You know I guess Richard Atkinson, reviewing the stories release on BBC Video a few years ago for TV Zone magazine (Issue 160) best conveyed the basic premise when he said
”The Doctor and Jo set off on a mission to deliver a mysterious box to an unknown recipient. They arrive on Sky Base orbiting the Earth colony Solos. The natives want independence from Earth, and having plundered the planet for pretty much all its worth the Humans are happy enough to agree. Apart from the Marshal, who has run the colony for many years and intends to alter Solos’s atmosphere so that it’s breathable to Humans but poisonous to Solonians. Are his experiments responsible for the mutations among the indigenous population? Will the Doctor unravel the planet’s secret before the Marshal commits genocide?”
Apart from the usually worthy acting contributions from series regulars Pertwee and Manning I personally enjoyed performances from other cast members in this epic which albeit weighing in at almost two hours and twenty minutes did not, for me at least, feel overly forced or laboured in its delivery. Paul Whitsun-Jones as the overweight, pompously mad Sky Base Marshall, Rick James endearing well meaning lowly security officer Cotton and James Mellor’s over-the-top manic warrior Varan are all worthy of a creditable mention. However the atypical foreign accented charactures created by George Pravda and John Hollis are worthy of special praise. Pravda’s intractable Sky Base based scientist Jaeger is clearly a dangerous blunderer whilst Hollis plays the reclusive ethnically clothed Professor Sondergaard, an endearing well-meaning figure whom truly cares about the fate of Solos indigenous lifeforms.
Regarding those particular aliens referring to in the stories title I guess you could describe them as a more subtle version of the Hartnell era Zarbi from “The Web Planet”, designed with greater clarification in their facial characteristics and, for me at least, they seem far more frightening, especially in the darkened confined location environments of the Chislehurst Caves.
So why do I feel it necessary to specially highlight this particular story? Well I guess the main reason stems from reading Jonathan Morris comment on the story in his article to be found on page 43 of ‘The Complete Third Doctor – Doctor Who Magazine Special Edition’. Now we all I guess, are aware that preceding story “The Sea Devils” is cited as introducing the electronic incidental music of the Radiophonic Workshop but I feel that Jonathan really nailed the continuation of this in “The Mutants” when he said
And most of all, you have Tristram Cary’s gorgeous, scintillating incidental music; a bizarre, space-rock score performed on vintage Moog synthesisers – well, they were state-of-the-art synthesisers at the time – which sounds like the missing link between Wendy Switched-On Bach Carlos, Rick Wakeman, and traffic-cone-era Kraftwerk.
