“The rest of you – I want you to scatter through the city and tell the people what’s happening. Remind them that they’re human beings and tell them that human beings always have to fight for their freedom!” The Doctor’s words in Part Three of Robert Holmes’ incomparable 1977 story The Sun Makers always bring tears to my eyes. Here is the Doctor as he should be: a fearless champion of human…

The latest installment in Obverse Books’ The Black Archive series is The Sun Makers, perfect for anyone who is strangled by high taxation! The Black Archive is a range of monographs about Doctor Who stories, and previous volumes have includes Rose, Ghost Light, Listen, Doctor Who and the Silurians, The Pandorica Opens/ The Big Bang, The Awakening, and The Haunting of Villa Diodati. The Sun…

The actor Henry Woolf, who played the Collector in the Fourth Doctor story The Sun Makers in 1977, has died at the age of 91. Woolf made for a memorable villain as the Collector, whose regime on Pluto pays workers a pittance and taxes them on everything under the sun. The story is perhaps best remembered for writer Robert Holmes’s satirical take on the UK’s Inland Revenue, but, whilst references…

Doctor Who has always meant well. It wants to see the best in people, it wants to make the best of people, and it personifies those two principles in a lead character who is ‘never cowardly, never cruel’ and always fights with the oppressed.

While many stories, perhaps even the majority, have not had a ‘message’, many of the best have addressed themes and issues; often skilfully fusing the…

The new issue of Doctor Who: The Complete History finds us in the middle of Leela’s time on our favourite show: rioting about paying tax, winking at Benedict Cumberbatch’s Mum, considering prawns for dinner, and singing something by The Lighthouse Family. If you hadn’t guessed by my particularly on-point clues, here are the tales Volume 27 of this 80-issue partwork covers: Horror of Fang Rock On…