Tat Wood (and probably Lawrence Miles) assesses ‘The Mutants’ as in at least some way addressing or echoing US-style segregation, apartheid in South Africa, terrorist movements seeking political concessions, the British empire in India, the British empire in Kenya, the return of British empire personnel to the UK, the marginalisation of the Welsh language, Tarkovsky’s Solaris and Kafka’s ‘Metamorphosis’ (3). El Sandifer throws in Nazi rocket scientists on top of all that (4) and asserts that the massive ‘excess of reference points’, contrary to what Wood might feel, easily all ‘exist in the same general orbit’ (5).

    To be fair on Wood, one of the reasons Sandifer disagrees with his verdict is that her list of reference points – the dissolution of the British empire, segregation in the US, the start of apartheid in South Africa and ex-Nazi rocket scientists – is rather less excessive than his and all belong to the late-1940s and the 1950s. Of course they all fit together – they did in the real world. Anyway, the advantage of her approach is that Baker and Martin’s critique of empire, which boils down to ‘get out’, manages to embrace all of ‘white western European culture’ (6).

    However, pleasingly unambiguous as that message may be, it also runs the risk of suggesting that when the Europeans did get out in the second half of the 20th century, that was them coming good. ‘The Mutants’ hints at the lack of benevolence behind imperial withdrawal, the Administrator insisting independence will come ‘Whether they’re ready for it or not’ (7), but unfortunately does it in a way that tacitly supports colonialism, as if it’s a process that genuinely takes underdeveloped countries and, if done properly, eventually turns them into ones able to stand on their own two feet. Doctor Who and the Mutants, thankfully, has the Administrator also point out that the Solonians had managed perfectly well before humanity’s arrival and add the detail that Earth is giving Solos independence ‘Not for their sakes—for ours!’ (8). The empire just turns up, strips all the wealth out of the planet (9) and then buggers off when there’s not enough in it for them any more (10).

    This nicely sets up a tension between what Baker and Martin as writers and Terrance Dicks as script editor wanted to do with the story, which, according to Shannon Sullivan, dated right back to commissioning – the former were primarily inspired by ‘concerns about South Africa’s segregationist Apartheid policy’ (11) while the latter was interested in addressing ‘the British Empire’s nineteenth-century colonialist ways’ (12). Both (or all three) seem to have felt that the two were easily analogous but seem to have differed on the most useful purpose to which to put the observation.

    A clue to what Dicks is targeting comes in the way Jaeger, an addition to the broadcast episodes for which Sullivan suggests Dicks was partially responsible in the first place (13), is not quite the same in the novelisation as onscreen. The name might remain evocative and rockets might still be his tool of choice but without the performance, by which I of course mean the accent, it’s more of a stretch to read him specifically as an ex-Nazi rocket scientist, of the type the UK, US and USSR were all so keen to grab after the Second World War, especially once there’s a back-story thrown in (14). Instead, thanks to Dicks tweaking a few lines, like having the Marshal insist the Mutts must be ‘Exterminated!’ (15), he’s more like a scientist working under the Nazi regime. That’s pretty much a statement that the British empire were the Nazis of their day.

    Where Baker and Martin were using their reference points to implicate all of white western culture in the problems experienced by indigenous populations around the world, Dicks is using them specifically to emphasise how bad the British empire was. If something resembles Nazi Germany, it’s hard to argue it’s a good thing; if something resembles apartheid South Africa, by, say, trying to make the native population aliens to their own land (16), it’s hard to argue it’s a good thing. Dicks may offer less excess than Baker and Martin – transmat segregation is out the window, for example (17) – but there’s, oddly, a more direct challenge to his assumed audience than there was in the TV episodes.

    That extends to the novelisation’s reflections on who is culpable for the acts committed in the name of empire. Though the Marshal is still clearly a ‘brute and a bully’ with, wonderfully, ‘the temper of a rogue elephant’ (18), he’s also made a literal and figurative product of the colonial system. He’s worked his way up over ‘many years’ from ‘a lowly security guard’ to his current position of ‘supreme power on Solos’ (19) and, though he still spends the story ruthlessly trying to maintain his position, regardless of the cost to the Solonians, rather than be decommissioned to a lesser ‘clerical’ role (20), his chosen path is a reaction to the clear contempt in which he’s held by the likes of the Administrator (21) and to the fact that his demotion has as much to do with his lack of ‘powerful friends or academic qualifications’ (22) as it does the oncoming redundancy of his role (23).

    The important thing is that, despite the Marshal never being anything other than the villain of the piece, his behaviour is far from aberrant – he’s not some loose cannon who just happened to come to a position of authority within the empire. Just as the Marshal has his ‘gorillas’ (24), so the likes of the Administrator and the Investigator have the Marshal to conduct the brutal nitty-gritty of ‘dominating […] lesser planets’ (25). This can be seen in the speed with which the Investigator adopts the Marshal as a ‘shield’ the moment he’s actually confronted by the events on Solos, seemingly equating ‘brutality’ with hands-on ‘experience’ (26), and in how closely the Marshal’s reaction to the Doctor (27), simply refusing to engage with anything new or different, mirrors the Investigator’s to the Mutt and the Administrator’s, so the Doctor suspects, to everything (28). The Marshal is a villain because that’s what the empire requires of its cogs and everyone complicit in imperialism shoulders some of the responsibility. You don’t get excused just for staying at home if you still reap some of the benefits.