Trivia / Doctor Who S15 E4 "The Sun Makers"

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• Author Phobia: Robert Holmes hated filing his taxes — as his role on Doctor Who combined writer (as a freelancer) and script editor (as a staffer), he was stuck in a complicated and Kafkaesque financial situation where he had to pay tax on his earnings twice. This annoyed him so much that he wrote a story about an Obstructive Bureaucrat civilization that taxes people to suicide before the Doctor inspires a populist revolt to murder them all and cheer about it.
• Creator's Favourite Episode: Louise Jameson named this as her favourite serial.
• Development Gag: Leela and the Doctor are identified as "terrorists." Leela's character was somewhat based on Palestinian revolutionary Leila Khaled.
• Edited for Syndication: When the story was aired on The ABC in Australia in 1979, a small edit was made by the Australian Film Censorship Board (now the Australian Classification Board) to remove the Mandrel’s "Stuff the Company!" remark. Strangely, this edit was not carried over, including in re-airings the same year.
• Inspiration for the Work: In addition to his gripe about his tax bill, Robert Holmes was inspired by a non-fiction book called The Iron Sun: Crossing The Universe Through Black Holes by Adrian Berry, which postulated the idea of man-made suns.
• Reality Subtext: Due to rising tension between Tom Baker and Louise Jameson on the set, the script was written to keep The Doctor and Leela separated for a good portion of the story.
• Science Marches On: K9 describes Pluto as being the ninth planet in the solar system, a position it lost in 2006 after its orbit was found to overlap with those of other dwarf planets.
• Throw It In!: The joke involving the Doctor accidentally hypnotising Leela was devised on the set by Tom Baker and Louise Jameson.
• What Could Have Been:
  • The scene where Leela is stunned when entering the large safe was supposed to be her death scene. However, the production team decided against killing Leela. This wasn’t just because Louise Jameson decided to stay on for the rest of the season, but also the thought that Tom Baker's Doctor shown grieving midway through a story would be inappropriate for both the story and his version of the character.
  • The Collector was originally conceived as a large, corpulent figure, which is why Hade calls him things like "Your Immensity".
  • Director Pennant Roberts had the giant credit cards to look like the cards of British bank Barclays. Graham Williams changed them because it would give free publicity to the bank.
  • Veet's lines originally went to a character named Rashif, who was dropped from the script.
  • Marn was originally a man, but was changed to avert The Smurfette Principle that Doctor Who had often been accused of.

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