Monday, 23 October 2023

What's Wrong With... The Sun Makers


The Sun Makers is set on Pluto. Thus, it's a victim of its times as Robert Holmes wasn't to know that in 2006 Pluto would be downgraded to a mere minor- or dwarf-planet, one of many similarly sized bodies in the Kuiper Belt.
It would be an odd choice for a base at the best of times, being so far from the Sun, but Holmes was more interested in the name than in the astronomical body itself - a plutocracy being a society ruled by the wealthy.
What exactly is the point of running six artificial suns? The population live in totally enclosed environments, so why go to all the bother and expense of producing something no-one needs? There's mention of the elite being able to enjoy the sun, but the only rooftop we see looks like a multi-story car park in Bristol.

In the opening scene we see Cordo speaking to one of the Gatherer's underlings. She's about 10 feet off the ground, which is surely a bit of a design flaw. If the point is that she doesn't have to interact with the populace anyway, why even have a window in the first place. A monitor screen or intercom (or call centre) would surely have sufficed.
The bank card which the Doctor attempts to use is so obviously based on a Barclaycard credit card (at the time there was only that or American Express). Even sticking pieces of coloured tape on it fails to disguise this.
Much is made of how rare wood is on Pluto, so it might not have been a wise design choice to have the guns look like they are made of wood. The barrier put up to block the corridor also looks like it's made up of big lumps of wood.

For the representative of a business for which profit is king, the Collector isn't much of an economist. The Doctor overcomes him by introducing a growth tax which wrecks the economy.
However, it's the Company which collects all the taxes, so the money raised would have gone to it anyway.
The other thing about the ending of the story is that we've only seen events in one of six Megropoli. The Collector may be unique to Pluto, the sole representative of the Company, but there are still five other Gatherers with their guards and repressive regimes to deal with before the human race is free.

Is it one of the Company's ways of making money that they employ only one Gatherer for the whole of Megropolis One? There must be millions of people living here, and yet Gatherer Hade deals personally with the trivial affairs of a lowly D-Grade worker like Cordo.
Not only that, but he personally goes up to the roof to challenge the workers who have gathered there. We've seen many guards join the revolution, but surely he could have found a couple still loyal to the regime to do this basic police work.
He's a humorous character, despite being one of the villains, so it leaves a bad taste in the mouth when he is killed in such a nasty fashion - thrown from the roof of a building hundreds of floors high.
(Terrance Dicks spotted this and, in his novelisation of the story, had his killers feel guilty afterwards).

Whilst Hade is a funny character, Mandrel is presented as a vicious bully throughout the first couple of episodes - yet he gets off Scot-free. Is the Doctor simply swapping one monster of a leader for another?
Whoever emerges as the next leader of the human race, their government will need to be paid for. How are they going to go about raising income when everyone has had such a bad experience of taxation?

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