DOCTOR WHO, SEASON 15 SERIAL 4:

THE SUN MAKERS

Doctor: Fourth (Tom Baker)

Companions: Leela, K9

May 2023

Now this is Doctor Who.

The Sun Makers comes in the middle of Graham Williams’ time as producer of Doctor Who. I don’t generally tend to talk too much about producers and eras and all that in this series of reviews—I’ll probably talk more about them once we get to the revival show. (Or, um. Once we get past episode one of the revival show. I’ve been busy, all right?) But I think it’s notable to talk about Hinchcliffe and Holmes one more time here, because this is another Robert Holmes story.

So, in case you missed the last couple of reviews, Philip Hinchcliffe was the producer of Doctor Who from 1975-77, and the show’s script editor was Robert Holmes. Together they’re basically hailed as a bastion of brilliant stories with a gothic, almost horror feel: stories like The Ark in Space and Genesis of the Daleks and Terror of the Zygons and yes, even The Talons of Weng-Chiang (proving, to me at least, that some corners of this fandom have their priorities deeply out of order). That last one was the last story that Hinchcliffe & Holmes served as that team for: with Horror of Fang Rock, producer credit shifted to Graham Williams and script editor to Anthony Read (well. a little later for that). But Robert Holmes wrote four or five more scripts for the series, and this is the first one we’re encountering that hasn’t been under his tenure as script editor. And. Well. Perhaps I’m beginning to understand why he’s so well-regarded.

The Sun Makers is a very good piece of television. It’s a classic Doctor Who sci-fi story, set on a future version of Pluto where humanity is forced to work constantly and pay exorbitant taxes on things such as breathing and dying, all for the benefit of a few rich individuals at the top of the food chain. It’s very visibly a critique of capitalism.

And it’s a damn good one! It feels distinctly topical and prescient in its portrayal of wealth being funneled from the workers, who work double and triple shifts to be able to pay for the deaths of their family members, to those who sit in luxury at the top, doing nothing all day but reveling in wealth. The way the characters are pitched against a company just called “The Company” goes a significant way towards this as an overall anticapitalist...to call it “allegory” feels like I’m underselling how pointed it is. By removing any specific title for the company, it makes it the company, every company, and it becomes that much easier to overlay this framework on real, actual companies, that do real, actual harm.

It’s also a fundamentally hopeful story about revolution against the unjust system, which is great. Even though, when we first meet our group of anti-authoritarians, they’re spiteful, disorganized, and ready to kill people with whom they frankly share interests (like ...Cordo?), we get to see them change throughout the serial thanks to the influence of the Doctor and Leela. It’s actually really satisfying to see Leela’s gradually growing coterie of followers as they run through the city halls (that look a lot like an office building).

An office building is weirdly apt, actually! It totally does look like an office building, but it fits: they are dreary, seemingly-infinite, bland, and deeply capitalist inventions. Colorless and focused entirely on profit.

This is also K9’s first proper story!! So how does he do?

Very well!

I love K9. He’s just a very compelling character to me. And, more than in The Invisible Enemy, that’s very much on display here. He’s effective (he shoots people! He’s a guard dog!), he has a strong personality (see: the scene where the Doctor tries to say something meaningful about his feelings towards him and K9 just chirps out “Please do not embarrass me, master”), and he’s wonderfully voice-acted by John Leeson. Leeson brings a vast amount of character to a role that is effectively just a square box that’s vaguely dog-shaped, with about 1 part that can move. The scenes at the beginning and end of him beating the Doctor at chess are also great. It’s testament, I think, to how effective a voice actor John Leeson is (and how effective Louise Jameson and Tom Baker are acting against him), that K9 is largely beloved. I mean, he’s sure as hell beloved to me! And I’m glad to see him shine in this way. He’s very much just as much a companion as Leela is in this episode.

Leela in this episode is also pretty great! She’s not quite as effective as she was in, say, Horror of Fang Rock, but that’s largely because of the way she’s imperiled and captured for a large chunk of episodes 3 and 4. She makes it out okay, and she continues to have a strong impact on the narrative (especially in the first parts), but it is a bit of a sour note in the way she kind of...doesn’t get to do anything for an episode.

I really like this episode a lot, even despite that. The overall narrative is executed in a really compelling way! There aren’t any bad characters! K9 is here!

It’s still not without its faults, though. Let’s talk about antisemitism and antisemitic caricatures.

So, the overall villain of this piece is the Collector, a character who is essentially at the very top of the food chain regarding The Company. By and large, I think the Collector is fine or even good as a character! He’s entirely profit-motivated, greedy, and petty - a strong characterization for your capitalist villain! ...He’s also portrayed as a short, bald man with bushy eyebrows and a large nose.

So, the deal with antisemitic caricature is that once you start noticing it, it is everywhere. Because antisemitism has been around for such a long time, it can happen even unconsciously while writing. Take goblins, which are something of a classic antisemitic caricature: they have large noses, big ears, are short and greedy. They’re also something of a staple of fantasy fiction, and sometimes are used in ways even going against that original spirit of antisemitism. I’m not suggesting that we remove all goblins from fiction. But when you write a greedy character, and your first impulse is to make them short, or big-nosed, or curly-haired (a feature goblins do not have but many other antisemitic caricatures do), you are playing into that antisemitic caricature, even unconsciously. Take Wario, a popular character from Nintendo: he is portrayed as a man obsessed with money, short, with dark curly hair, and a huge round nose. This is an antisemitic caricature, even though I doubt that Wario’s designers intentionally set out to make one! Once again, I’m not saying that you can’t like Wario, but this needs to be said, so that you can avoid the biases that culture may have drilled into you, especially if you aren’t in fact Jewish. And so, when I saw the character of the Collector for the first time, large nose pressed to his money, I cringed, because he is another example of this. I don’t think Robert Holmes set out to write an antisemitic stereotype. But we already know (from Talons of Weng-Chiang) that he is not immune to writing some really heinous shit. I also don’t think that this is as horrific as Talons: by and large, I really like this story, and I can see myself coming back to it later. But it needs to be said so that it can be noted and so we can not perpetuate these biases. Jews don’t rule the world: Jews are not the ones at the top of the capitalist food chain! This is a stereotype that feeds into the Protocols of the Elders of Zion bullshit, and it must be pointed out.

Anyway.

Top Leela quotes:

• "Then the people should rise up! And slaughter their oppressors!"
• "Let me get him, Doctor - I could cut his heart out!"
• (Her brilliant revolutionary speech in Part 2)
• "We should have killed him, he will raise the alarm."
• "You touch me again and I'll fillet you!"
• ("What is it? [K9]") "Well! He's a sort of...friend."

Overall thoughts:

I do really like The Sun Makers. It’s not perfect—Leela doesn’t get quite enough to do in the back half, and if anyone told me that the character of the Collector made them too uncomfortable to watch it, I would not blame them in the slightest. But it’s a striking capitalist critique in a fun sci-fi setting, and I am quite fond of its optimism and spirit. Is it quite as good as Horror of Fang Rock? ...Maybe! Probably! I might rate them the same, actually, in our first tie! This is up at the top of Season 15 so far, and it’s simultaneously a strong first story for K9. I like it a lot!

Next up is Underworld, which I’ve repeatedly heard is quite bad! I look forward to it!

Leela Kill Tally: 13 (+1) at least. This is a conservative estimate