Rate "The Sun Makers"

The TARDIS deposits the Doctor, Leela and K9 on Pluto in the far future. The Doctor is astonished to find the tiny planentoid at the edge of the solar system inhabited by humans and heated by a number of miniature suns. Unfortunately, the first mistake the Doctor made was to arrive on the roof a building, a taxable offense. It becomes clear, as the Doctor and Leela continue to rack up taxable offenses, that humans moved off Earth to do the bidding of The Company, a ruthless intergalactic conglomerate set to rob humanity of its ambition and drive. It therefore falls to the Doctor to confront The Company's administrator, The Collector. Poor Leela, however, for her taxable offenses, is sentenced to Death by Steaming.

So what did you think of this little economic allegory? Were the markets up for you when you saw it? Or did you find the whole experience enormously taxing?

I dearly love this little gem of a story. Nice allegory about taxation, truly loathsome alien in the form of The Collector, and a very clever resolution. In fact, the only part of this story that lets it down is the special effect where the Collector shrinks back into his normal form and goes down the plughole in his chair. Other than that, its hard to really find fault with this story. 4/5 from me.

I seem to have missed this. Rewatched this in the last year and it wasn't as good as I remembered. Bit too sledgehammery from Bob Holmes on this occasion for me so 3/5.

I believe I read somewhere that Mr. Holmes was having some tax troubles at the time, and poured that vexation into this story.

Was he having problems with native Americans when he wrote The Mysterious Planet?

The" co="Ordinator wrote:Was he having problems with native Americans when he wrote The Mysterious Planet?

None that I'm aware of. And may I say in the immortal words of the Fifth Doctor, "Sarcasm is not your strong point."

Perhaps Holmes had bats in his belfry while writing The Caves of Androzani.

Or perhaps he just had a significant case of urticaria.