Doctor Who: The Sun Makers review (DVD) ★★★

If we had the option to give separate points for ideas and execution then the ideas in this mid-Baker-era Doctor Who would have a full five stars. Writer Holmes had been subject to a random VAT inspection so he dashed off this story about insane tax collectors, overly officious officials and a regime that simple killed people who weren’t able or willing to cough up money they haven’t got.

I’m a freelancer. I can relate to that. In the accompanying documentary, Jameson suggests another possible origin of the idea. Whichever is correct it’s a strong, fun premise that the series hadn’t seen before. Baker is at his ebullient best dealing with it and a way over the top villain in the exaggeratedly diminutive form of Henry Woolf. The rebels (of course there are rebels) are suitably seedy and there’s a glorious scene in which they’re trying to interrogate the Doctor, who’s clearly enjoying the whole thing massively.

Elsewhere, though, Baker actually appears to be having far too much fun. This was a characteristic that blighted his middle to late years. Incoming producer Graham Williams was ordered to tone down the violence and horror so understandably, on finding that he had a gregarious comedian at his disposal, he played up the comedy. It doesn’t actually match up to what’s going on every time; Baker could turn a good story into a brilliant one and a bad story he’d wreck by grinning too much. A younger audience, which wasn’t around to buy into Baker at the time, is likely to find this quite jarring.

There are other mis-matches. The crowd grabs Gatherer Hade and throws him off the top of a skyscraper to kill him, and everybody cheers – the Doctor doesn’t mind. Sorry, what? The Doctor happily leaves the planet (an oddly habitable Pluto) in the hands of the rebels who were cheerfully trying to kill him only shortly before. Nowadays the production team would be dissected – possibly in person – on the Internet for allowing that sort of inconsistent behavior through. It mattered less in the seventies but I do remember it all seeming a bit silly and glib by the end.
I suppose we have to discuss the look and feel of the thing as well. Dull buildings kind of suit the theme and so do the basic overalls worn by most of the characters but there are echoes of a previous, unaffordable design in some of the costumes and scenes – I’ll leave you to watch the “making of” documentary to find out what happened. The running down corridors scenes were never more dull, weapon and transport design never more pedestrian.

The Sun Makers is an imperfect story, then – a spark of brilliance which, in my view, faded as it came under the spotlight of an unbelievably poorly budgeted TV production and a cast playing to their strengths rather than to those of the script.