The Celestial Toymaker

The Celestial Toyroom [Episode 1]

Hannah: That's concerning.

That phrase could sum up a lot of my feelings about this story, but the cause of Hannah's concern here is that something extremely powerful has penetrated the safety barrier of the TARDIS. Only Dodo seems particularly anxious about what might be outside.

Hannah: She does make good points. She was all up for running around and doing stupid things last time, and now suddenly she's being all cautious because they don't know what's out there.
Me: Maybe it's just more scary now.
Hannah: But it makes sense that the Doctor's curiosity gets the better of him, and it's his fault that they're stuck.

The story's premise in a nutshell: our heroes are forced to play a series of deadly party games in the nursery-like realm of the Celestial Toymaker, which apparently exists outside of space and time.

Hannah: This is an interesting story. You would assume it's not likely that they'll actually lose the games, but maybe one or both of the companions could be lost. Are Steven and Dodo expendable to show the Doctor's flaws, like his curiosity and ego?

I think she may be overestimating how much narrative depth we're going to be getting out of this story.

Meanwhile, the Toymaker selects Steven and Dodo's opponents for the first game, but there's a problem.

Hannah: I don't like clowns!
Me: That's a shame.
Hannah: I don't really want to see this.

Dodo's verdict is that the Toymaker's surreal playroom "looks dead boring."

Hannah: No, it doesn't! She's weird.

Whilst we talk amongst ourselves about the correct pluralisation of "TARDIS" (Hannah favours "TARDI" but it's clearly "TARDISes"), it's time for Steven and Dodo to meet their opponents.

Hannah: NO! Not clowns!
Me: Would you find it worse if these episodes existed and you could see the clowns moving, or is it worse seeing them frozen in still images like this?
Hannah: I'm not sure.

One of the clowns presents Dodo with a bouquet of flowers, and a jet of water squirts her in the face.

Hannah: Hilarious.

Hannah has a theory about the Toymaker.

Hannah: I think he's a Time Lord, if he's able to affect TARDIS machinery. Or is he actually just magic?
Me: He's supposed to be like some kind of demigod. He's probably more powerful than a Time Lord if he can create entire worlds.
Hannah: I don't like those kinds of enemies because they're overpowered, and there's no way to beat him unless you play the game; you can't outwit him, you can't run, you can't trick him, it's just a god making you play games and you literally can't win unless you play by his rules. I don't like it when someone is so overpowered that there's no way to outsmart them, it just takes the fun out of it.
Me: You haven't even seen it yet.
Hannah: I've seen situations like this before.
Me: You never know, they might still find a way to outsmart him.
Hannah: Yeah, but within the parameters of the game that's set. So the Doctor has met him before, then? How did he escape the first time?

The Toymaker, by the way, is played by Michael Gough.

Me: He was Alfred in the Batman films in the eighties and nineties.
Hannah: Which I haven't seen.
Me: He also played Bertrand Russell in Wittgenstein, Derek Jarman's 1993 biography film about the life of Ludwig Wittgenstein.
Hannah: I certainly haven't seen that.
Me: Would you like to? We have it on DVD.
Hannah: No.

While Steven and Dodo play their own game, the Doctor has to play the Trilogic Game (a version of the Tower of Hanoi puzzle).

Hannah: Arin was able to do this in an episode of Game Grumps, so I'm hoping the Doctor can.
Me: Well it can't be that hard if Arin was able to do it, he can't even play any of the Sonic the Hedgehog games properly.
Hannah: Well, he did a simplified version, anyway. The Doctor has to make 1,023 moves in this one and he's only got one attempt, so he's going to find it a lot harder.
Me: I bet he could still complete Sonic Mania with all seven Chaos Emeralds, though.

The female clown has an annoyingly squeaky voice.

Hannah: That's painful.
Me: That's Carmen Silvera.
Hannah: Who's that?
Me: She was in 'Allo 'Allo!.
Hannah: I saw half an episode once.
Me: She also appeared in one of the best episodes of Dad's Army, if that helps.

In a (literally) transparent attempt to write William Hartnell out of the remainder of the story, the Doctor is rendered invisible again except for one hand.

Hannah: That's creepy. I don't really know why.
Me: It may have something to do with the fact that his disembodied hand is still playing the game.

Steven and Dodo also have a significant disadvantage.

Hannah: Does it actually say anywhere that they have to keep the blindfold on? Why doesn't Steven just take it off? If the clowns can cheat, he can cheat.
Me: They're playing blind man's buff; I think you're supposed to take it for granted that you can't remove the blindfold.
Hannah: I thought that was a different game? I thought that was running around trying to catch people?
Me: Well, yeah, you don't tend to swing from ropes like this when you play it at children's parties.
Hannah: Exactly. It's not usually an obstacle course.

The good news for Hannah is that we're done with clowns for the time being; the bad news is that the next episode promises something else that she finds even more disturbing.

Hannah: Oh, "Hall of Dolls". Sounds like there's going to be more horrible things for me to look at that I don't like.

The Hall of Dolls [Episode 2]

Steven and Dodo's opponents for this episode are the King and Queen of Hearts, and something about them seems eerily familiar. For a moment, it looks like Hannah may have spotted it.

Hannah: Is that somebody we know, dressed up as the King?
Me: Did you have anyone in mind?
Hannah: It sounds like the Doctor.
Me: No, it's the two clowns from the previous episode. If you lose one of the Toymaker's games you become one of his toys, so all the people Steven and Dodo meet in this story are played by the same handful of actors. These are people that have played the games before and are now being constantly resurrected as different characters by the Toymaker.
Hannah: Interesting concept; people stuck as toys forever. It's creepy, terrifying, and gives the episodes a sense of urgency.
Me: You'd think so, wouldn't you?

We eventually come to the point where the King is trying to choose which one of the dolls to pick up. The dialogue here is almost indistinguishable, and I probably shouldn't be drawing anyone's attention to it, but I just can't let it pass without comment.

Me: Now, listen carefully...
Hannah: (distastefully) Oooh.
Me: Yes.

The king has decided to play "eeny, meeny, miny, moe" to make his selection, but has regrettably opted for the version containing a racial slur (i.e. the n-word).

Hannah: Did other people notice that?
Me: The audio has been deliberately muffled on this copy of the recording, and it's been hidden on the official soundtrack CD by placing Peter Purves' narration over the top so that you can't hear it. But it's definitely there; it's officially a word that appears canonically in Doctor Who.
Hannah: Was it in the script? Or was the actor just improvising?
Me: The script just says "the King closes his eyes and eeny-meeny-miny-mos at them," so it looks like the actor interpreted it as reciting this version.
Hannah: Hmm. (after a long pause) The sixties were a different time.
Me: Not that different. It definitely wasn't an acceptable term even in 1966, in spite of all the people that still try to defend it as a product of its time.

The game involves throwing some life-sized dolls into a series of deadly chairs in order to identify the safe one. Sounds straightforward, right?

Hannah: I don't know why it's taking them so long. Just get on with it! How difficult is it to pick up a doll, throw it in a chair and try another one? There's no other obvious way to find the safe chair. Also, there aren't enough dolls, so how could anyone ever win unless their opponents sacrificed themselves?

Dodo agrees with this assessment, and takes her chances with one of the remaining chairs.

Hannah: She is foolish.

Having won the game, she seems surprised that their ordeal (and ours) still isn't over.

Hannah: They thought he'd only do two things? Idiot.

As with the previous cliffhanger, Steven and Dodo are presented with a riddle to tease the game for the next episode. In addition, the reconstruction we're watching also shows the riddle on-screen at the beginning of the credits sequence.

Hannah: It's not really a riddle this time. Just instructions.
Me: I wonder if the real episodes recapped each riddle in the credits like that.
Hannah: It would be interesting if they did, giving people an extra bit of cliffhanger to see if they could work it out by next week. But that wasn't a riddle, so there wasn't much point having it up there.
Me: What do you make of this so far?
Hannah: I like it, it's an engaging story. No one's annoying me very much.

The Dancing Floor [Episode 3]

Hannah: I don't like how overpowered the Toymaker is. But actually, it just goes to show that there's so much out there in space and time; you can't always come across a "normal" enemy and expect to simply beat them. Travelling in the TARDIS really is dangerous, beyond their imagination.

So what exactly does the Toymaker do with his god-level power? He makes Steven and Dodo spend an entire episode searching for a key, which has been hidden somewhere in a domestic kitchen.

Hannah: It doesn't really feel like a game. Also, throwing dolls on dangerous chairs didn't feel like a game either. At least the first one was an actual competition, where they had to walk from one end of the room to the other.
Me: Yes, what a great game that was.
Hannah: Whilst blindfolded.
Me: That still doesn't make it great television. We're not exactly talking Blue Planet here.
Hannah: Why did it take them so long to realise they had to find a key? It's a door with a giant keyhole, and the words clearly say "hunt the key."

As usual, there's something familiar about the Toymaker's representatives.

Me: Same two actors again.
Hannah: Of course.

This time their tactic is to stand around bickering with each other for what seems like an eternity. It's like being alone in a room with a married couple while they're having a vicious argument, and no less depressing to watch, so we end up trying to find distractions wherever we can.

Hannah: There are sultanas in the cupboard.

We can only watch nonplussed as chaos ensues in the kitchen. In the middle of the commotion Steven accosts a young troublemaker, Cyril, who slinks away and locks himself in the pantry.

Me: Do you ever wonder if we're really watching the same show that Peter Capaldi is in?
Hannah: Mmm.

When Dodo finally locates the key inside a pie (it must have been a steak and Yale pie), Hannah starts to worry about the fate of the Toymaker's players.

Hannah: It's sad, because obviously Steven and Dodo want to escape and win, but they must know that all these people are going to die when they lose.
Me: They get reborn each time they "die" anyway.
Hannah: So can they be rescued? Is there a real "them" right at the bottom?
Me: There used to be. Maybe not anymore. Who knows?
Hannah: And can the Toymaker not make them real again?
Me: Probably.

After a shaky start at the beginning of the previous story, Hannah seems to be gradually warming to the Doctor's newest companion.

Me: What do you think of Dodo now?
Hannah: She's not as stupid as she used to be. She's gotten very intelligent very quickly. Well, not very intelligent.

Hannah finds the jerky movements of the dancing dolls extremely disturbing, despite not being able to see them. Or maybe it's more vivid in our imaginations because we can't see them.

Hannah: Eurgh, creepy body control.
Me: Makes you glad you can't see them moving, doesn't it?
Hannah: It's not as creepy as the Doctor's disembodied hand. Is the Doctor on holiday, by the way?

After the Toymaker decides to make the Doctor completely invisible, he reminds the Doctor "you forget that I can see you, even if no one else can", although we can't see what the Doctor does to provoke this. Hannah has a theory.

Hannah: The Doctor is gesticulating wildly at him with his middle fingers.

The Toymaker is clearly as sick of Steven and Dodo's regular opponents as we are, so he retires them for the final game and deploys Cyril the mischievous schoolboy instead.

Hannah: What, like Dennis the Menace?
Me: More like Billy Bunter. Almost litigiously like Billy Bunter, in fact.
Hannah: Except he looks, what, 40? Oh, it's the knave again, from the last episode.

Once this interminable episode is finally over and the credits start rolling, Hannah notices something familiar about the name of the choreographer.

Hannah: Tutte Lemkow sounds familiar. I think he was mentioned in one of the documentaries.
Me: He was in Marco Polo, The Crusade and The Myth Makers playing a Mongol, an Arab and a Greek, as well as an Egyptian in Raiders of the Lost Ark; basically he specialises in playing vaguely foreign-looking characters. He's the one who keeps wearing that eyepatch.
Hannah: So he mostly plays Asian characters. Where's he from?
Me: Norway.
Hannah: What?

The Final Test [Episode 4]

Finally, a moving episode!

Me: Ready to see some live action?
Hannah: Yes. It's been hard to judge the direction and much of the set from the still images.
Me: Okay, if you want to judge it effectively on its directive skills, then... well, anyway, let's see.
Hannah: Why, what's wrong with it?
Me: I don't know, you tell me.
Hannah: You're saying it in a way that indicates there's something wrong with this episode.

The Toymaker has been constantly advancing the Doctor's game for him, skipping over several moves at a time.

Hannah: If he's just fast-forwarding each time, surely the computer knows that it's the correct sequence? How is it possible for the Doctor to get it wrong? Also, what was the point of having the Doctor complete that test when the Toymaker could just skip forward whenever he wanted? At what point would he have eventually fast-forward to the last move? What was the point of having the Doctor do anything?

As the Doctor approaches his final move, the Toymaker decides to restore him to normal.

Hannah: And he's back off holiday.

Meanwhile, Steven and Dodo's game of "TARDIS hopscotch" comes to an end when Cyril ends up electrocuting himself, and we're treated to an unsavoury glimpse of his remains.

Hannah: Oooh, that's not nice!

At last, our heroes have won their respective games and are finally reunited with the TARDIS.

Hannah: It can't be that easy.

Of course it isn't; there's still one move left in the Trilogic Game, and once the Doctor makes the final move, the Toymaker's realm will disappear with them inside it. The only solution is to somehow complete the game from within the TARDIS; fortunately Hannah has a solution.

Hannah: Remote-control grabber.

The Doctor's idea is, if anything, even more unlikely: he commands the game to skip to the final move, and the Toymaker is hoisted by his own petard.

Hannah: (laughing) He just imitated his voice? Is that it? That's how they... is the Doctor good at voices?
Me: I think this is the only time he's ever used the Mel Blanc skills, but there's an occasion when the Master does it later as well. Maybe it's a Time Lord thing.

The Doctor celebrates by helping himself to one of Cyril's sweets...

Hannah: No...

...and breaks a tooth, shortly before the title of the next episode appears on-screen.

Hannah: Did that say "A Hospital for the Doctor"?
Me: "A Holiday for the Doctor".
Hannah: Either those sweets were super-sour, or they were made of glass.
Me: Eating broken glass might be a step too far, even for Doctor Who.
Hannah: There are some very, very sick jokes out there.
Me: Like what?
Hannah: Like boiled sweets made out of glass.
Me: Does that even happen?
Hannah: It just feels like a thing that could happen.

The Score

Hannah: I liked it quite a lot. It was gripping.
Me: Good grief.
Hannah: Only because I like riddles, and I like watching other people solve them. Unfortunately it wasn't really as intelligent or witty as I was hoping it would be, because everything was just full of stupid dawdling and messing around. So it was a really good story idea, with this omnipotent toymaker controlling everything, but it's just a shame that it was so slow and silly. What do other people think about it?
Me: Not a lot; it's pretty universally disliked these days. It used to have a reputation as a lost classic until the final episode was discovered in the 1990s and everyone saw how cheap it looked. In theory it's a great story concept, but in practice it's just four episodes of Steven and Dodo playing some fairly tedious parlour games.
Hannah: Yes, badly, and with stupid distractions.
Me: And it's hard to get away from the fact that episode 3 is almost entirely about them searching for something in a kitchen.
Hannah: But I really do like the concept; I like the idea that there's someone out there who might beat the Doctor one day. Lots of little things were really, really good, but...
Me: But no big things.
Hannah: Overall, it just felt annoying and irritating. But I'm feeling generous on this one, because I was so enthralled by the concept.

7/10