Filed under random coincidence: As of today, I have walked exactly 802.11 miles on the treadmill for this project. Does that number look familiar to you? It did to me, but maybe that's because I'm a technology geek. If you have ever gone out shopping for a wireless router, you may or may not have noticed they all specify their wireless type as something like "802.11g", which refers to IEEE 802.11 wireless standard. And this, folks, is exactly the kind of thing my stupid brain fixates on when I am not watching Doctor Who.

Speaking of which, I started a new story today. Let's talk about that.

The Sun Makers - Parts 1 & 2

(TARDIS Data Core recap)

It is safe to say that writer Robert Holmes was not a fan of Inland Revenue (for stupid Americans like me: that is the British equivalent of the Internal Revenue Service [or was until it was folded into the Customs and Excise department in 2005]). The Sun Makers amounts to one long treatise on how foul and immoral unchecked taxation is.

Set on Pluto in the distant future, the story opens with a man named Cordo anxiously hearing that his father has passed away and that Cordo needs to pay the death tax. This is rapidly followed by a scene in which Cordo goes to see the cartoonish Gatherer Hade, and discovers fee upon fee larded on top of the already ruinous tax bill. Unable to pay his bill, a suicidal Cordo heads to the top of the building in order to throw himself off in a fit of despair. The Doctor and Leela arrive in the TARDIS at just the right moment to prevent Cordo's self-destruction, which then sucks our heroes into the drama of this unjust society. All citizens are literally taxed to death while a fortunate few (the one-percenters?) reap the benefits. There is an unorganized resistance brewing in the undercity, but even they are a fairly timid lot. The corporation is pumping a chemical into the air, purportedly for anti contamination but in actuality to breed fear and subservience in the citizenry.

Although I find the characters of Gatherer Hade and the Collector (the big bad guy) a bit too cartoonish for my taste, the rest of the execution of the story is quite good. Roy Macready, who plays Cordo, does a particularly good job of gradually evolving from a timid and mousy nobody into a brave hero. It is still clear that this story was initially written before K-9 was added as a companion, but at least he is worked into the plot a bit better (as opposed to the previous story, where he was seen at the beginning and end, but sidelined for everything else).

In another bit of random synchronicity, there is a filming location in this story that I immediately recognized as the basis for the artwork in a series of books I used to run a website for. When the Doctor and Leela meet the bandits in the undercity, they pass through a rounded and girdered tunnel with a very distinctive appearance:

This was filmed in the Camden Town Deep Tube Shelters, built during the Second World War as air raid shelters. I had never seen or read about them before, but I instantly recognized them from this piece of artwork:

That is from the first book in the Deathands series, which ran for 125 books from 1986 - 2015 and which was my major online focus for nearly twenty years before the publisher went under. I got to know quite a few authors during that time, many of whom I still count as friends. It's weird how even two years later those books keep popping up in my life.

STATS:

Doctor(s): Fourth
Companion(s): Leela, K-9
Episode(s): The Sun Makers - Parts 1 & 2
Steps Walked: 7,511 today, 1,606,525 total
Distance Walked: 4.12 miles today, 802.11 miles total
Weight: 258.94 lbs (five day moving average), net change -48.36 lbs