The Mutants is the fourth serial of the ninth season of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast in six weekly parts on BBC1 from 8 April to 13 May 1972.
The serial is set on and high above the Earth colony world Solos in the 30th century. In the serial, the Marshal of Solos (Paul Whitsun-Jones) plots to change Solos' atmosphere to make it breathable for humans but not for the native Solonians. At the same time, the alien time traveller the Third Doctor (Jon Pertwee) delivers a set of tablets containing lost information about the Solonians' life cycle to the Solonian Ky (Garrick Hagon).
Plot
In the 30th century, the Earth Empire is contracting and plans are made to decolonise the planet of Solos. The militaristic and bigoted Marshal and other human soldiers, known as Overlords, rule it and the disunionised tribal Solonian people from Skybase One, an orbiting space station. The Marshal opposes the decolonisation plans outlined by an Earth Administrator, and is obsessed with eradicating the arthropod-like mutants or "Mutts" developing on the planet. The Solonians are split between those who actively oppose the occupation, and those who collaborate with the Overlords to eradicate the Mutants, believing them to be a disease. The Marshal and one Solonian, Varan, along with his son, all ensure the Administrator is assassinated before he can confirm Solos' independence. The Third Doctor and Jo arrive on Skybase, the Time Lords having transported the TARDIS there, with a pod which will only open for an intended recipient, which seems to be Ky, another Solonian framed for the Administrator's murder. Ky teleports to the planet's surface, abducting Jo as well.
On Solos, daylight-exposed atmosphere is poisonous to humans. With Ky's help, Jo survives. The Doctor learns that the Marshal and his chief scientist Jaeger plan to terraform Solos, to make the planet habitable for humans, but not for indigenous life. The Marshal betrays Varan by killing his son. In response, Stubbs and Cotton, the Marshal's most senior officers, secretly ally with the Doctor. The now-fugitive Varan takes the Doctor hostage, fleeing to Solos' caverns, but the Doctor convinces him into a truce. There, they encounter many mutants, but fend them off. The Doctor reunites with Ky and Jo, and gives the pod to Ky. It opens to reveal ancient etched tablets that Ky cannot decipher. Frustrated at the lack of help, Varan stubbornly flees from the group. The Marshal later knowingly fumigates the caves with the Doctor, Jo, Ky, Stubbs, and Cotton still inside, but an outcast human scientist, Sondergaard, a Solonian anthropology expert, saves the group. He also explains his attempt to report the Marshal to Earth Control, but it was intercepted, so Sondergaard fled and hid in fear for his life. The Doctor and Sondergaard interpret the tablets as a lengthy Solonian calendar, and while investigating the caves, also find a mysterious crystal. From the calendar and crystal, the Doctor deduces the Mutant phase is a natural part of the Solonian life-cycle, triggered by Solos' transition into summer, but the Marshal's experiments triggered the mutations too soon.
To look into the strange events, the Earth government has dispatched an Investigator. Despite partly mutating, Varan attacks Skybase with his warriors, with Jo, Ky, Stubbs and Cotton as hostages. It fails, and a hull breach from the fight blows Varan out into space, nearly taking everyone else. The Marshal later sentences summary execution on the remaining four, but are saved by Jaeger's timely revelation of the terraform attempt failing and instead poisoning Solos' environment. Later, the four attempt to escape, while warning the Investigator's shuttle, but Stubbs is killed. The Doctor returns to Skybase – without Sondergaard, who was weakened from breathing the sun-exposed portions of Solos' atmosphere. To force the Doctor to rapidly decontaminate the planet with Skybase's technology before the Investigator's arrival, the Marshal imprisons Jo and the rest in a soon-to-be-radioactive thaesium refuelling bay. The inquiry is held, but the Marshal gives more lies, supported by the Doctor under duress. Luckily, the prisoners escape their fate and arrive to help the Investigator see the truth of the situation. Sondergaard recovers, discovers the mutants aren't animalistic, and also reaches Skybase to offer testimony. Unfortunately, a Mutant follows him and accidentally scares the Investigator enough to reinstate the Marshal's command and recommendation to eradicate the creatures.
Escaping from the guards, the Doctor quickly studies the crystal in the Skybase laboratory, confirming that it focuses and converts thaesium radiation from the deposits deep in the caves, beneficially accelerating the mutation process. The Marshal, now unbalanced from thoughts of ruling grandeur, forces Sondergaard (to whom the Doctor secretly gives the crystal), Jo, Cotton, and Ky back into the refuelling bay. There, Sondergaard gives a severely weakened Ky the crystal, who then absorbs all of the thaesium fuel and rapidly mutates, emerging as a radiant angel-like super-being and saving the prisoners. Meanwhile, the Marshal holds the Investigator's entourage hostage to be the first forced citizens of New Earth (on Solos), and orders the terraforming completed, but the Doctor covertly sabotages the terraformer's circuits, which overloads when Jaeger tries to operate it, killing him. Furious at his lost chance of domination, The Marshal takes aim at the Doctor, but Ky arrives and dispenses justice, vapourising the Marshal. Sondergaard and Cotton elect to stay to help see the other Solonians through their mutations, while Jo and the Doctor slip away, their mission from the Time Lords complete.
Production
Working titles for this story included Independence and The Emergents. Writers Bob Baker and Dave Martin, as well as producer Barry Letts, intended for The Mutants to have an anti-racist message. The basis of the story came from Letts, who had submitted the idea for Season 4 but it was rejected by script editor Gerry Davis for the 1966 story "The Mutant". Martin was highly concerned about the Apartheid system in South Africa, which was reflected in the script. That the Marshal is opposed to Solos being granted independence as he wishes to displace the native population of Solos in order to make way for colonists from Earth was a reference to Rhodesia. The Marshal is so determined to hang onto Solos as a colony that he assassinates the Administrator sent out from Earth to grant independence to Solos. In 1965, Ian Smith, the prime minister of the self-governing British colony of Southern Rhodesia (modern Zimbabwe) whose franchise was restricted to white settlers illegally declared unilateral independence rather than accept British plans to grant Southern Rhodesia independence on the basis of majority rule. The way the Marshal tries to keep the imperial project going in defiance of his own empire's wish to give up Solos in order to colonise it with millions of settlers from Earth was based on Rhodesia. The British critics Maura Grady and Celcia Hemstrom note that both the Administrator and the Marshal are caught up in imperial nostalgia as the Marshal wishes to turn Solos into a "new Earth" that will be colonised by settlers from Earth while the Administrator complains that Earth is now a toxic wasteland and the Earth Empire is economically "finished" owing to its ruined environment. The amoral German-accented scientist, Professor Jaeger, whose experiments are intended to exterminate the native population of Solos was based upon those German scientists who served the Nazi regime in devising every more efficient methods of killing people.
The mines of Solos were filmed at Chislehurst Caves near Bromley. They also filmed at Western Quarry which was the setting for the planet Solos, before it was a shopping centre and Stone House Farm Caves which was the entrance to Solos caves.
Cast notes
George Pravda had previously played Denes in The Enemy of the World (1968) and would later play Castellan Spandrell in The Deadly Assassin (1976).
Christopher Coll had previously played Technician Phipps opposite Patrick Troughton in the 1969 serial The Seeds of Death.
Geoffrey Palmer had previously played Masters in Doctor Who and the Silurians (1970) and would later play
Captain Hardaker in the 2007 Christmas special "Voyage of the Damned".