The terrible ‘truth’ that against which fans of the classic series felt the need to defend against was that classic Doctor Who was ‘cheap.’ The common defense against the calumny of the sets’ wobbling’ was that the towering imagination used in the concepts and storytelling more than made-up for what occupied the edges of a 405-line (and eventually 525-line) TV display.
But there were times when the paucity of funds did show on screen. 1977, with inflation raging in England, was such a time, and even on Doctor Who’s meager budgets, it meant that the fraying edge occasionally shown, either covered with a black backdrop or, often times even worse, CSO, with the tell-tale color fringing when, despite the best of intentions, it was the cost-effective solution to a story-based problem.
Season 15 had both of these solutions on full display. The Invisible Enemy and Underworld went the CSO route while The Sun Makers, as the Tour has recently revisited, went the spare route. Robert Holmes‘ witty script couldn’t cover for set dressing which could really become a distraction, should one choose to obsess over it.
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What made the re-watch of The Sun Makers all the more stark was the drop, we suspect a bit earlier than intended, for the first teaser trailer for nu-Who Series 15 (accept no substitutes) beginning April 12. There was so much money up there on the screen, which we know is often the point of the trailer, that 1977 looked positively archaic in contrast. Yet we, as the Tour, do occasionally wonder whether the good-faith attempt to keep Doctor Who moving forward and ‘up-to-standard’ in terms of what the modern viewer could and should expect to see in 2025 (and yes we acknowledge this conversation has been going on for 50 years or more), is in some way flying too close to the Sun (Makers) and in turn laying the seeds for its eventual demise at a time when uncertainty has crept back into the long-term future of the show.
Sometimes being small-ish and consisitent works. It certainly has here at the Tour.
