2019d be able to contribute to the series (fortunately, he was mistaken).<\/p>\n

The Sunmakers<\/i> is a comedy episode, which is surprising if you only see a plot summary. It\u2019s set in a very bleak, dystopian world run by an oppressive tyranny opposed by violent rebels who aren\u2019t much more than criminals posing as freedom fighters (their big plan when the Doctor arrives is to rob an ATM). The basic plot (and the world in which it moves) could easily be the subject of a truly grim, dark story. But Robert Holmes, a fan of dark humor, makes it comical at every turn. The characters are over-the-top caricatures, and while that would be a flaw in a serious drama it\u2019s perfect for the comedy Holmes is going for. The lead government official, Gatherer Hade, is a self-important but dim-witted buffoon. The actual dictator, known only as \u201cthe Collector,\u201d is a hunched-over miser with a whiny voice who barely looks up from his ledgers to issue orders for public executions (though he really enjoys those: \u201cThis is the moment when I get a real sense of job satisfaction,\u201d he says as Leela is wheeled off to certain death in the episode 3 cliffhanger).<\/p>\n

The story is also, manifestly, a political satire\u2014 and yet the real genius of it is that you can never tell which side it\u2019s on. By that, I don\u2019t mean that it\u2019s muddled and fails to make its point clear. Far from it. Nor is it that it \u201ctakes shots at both sides,\u201d although that\u2019s closer to the truth. What\u2019s really going on is that Holmes, ever the master of science fiction world-building, succeeds in combining the designated villains of both the left and the right into a single political villain. The evil regime is a for-profit Company that employs the tools of a bureaucratic state to collect its profits in the form of taxes. Or it\u2019s a socialist\/totalitarian state that cloaks its political oppression in the jargon of profits and balance sheets. Take your pick: it\u2019s both, or it\u2019s neither. Meanwhile the rebels sometimes talk in Marxist jargon and sometimes like right-wing survivalists. Then at the end it turns out the whole situation is being run by a sort of galactic loan-shark who looks like \u201cseaweed with eyes\u201d and escapes by flushing himself down a toilet (okay, actually a drain in the motorized wheelchair that maintained his human form, but there\u2019s no mistaking what we\u2019re supposed to think about it).<\/p>\n

The key to the satire is to know what motivated Holmes\u2019 writing it: he had recently gone through a tax audit (a severe ordeal for a freelance writer with no head for accounting), and he thought he\u2019d been screwed over by the BBC (in the whole politically-motivated mess that ended the Hinchcliffe\/Holmes era of Dr Who). Believing he\u2019d never have another chance to write for the BBC, he combined both the tax-collector and the BBC into one evil empire and fired the Doctor at them with both barrels.<\/p>\n

At the end of the day, whatever you choose to conclude about the political satire of the story, you have to love an episode in which the Doctor defeats the bad guy by introducing a two percent, index-linked growth tax which wrecks the economy.<\/p>\n

Details<\/h4>\n