Retro TV Review: The Mutants

The Doctor is given a package from the Time Lords to deliver to Solos in the 30th centaury. There, the Marshal attempts to hold onto power while the natives demand their freedom. However, what is the cause of the mutations that have started to happen to the native populations, and just how far will the Marshall go to keep control of the planet? All will be revealed in ‘The Mutants’.

So as I got hold of this story, it came to my attention that we have something of a oddity for me. I have been a fan for many years, yet there are some stories out there that I *shock horror* haven’t seen or have only ever seen once (I do not count the missing episodes here, which in fact I have listened to all of them). Sadly in the days before the Internet and DVD, getting Doctor Who on video was a costly past time, and not all of the stories were out (the simple fact is that it took them over 25 years to get all of the surviving stories out on video) or if they were, some were very hard to get hold of. So in short, I have never seen this story in my life. So I can look at this story with a completely fresh view, unlike some stories that I have over and over again.

So what’s the story then? The Doctor is given some donkey work to do for the Time Lords, and that’s to deliver the orb they sent him to the planet Solos. There the native population demands freedom from the Earth Empire, but the Marshall has other plans like all rounded mad men. The Doctor manages to find who the orb was for, Ky, and with the help of Sondergaard, end up discovering that the planet is about to enter its summer phase that will last 500 years, and the mutants that have cropped up on the planet are the Solonians who have begun to change into a final evolutionary phase that will enable them to survive. The Marshal however plans to terraform the planet so that humans can live there, regardless of the cost to the native species there. With the Earth Investigator sent to assess the situation, a final plan of wiping the Mutts out is stopped when Ky begins to mutate to the final stage of evolution, an angel like creature who will survive the change in the season. He kills the Marshal, and with the help of Sondergaard and Cotton, prepare the rest of the population of Solos. The Doctor departs with Jo, their job for the Time Lords now complete

A complex story in it’s ideas of dictatorial overlords, racism and evolutionary ideas, The Mutants has a lot in it to take in. But to the actual review of the story. The trouble I find with later Pertwee is the creeping in of stories with moral overtones, and The Mutants is no different. When it is done well, such as Frontier In Space and The Green Death, it does not detract from the story but adds a level to it that I would assume at the time would of felt very poignant to the person watching and the general out look of the 70’s, and even in today’s view too. The Mutants sadly suffers from a premise of just having people with Napoleon complexes ruling their own little part of the universe, with a borderline racist overtone in an apartheid system. The Mutants comes at a time (1972) where most of the African nations had started to gain independence from their respective colonial masters, and as such is trying to portray in its little way the idea of this. Sadly it doesn’t quite work

While the sets and acting are ok (but the actual Mutt costumes are a little bit unbelievable in their appearance), the tones here detract from the story too much. When satire is done on subjects like inequality, racism and apartheid, it has to be done in a way as to make the person think. A great example of this is the Goodies Episode ‘South Africa’, it is done in a such a way by showing the person how stupid the idea of Apartheid really is but substituting the concept of inequality of Africans with that of people who are short, and really shows just how stupid the idea of apartheid is (The fact that it is renamed ‘Apartheight‘ goes to show as much. Where as I don’t expect Doctor Who to do the same (unless Douglas Adams writes it), the serious nature here is missed totally in the end, so much so that Salman Rushdie missed the whole anti-racist message in the show and mentioned it in his book ‘The Satanic Verses’ as having alleged racist attitudes.

To come away from the satirical nature of the story however, The Mutants suffers terribly from being overly padded, four episodes could of be sufficient for this story instead of the six it was given (the same can be said for ‘The Time Monster’ afterwards). The trouble with Doctor Who as it went on in the Pertwee era was it suffered from too many six part stories with only enough material for four, with a few notable exceptions (Frontier In Space & The Green Death) it is easy to see why that when Tom Baker took over the role and Philip Hinchcliffe as Producer that the six part story was left for the closing story of the series, or used on rare occasions (The last time being The Two Doctors, which although is a three parter, is the length of a six parter.

Although the story has its good moments, and the basic moral idea behind it is a good one, The Mutants suffers from too many issues that let the story down. From a season that had a great Dalek opener (I love that story) in Day Of The Daleks, a story on the issue with the EU entrance in Curse of Peladon, and the iconic story that is The Sea Devils, The Mutants is a letdown to three strong stories in a season where the cast and crew should have been in there full swing. In light of all of this, and reflecting on other stories on the season, The Mutants gets a 6 out of 10.

The Mutants was first broadcast between April 8 and May 13 1972 as the 4th serial of Doctor Who’s 9th Season. It was released on VHS in February of 2003 and on DVD in January 2011, available via the Amazon link below. A Target novelisation by Terrance Dicks was released in September of 1977.