Synopsis: The planet Pluto has been colonised and made habitable by the addition of artificial suns. But life for the citizens is hard with astronomically high taxes that keep everyone in constant debt to the Company. When the Doctor, Leela and K9 arrive in the city Megropolis One, they quickly fall in with a band of inept rebels. Soon, they come up against the Gatherer, who controls the city’s finances, and the head of the Company, the slimy Collector.

Chapter Titles

• 1. The Cost of the Golden Death
• 2. The Fugitive
• 3. The Others
• 4. The Collector
• 5. The Reprieve
• 6. The Trap
• 7. The Rebels
• 8. The Prisoner
• 9. The Steaming
• 10. Revolt
• 11. The Confrontation
• 12. Liquidation

Background: Terrance Dicks adapts scripts for Robert Holmes’ 1977 serial The Sun Makers (slight change of title there), completing the run of Season 15 stories for Target. This is also Leela’s final adventure to be novelised and they’ve all been written by Terrance!

Notes: Leela is unsettled when she discovers three people awaiting erasure on their ‘death day’; Condo tells her it’s called ‘business economy’ and Leela says ‘I call it murder’. When Mandrel threatens him with a poker, the Doctor responds: 

‘You’re really not very good at this sort of thing, are you Mandrel? I don’t think you’re really nasty enough at heart. I can see it in the eyes – no conviction.’

Although they’re named in the TV episodes, Terrance makes sure we pick up on the names of two technicians – ‘Synge and Hakit’ – surely a reference to the popular drag performers ‘Hinge and Bracket’, who were emerging radio stars around the time of the TV broadcasts.  On screen, Hade is thrown from the top of a building with a cheer; here, it’s with shame and disgust:

There was a general feeling things had got out of hand, gone a bit too far. But there wasn’t very much that they could do about it now. From the top of a thousand-metre building, it’s a very long way down.

Cover: The last novelisation to have ‘and the’ in the title. Andrew Skilleter’s cover art is an effective portrait of the Collector. It’s very subtle, but the spotlights behind him represent Pluto’s six suns.

Final Analysis: There’s almost a reworking of The Dalek Invasion of Earth with the opening line: ‘In a drab and featureless corridor, a drab and featureless man stood waiting before a shuttered hatch.’ It’s otherwise a predictably solid adaptation from Terrance, which is becoming a rare thing around this time, though as the above quote about Gatherer Hade’s demise shows, he still has room to add a tinge of dark humour that’s very much in the spirit of his friend Robert Holmes’ original scripts.