Well, how to I start this review off? The Celestial Toymaker was one of my least favourite Who stories period, one I was dreading on day reviewing and having to sit through three episodes of painfully boring slideshows and a bit of a naff final episode. Then along came the news it was being animated! Great, that at least takes care of the photo slideshow not doing the glacial pace any favours, but then the animation turns out to be in a 3D CG style that looked pretty terrible in the trailer and in watching it is only a bit better than I feared. Did it make it easier to watch? Yeah, but it’s sort of like replacing something I hated with something I really don’t like, so… it’s not a major win… Well, with all that rambling over with, let’s actually take a look, shall we?
The story is quite simple in its design. The Doctor (William Hartnell), Steven (Peter Purves) and Dodo (Jackie Lane) notice the TARDIS being pulled from time and space and upon taking a peek outside they find themselves in the realm of the Celestial Toymaker (Michael Gough), an old enemy of The Doctor who wishes to have a rematch with him. As The Doctor is tasked with completing a “Trilogic game” within a certain amount of moves his companions spend the first three episodes essentially playing children’s games but with potentially deadly consequences. First they play Blind Man’s Bluff but on a rather insane course (especially in the animated version!) against some clowns, then they play a game against a set of living playing cards where there are seven chairs and one is safe and the other six are deadly, then they have to find a key in a large kitchen with a soldier and an old maid-type, before finally making it to the TARDIS after beating an annoying adult-playing-a-schoolboy called Cyril at a crazy game of hopscotch. Most of these extra characters were played by the same trio of Peter Stephens, Campbell Singer and Carmen Silvera, for the record.
That leads into the finale, which I may as well save for the spoiler section, though this story aired nearly 50 years ago so I’d probably be safe without one!
Well… I mean… The clothes are really accurate.
As for the animated episodes? Well, like I said I really don’t like the style. I will at least give them credit that they’re not constantly moving and nodding like the Web of Fear episode from a few years back, and some of the fancy camera angles and effects for some of the games jazzed them up a bit, but overall the likenesses were… weird, the lip movements and facial reactions were off and just generally it wasn’t visually appealing. There were also some weird decisions, like they made the playing card people look like they were walking and talking cardboard people but kept in the line where Dodo had to touch them to confirm they were real people, despite the fact that visually in this version it should’ve been obvious they definitely weren’t, though apparently they were? Strange…
So overall the story is just a series of really dull scenes of Steven and Dodo playing games until a pretty crap ending. So, in other words, a pretty poor viewing experience.
The Continuity:
The weird playing card people that are apparently human if you touch their clearly cardboard faces.
The Toymaker himself has made numerous appearances in various spin-off media over the years, including a few adaptations of the Sixth Doctor story “The Nightmare Fair”, which was actually due to air on TV before Season 23 was put on hold. He did later appear on screen again though, many, many years later in the Fourteenth Doctor story “The Giggle”.
The story actually does a rare thing (especially for the time) and ends on a cliffhanger, leading directly onto the next story: “The Gunfighters”, which… ugh, is another story I’m not looking forward to covering down the line…
Overall Thoughts:
Argh! Real people!
“The Celestial Toymaker” has always been a chore to watch, and frankly the animated version isn’t much of an improvement, though at least it is one at all. The story is just dull in the extreme, and even watching one episode a day this time I was still clock watching towards the end of some of them. I’ll give it a point for originality at the time and the fact I didn’t hate it and instead was just bored, but I sure as hell am never going to watch it again…
The Doctor reunites with Steven and Dodo in the TARDIS, being one move away from winning the Trilogic game, but he realises that this was the Toymaker’s back up plan because if he loses his dimension collapses and so The Doctor, his allies and the TARDIS will vanish into the void with him. Luckily The Doctor manages to impersonate the Toymaker’s voice precisely and tells the game to finish itself from within the TARDIS, which it does thanks to the Toymaker dimension’s rules, allowing him to escape with his friends before the dimension collapses.
Just thought I’d better include a proper picture of the Celestial Toymaker in my review of “The Celestial Toymaker”…
Bit of an “out of nowhere” and somewhat lazy conclusion, honestly. As mentioned in the continuity section it ends on something of a cliffhanger to lead into “The Gunfighters”, and do you know what it is? The Doctor eats a sweet and hurts his tooth. That’ll get you tuning in next time! Though given the quality of that story, I wouldn’t bother…
Hogan Reviews 