Ostensibly an allegory for anti-colonialism, 'The Mutants' was possibly the nadir of Doctor Who during Jon Pertwee's era. Tristram Carey - who had provided some genuinely eerie music for the programme's second story ('The Daleks' - which was also known, coincidentally, as 'The Mutants') - here offers a compendium of animal flatulence, synthesised to a degree that suggests he didn't actually understand the 'incidental' requirement of incidental music. The special effects - an excess of CSO¹ - were thought of as groundbreaking at the time, as opposed to eye-searing. And as if that wasn't bad enough, it also boasts possibly the least impressive supporting cast in the series' history.

All in all, a pretty damning sumary.

The Plot

Thanks to a little intervention from the Time Lords, the Doctor and his companion Jo find themselves on Solos, an Earth colony under the control of The Marshal, who rules from a skybase orbiting the planet. In a set-up that wouldn't be out of place in Robin of Sherwood, the native Solonians are rebelling against the Marshal's law and fighting for independence from enforced collonial rule. The Time Lords have sent the Doctor to Solos with a gift for a mystery person - a large roughly-spheroid object that will only open for its intended recipient, who just turns out be a Solonian called Ky (that's a name to rhyme with 'Sky' rather than a popular lubricant).

The Doctor discovers that the people of Solos are actually part of a strange cycle of mutation that begins as a race of humanoids who pupate in the form of ugly insectoid monsters before evolving into 'superbeings' - something that the genocidal aspirations fo The Marshal could put a stop to. Luckily, the Doctor sorts everything out, the Marshal gets his comeuppance and Ky evolves into a dodgy special effect, all in time for the conclusion to episode six.

Guilty Parties

'The Mutants' is notorious for playing host to some of the series' worst acting performances. The Marshal himself, played by Paul Whitson-Jones, is an exercise in overacting. Admittedly, the script (courtesy of series regulars Bob Baker and Dave Martin, famous for their overambitious visions and, later, for creating the popular robot dog K9) doesn't serve the character well, consisting largely of bullyig bluster and blind prejudice that strikes the viewer as illogical and ill-informed for the most part. In contrast, the heroic lead, Ky (Garrick Hagon) appears wooden and uninterested, sadly lacking the passion that the part requires. Most distractingly bad of all, though, is Rick James. It's often been noted that Doctor Who can often be accused of racism, whether conscious or otherwise, in its depiction and representation of ethnic minorities. But while it's coincidentaly that the part that James plays is called 'Cotton' (instantly evoking images of the cotton-picking slaves of the American Deep South), the fact that Afro-carribean actors had not had the opportunities and experiences of black actors today means that James comes across as ill-equipped to deliver his lines convincingly. His poor performance here did not, however, prevent him from being cast nine years later as an ambassador in an episode of Blake's 7 ('Warlord')... sadly with equally lamentable results.

Despite an almost across-the-board panning of the story, one element is a surprising success - the mid-stage of the Solonians, the insectoid monsters, manages to be very effective in breaking up the human form by elongating the arms, adding a sting-like tail and a grotesque caricature of the human face, all courtesy of regular Doctor Who monster-maker John Friedlander.