The Time Lords have a mission for the Doctor and Jo: take a sealed container to the planet Solos
in the far future and deliver it to its intended recipient. The trouble is they
do not know who to give it to, and Solos is in turmoil as it is about to become
independent from the crumbling Earth Empire. The Marshal of Skybase, overlord
of Solos, does not want to relinquish his power and is using the recent
outbreak of mutations on the planet as a means to retain control. The Doctor
knows that the Time Lords would not send him here unless it was of the utmost
importance, but before he can complete his mission he must survive the
megalomania of the Marshal, and the savage primal ferocity of the Mutants
themselves.
As with a lot of the stories of this era of the show, The Mutants is not purely an
entertaining adventure but also a commentary on the colonial mindset and those
who are desperate to see it continue. The DVD extras say it best really - don't miss those. In the far future Earth can’t support an
empire anymore and as it recedes it graciously grants independence to its
fringe colonies, although this is not so much a magnanimous gesture as it is an
economic one. As the announcement is made there are no real admissions that
anything was done wrong and that the Empire should have just left Solos alone,
it is dressed up as a friendly partnership now dissolving on good terms. The
truth of course is far from that, and the native representative, Ky, just wants
the Earth people gone so his people can try to salvage their planet. On the
other side of this is Varan, whose warrior sect have enjoyed the freedom the
Earth rule – particularly the Marshal’s crooked ways – has allowed for them to
wage war and live like rulers themselves – and this includes terrorizing their
own fellow Solonians and hunting down Mutants. Varan's ways are fine by the Marshal as it saves him the trouble of doing the dirty work while he can rule from Skybase and not actually have to set foot on Solos unless he absolutely needs to.
The Mutants themselves are Solonians, their change from
humanoid to insectoid being blamed on
experiments by the Marshal and his chief
scientist, Jaegar, in an attempt to make the Solonian atmosphere breatheable;
by day the air is poison to humans and no-one can go outside without a mask.
Why would the Earth empire want to control such a place then? Mineral
resources! What else? But now it’s effectively run out and the Marshal is
desperate to retain control of the planet to secure his own future; and if that
means exterminating the Mutants, so be it. They’re not exactly the prettiest
thing to look at and the mutation from humanoid looks downright painful as
their backs swell up and split open. Among Varan’s people the mutation is a
curse, a badge of shame to be purged, and while Ky doesn’t exactly advocate for
Mutant rights he doesn’t want them murdered either. But what is going on with Solos is obviously important - important enough for the Time Lords to get involved, and the package sent with the Doctor will be of paramount importance if only he can deliver it to the right person. Is it weapons to beat back the oppressors? Is is a means for the Earth Empire to retain control over Solos rather than let it go? Or is it something else?
As far as timeline goes with this one the Doctor says this
is the late 30th century, and as far as fitting this one in with
other episodes The Mutants would be
set not too far before The Curse of
Peladon when the Earth Empire has faded and the Galactic Federation has
been formed. At the other end of this would be Colony in Space when the Empire was barely starting off. When these
were written, though, there was no real plan to connect any of the stories in a
proper timeline so it’s not going to fit together perfectly, although the New
Adventures series does its best to link them up where possible. The next time
the Doctor goes into the future in this continuity it will be at the height of
the Earth Empire, when it is coming into collision with another one.
But that is, of course, in the future.
NEXT EPISODE: THE TIME MONSTER
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