Today is April 15th, Tax Day here in the United States.
Be sure to file your taxes and be prepared to pay up because goddam Donald motherfucking Trump's goddam golf trips to motherfucking Mar-O-Lago are not going pay for their goddam motherfucking selves.
Am I angry about that? Yes, I am!
Back in 1977, also pissed off about taxes was writer Robert Holmes. He turned his agression with the British tax system into a scathing satire for Doctor Who called "The Sun Makers".
Which brings us to this edition of Doctor Who Is CLASSIC!
Producer Graham Williams did direct Holmes to dial back some of the nastier bits. And Holmes made the villainous entity a private corporation instead of a governmental agency.
Still, a whopping smack on the backside of both taxation AND rampant out of control capitalism.
Gee, I'm glad Doctor Who back in the 1970's wasn't all WOKE and shit like it has been lately. (Wink!)
So what gives with this story?
It all begins when the Doctor, Leela & K9 arrive on the planet Pluto and intervene to stop this guy named Cordo from killing himself.
The cause of his suicidal distress? His tax bill.
The Company rules all, controls all. All praise the Company!
How bad is the tax situation? Perhaps this sequence will give an idea about that.
WOMAN: Citizen Cordo, District Four?
CORDO: Yes?
WOMAN: Congratulations, Citizen. Your father ceased at one ten.
CORDO: All was well?
WOMAN: A fine death. Body weight was eighty four kilos at termination.
CORDO: I'm gratified.
WOMAN: Gatherer Hade is waiting for the death taxes.
CORDO: Yes, I have them here.
WOMAN: Pay them at the Gatherer's office.
Yep, there's a tax to be paid when someone fucking dies!
The Company barely pays it's workers a subsistence wage AND then taxes those meager earnings in ever increasing amounts.
There's an entire Undercity filled with desperate and dejected souls, worked into subservience, taxed into submission.
The Doctor is captured by the Company and brought to the Corrections Centre. Gatherer Hade, an obsequeious middle management toady, is intriqued by this Doctor fellow who is so unlike the other physically and spiritually beaten down inhabitants of the Undercity.
Leela, Cordo and K9 lead an attack on the Centre to rescue the Doctor but Hade has released the Doctor to lead him to his fellow conspirators working against the Company.
Well, he's traded one prisoner for another as Leela is captured. Hade presents Leela to the Collector, a short hairless ill-tempered troll who sits at the center of the Company's web, tallying ever single penny of profit, every single penny of loss.
Meanwhile, the Doctor attempts to rally the dispirited citizens to rise up in rebellion against the Company. He knows an autocratic dictatorship when he sees one and this one needs to be brought down.
And he needs to save Leela.
The Doctor discovers the Company decimated Earth, then Mars, ravaging planet after planet until setting up shop on the planet Pluto.
(Fuck Neil Degrasse Tyson! I was born in a solar system with 9 planets! And damn it, I say I still live in one and Pluto is a planet!)
The Collector orders Leela to be publicly executed in the steamer. It's a creepy tube where victims are, well, steamed to death. Like broccoli.
Leela is going to be broccolied to death.
The Collector allows for a temporary halt in production so the workers (without pay) can attend the execution. Which they can witness for a small fee. And attendance is mandatory.
Despite such mangaminous generosity from the Collector, the revolution is on!
Gatherer Hade is thrown from the roof to his death!
(Man, Robert Holmes was really pissed off about that tax bill.)
Having rescued Leela from her death sauna, the Doctor confronts the Collector who the Doctor recognizes as a seaweed-like sentient poisonous fungus from the planet Usurius. As the rebellion proceeds, the Collector checks his computer and finds the Company is heading for bankruptcy.
The shock of this revelation is so great, it causes the Collector to revert to his natural form, a puddle of goo.
The Doctor, Leela & K9 depart, leaving Cordo and his fellow citizens free to live their own lives, perhaps going back to Earth and rebuilding their home world.
"The Sun Makers" is a pretty solid sci-fi story welded to a wicked sharp satire on bureaucracy, taxation, capitalism and autocracy. Robert Holmes has a lot of targets for his anger and he hits them all hard.
Gotta call out Richard Leech as Gatherer Hade whose over the top declarations of fealty to the Collector and the Company are a source of outlandish comedy.
- Ah, what a great truth, your Sublimity. A pearl of wisdom.
- Indubitably, your Elevation
- Your Amplification
- Your Voluminousness
- Praise the Company for ever and ever.
- Your Globosity
- Your Magnificence
- Your Supernal Eminence
Gatherer Hade was a one man Trump cabinet meeting.
There's a lot going on here that the makes "The Sun Makers" a worthy look back at classic Doctor Who.
Now, go pay your taxes! Donald Trump needs more bombs.
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