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Steven is forced into a deadly game against
the deceptively sinister Cyril (Peter Stevens)
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4 episodes: The Celestial Toyroom, The Hall of Dolls, The Dancing Floor, The Final Test. Running Time: Approx. 98 minutes. Written by: Brian Hayles. Directed by: Bill Sellars. Produced by: Innes Lloyd.
THE PLOT:
The TARDIS materializes in the world of the Celestial Toymaker (Michael Gough), an immortal whose existence centers around games. The Doctor wants to return immediately to the TARDIS - But the Toymaker makes it vanish, and transports the Doctor away for good measure.
He challenges the Doctor to the Trilogic Game, a game of intelligence and concentration. At the same time, he tells Steven and Dodo that they can recover the TARDIS, but only by winning a series of games against his own creations. The games appear simple enough - Blind Man's Bluff, a form of musical chairs, a hunt for a key, a trip around a dancing floor. But each game has a deadly twist, and the Toymaker's minions don't play by the rules.
Oh, and there's a final twist. Steven and Dodo must win their games before the Doctor wins his. Otherwise, they will all be trapped in the Toymaker's realm forever!
CHARACTERS:
The Doctor: The Doctor encountered the Toymaker once before, and wisely fled before the immortal could ensnare him in his trap. This time, his curiosity gets the better of him; when the Toymaker blacks out the TARDIS scanner, he can't help but go outside to see where they have materialized. He has confidence in his companions' abilities, but can't help but try to warn them about the Toymaker's traps - which leads to him being rendered mute and invisible as punishment. Hartnell isn't in much of the story, disappearing midway through the first part and only returning for the last half of the last part. He is terrific in his scenes opposite Michael Gough, however, the two actors convincing us that these are two towering intellects pitted against each other.
Steven: With the Doctor sidelined, Steven takes center stage again. Fortunately, Peter Purves again shows himself more than able to carry the show. His performance makes tangible Steven's frustration at being stuck playing "kids' games" while the Doctor is fighting for his life, and the way his anger boils over when the Toymaker's minions cheat makes you believe that he's an inch away from resorting to outright violence. There's certainly a threat in his voice when he forces Joey the Clown in Episode One to don a genuine blindfold to navigate the blind man's bluff course - "Fairly, this time," and he shushes Dodo's protests that the obviously terrified clown is going to fall by telling her, "It's them or us."
Dodo:: In an odd dichotomy, I actually think Jackie Lane is much better in this story than in The Ark - but that Dodo, the character (such as she is), is even worse. Lane is convincing enough portraying Dodo's childlike enthusiasm and compassion for the Toymaker's creations... But at the same time, the character becomes officially Too Stupid to Live. After three episodes of the Toymaker's creations cheating at every game, she still disregards Steven and nearly loses the final game by falling for Cyril (Peter Stevens)'s fake injury. Not to mention the bit in Episode Two, where after it's established that all but one of seven chairs is deadly, she decides to just plop her butt into a random chair without even trying to come up with an alternative. At this point, she's making Susan look as useful as Barbara by comparison!
Celestial Toymaker:: Michael Gough is unsurprisingly excellent. Episode Four exists in its entirety, allowing us to see the calm and poise he brings to the Toymaker. He smiles with nearly every line, a smile that never touches his eyes. We get a hint of the sadness that must underly the character's existence, when he complains to the Doctor about how bored he is with his world and his creations. The story has its flaws, but the Toymaker's sole television appearance, in a mostly missing serial, nevertheless shows why he was considered worthy of a potential return in the 1980s, and why Big Finish have brought the character back in several audio stories.
BEHIND THE SCENES:
Any discussion of this story would be incomplete without noting the circumstances of its production. This became the first story of incoming producer Innes Lloyd - after it became the final straw for outgoing producer John Wiles. Whether or not Hartnell's deteriorating health was evident at this point seems uncertain, but it is widely acknowledged that he became much more difficult to work with after Verity Lambert left, and he and Wiles apparently got on like a house on fire. If you want that house to burn to the ground, and then want to burn the ashes afterwards.
Wiles saw The Celestial Toymaker as an opportunity to solve the problem of a troublesome leading man. The Toymaker would discorporate the Doctor, who would come back at the end played by a different actor. The BBC overruled this, extending Hartnell's contract for the remainder of Season Three, and this appears to have led to Wiles' resignation.
I tend to think it worked out pretty well all-around. The Celestial Toymaker is too offbeat a story to be much of an exit, and Hartnell's role in it is too insubstantial - His replacement in a story he's barely in would feel like a cheat. Hartnell himself still had some very good performances left in him. And as much as I enjoyed most of John Wiles' run of stories, he didn't seem to have a unique vision for the show; he basically made Verity Lambert's Doctor Who, only a bit darker and more adult-pitched. Innes Lloyd's tenure is more uneven in terms of quality, but he did have a distinct vision for the series, one that helped to secure its future.
THOUGHTS:
The Celestial Toymaker's reputation in fandom has bounded up and down over the years. When aired, it was not terribly well-received by the public, with much of the audience actively disliking its "silliness." Over time, it became regarded as a lost classic. Then, in more recent years, its reputation has again plummeted, with detractors complaining about repetitive storytelling and dismissing the serial as "four episodes of watching Steven and Dodo playing silly games."
In fairness, the complaints are valid. The first episode is intriguing, tidily introducing the story and the stakes and giving us a quick first game that sets the structure. Episode Four - the one existing episode - does a strong job of bringing the story to a close. Unfortunately, the middle episodes... pretty much do nothing. Steven and Dodo play deadly games; the Toymaker's creations cheat, and ultimately defeat themselves in doing so; the Toymaker gloats to the Doctor and advances his game. If the first episode was ever recovered, the story would be fully releasable at that point - You could almost seamlessly cut from Part One to Part Four without noticing anything was missing!
For all of that, I still mostly enjoy this story. I have a fondness for weird, vaguely surreal stories, so this one is well-positioned to connect with me. I'll admit that my patience wanes at times during the middle episodes, but even they deliver a few strong moments. The deadly chair game in Part Two creates a hint of tension. The dancing floor in Part Three seems like an interesting set piece, though it's so visual in nature that it's hard to be sure based on audio or still-frame reconstructions. And Dodo gets a rare good moment when she observes to Steven that the Toymaker's creations keep failing "through doing something silly and human."
Meanwhile, I think Parts One and Four are quite good. The visual aspect is constrained by budget and unimaginative direction (the Toymaker's realm is a too obviously a mostly-bare BBC studio), but there's enough cleverness in the storytelling to engage. Part Four also gets a big boost from Peter Stevens' sneering, childishly despicable Cyril, who manages to briefly upstage Michael Gough's Toymaker.
So while it's far from the masterpiece it was once regarded as, I think it's equally far from the disaster some now label it. This would be better as a 3-parter, or even as a 2-parter... But I find enough to enjoy to recommend it anyway.
Overall Rating: 7/10.
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