Doctor Who and the Sunmakers

"They don't have a night on this planet."

Writer: Terrance Dicks

Format: Novel

Released: November 1982

Series: Target 60

Featuring: Fourth Doctor, Leela, K9

Synopsis

Everyone knows that Pluto is a barren airless rock. So naturally the Doctor is surprised when he discovers artificial suns, an ultra-modern industrial city and a group of colonists being worked – and taxed – to death in this inhospitable and supposedly undeveloped part of the universe...

With the help of his companion Leela and the faithful K9, the Doctor takes on the mysterious and powerful Company, ruthless exploiter of planets and their people.

Verdict

Doctor Who and the Sunmakers was an excellent novelisation of the televised serial! I really do think this is an underrated serial within the Fourth Doctor era and it's one that really does seem to go under the radar. It's really intriguing and imaginative and presents a fantastic society that I would love for the Doctor to return to at an earlier point in history. Having a colony on Pluto is a fun concept in of itself but when you couple that with the fact those responsible for creating it and the six suns that powered it were taxing the population to a ridiculous degree, well there was quite the issue presented for those living there. I love the idea of tax on a number of different aspects of life and the opening paragraphs of the book establishing that with Cordo and his inability to pay his father's death taxes was brilliant. He turned out to be a superb character and his being unable to meet his payments resulting in him being suicidal and wanting to jump from three floors was quite the way to introduce the Doctor and Leela to the society. I thought they were a fantastic pairing in this story and coupling them with K9 was tremendous. He was terrific in this book and I really liked how he and the Doctor were playing chess and check mate was calculated within six moves. The Doctor wasn't pleased with that! Circling back to that at the end of the novel was really fun and the touch of fortune from the TARDIS knocking over the chess board was the Fourth Doctor at his best. The Company and eventing it stood for made for a powerful organisational villain and reading how much of a grip they had on the population was excellent. Praise be to the Company. I liked how that was fed in throughout the book and it really showed how there was no loosening of their grip. Despite the numbers not being in their favour, they controlled every aspect of life on Pluto and could just raise taxes or implement compulsory unpaid overtime without any warning. The Collector as the head of that was superb and I loved the description of his appearance and the fact he adorns the book cover. He's heartless and so ingrained in the calculations of the production output and the levels of profitability that came from that. Gatherer Hade and Marn made for good villains at a lower level before the latter ended up joining the revolution and quite liking it which was great stuff. I thought Mandrel was a very good character and his being threatened by Leela was delightful. He headed the Others but was taken aback by the noble savage. Leela really seemed to be enjoying herself in the story which is always great but she did have a few close calls with death! There was a very strong level of excitement and action in the story and I really liked the pace of the revolution taking place. I also loved the passage where the Doctor knew that the easiest way to free Leela was to take down the oppressive regime that had her captured. That was magnificent. I liked the use of the PCM in the story to subjugate the population and Leela dismissing the fear that it invoked in her when K9 confirmed it was artificial was sublime. The ultimate fate of the Controller takes place in quick fashion with him seeing that there's a surplus and the system is going to crash, so he reverts to his natural form and runs away in a liquefied fashion which is pretty amusing! The Doctor literally putting a cork in the bottle to prevent him from escaping is quite silly but perfectly suited to this incarnation. Overall, an excellent novelisation!

Rating: 9/10