The Usurians were an amphibious race that enslaved other planets through economic means rather than through military conquests. The Usurians enslaved the human race and moved them all to the planet Pluto, where they oppressed them through high levels of taxation. The Fourth Doctor and Leela arrived on Pluto and they defeated the Usurian Collector in one of the most allegorical Doctor Who stories ever made.
The Sun Makers
★★★★☆
TX: 26/11/1977 – 17/12/1977
Written by Robert Holmes Directed by Pennant Roberts
The Fourth Doctor and Leela arrive on the planet Pluto in the far future. The entire human race has been moved to the planet Pluto and enslaved through economic imperialism by the galactic tax collectors, the Usurians. The Usurians enslave planets through economic policies such as very high taxation rather than through military conquests. The Doctor and Leela meet an underground group of rebels who plan to overthrow the Gatherer and the Collector. Leela is captured and narrowly avoids being steamed to death. The Doctor escapes capture and helps to start a revolution. During this rebellion, the workers throw the Gatherer off a very high roof. The Doctor confronts the Collector (which has bushy eyebrows to deliberately make him resemble Denis Healey, who was the Chancellor of the Exchequer at the time of the story’s broadcast – he wanted to tax the UK public “until the pips squeaked!”). The Collector explains the Usurians’ evil plan to enslave humanity through high taxes and economic hardship. The Collector retreats back into his natural form once it becomes clear that the revolution has won and that the Company is now experiencing negative growth. The Doctor and Leela depart in the TARDIS, where the Doctor tricks K-9 so that he doesn’t win the game of chess that they were playing. Writer Robert Holmes had received an enormous tax bill prior to writing this Doctor Who adventure, which formed its inspiration. My brother Jonny studied industrial economics at Nottingham University and he is now a qualified accountant. Pluto has a very entrenched class system thanks to the Usurians. In the past, I have voted Labour. I am a member of the Cardiff Labour Party, but I have recently joined Jeremy Corbyn’s new Your Party. Doctor Who has always been a liberal programme. It has made the occasional right-wing story. However, given that many of its writers have been socialists throughout the decades (i.e. Malcolm Hulke and Barry Letts), it does point in a liberal direction. I have no problem with discussing things like race, feminism, social justice, LGBTQ rights, capitalism and other issues in Doctor Who, and those that do have a problem with it make light of these particular struggles that the show is attempting to educate others about by dismissing them as simply being “political correctness gone mad”.
Chris Olsen's TARDIS 