Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...
Day 487: The Sunmakers, Episode One
Dear diary,
Every so often I seem to tell you how this is ‘another one of those stories’ that I know very little about, and every time I’m convinced that it’s the last one I don’t know very much about. I genuinely do find myself surprised when another one comes up, especially on a day like today - when I’m expecting to pop in the DVD of Underworld only to remember that this tale exists before I reach that one! When it comes to The Sunmakers, I know it’s set on Pluto… I know that it’s a story about a population crippled under the weight of enormous taxation… I presume there’s something about people making suns in there? Basically - oh look! it’s ‘another one of those stories’.
It’s also one of those episodes that Emma has joined me for. She’s dipped in and out occasionally and seems to enjoy touching in on the Doctor’s adventures from time to time. In todays episode, she’s very taken with Leela, not keen on K9 by any stretch of the imagination, and somewhat indifferent to the rest of the story (although she likes the Gatherer’s hat).
For me… well… I’m not really sure yet. The Sunmakers is odd in that - I believe - there’s no monsters or anything like that in there. This isn’t a case of ‘mysterious deaths with a green slug arriving in the last third’, and as such I’m sort of left wondering when things are really going to get moving. Much of today’s episode is incredibly ‘talky’, and spent setting up the world into which we’ve found ourselves. It’s really the locations of the story which work the best for me - being so striking and different as to really make an impact. They’re cold, and grey, and utilitarian. They’re bleak, and large, and the kind of shapes (and sizes) you just don’t find in a BBC tv studio.
Sadly, they’re being shot in a particularly bland way. These settings call for the strange direction of George Spenton-Foster, or even the keen filmic eye of Douglas Camfield. That never-ending round corridor, with the concrete pattern built into the walls could look so dynamic and interesting, but it comes across as simply flat. Maybe that’s the point - this is supposed to be a crippled and cloudless society after all - but it feels like a real missed opportunity.
I’m also longing for the kind of model shots which were used to such good effect during The Robots of Death - cleverly masking in a shot with a model to give the scene some scale. When we watch the Doctor and Leela look out from the roof of a building ‘thousands’ of meters high, You want an impression of that size. Instead - again - it’s just flat. Even some shots slightly from below, looking up to them, would help to sell the idea that bit better for me.
Mostly, though, I think I’m interested to see how they use K9 in the plot. I rather liked him during The Invisible Enemy (and despite the Doctor’s assertion at the end of yesterday’s episode, I like that here he’s very much Leela’s pet again), but this is the first chance we’ve really got to see him being integral to a story away from his origins. I love that he’s setting out on his own to explore (even if he is followed by CCTV and leads thee ‘baddies’ to the Doctor), and I can’t wait to see where he goes from here…
