The Celestial Toymaker (TV story)

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The Celestial Toymaker was the seventh story of Season 3 of Doctor Who, and the first to be produced by Innes Lloyd. It was at one point considered writing out William Hartnell as The Doctor in this story, but the idea was vetoed.

Synopsis

The travellers arrive in a strange domain presided over by the Celestial Toymaker – an enigmatic, immortal entity who forces them to play a series of games; failure at which will render them his playthings for all eternity. The Doctor has to solve the complex Trilogic game while Steven and Dodo are faced with defeating a succession of apparently child-like but potentially lethal animated toys in contests such as 'blind man's buff', musical chairs and 'hunt the key'.

The Doctor finally overcomes the Toymaker by imitating his voice in order to complete the Trilogic game from within the TARDIS, which then dematerialises as his foe's universe is destroyed.

Plot

TARDIS hopscotch

An alien intelligence has invaded the TARDIS and rendered the First Doctor invisible, leaving Dodo Chaplet and Steven Taylor incredulous. They step outside into a strange realm where the Doctor reappears, saying he recognizes the place they are in. They have come to the realm of the Celestial Toymaker, an eternal being of infinite power who sets games and traps for the unwary so that they become his toys and playthings. The TARDIS is removed to prevent their escape and hidden with hundreds of facsimiles to prevent detection. The Doctor and the Toymaker have faced each other before, and the Toymaker abducts his old adversary to another place. The Doctor appears in the Toymaker’s study where he is given the Trilogic game, a ten piece Tower of Hanoi puzzle whose pieces must all be moved and remounted in a precisely correct 1023 move sequence to ensure success at the game. Screens are placed in the two rooms which transmit the progress of the Doctor to his friends and vice versa. When the Doctor tries to communicate with his friends he is rendered invisible, unable to offer any advice or support. The game is advanced automatically to a further stage, with the Toymaker warning the Doctor that both parties must finish their tasks at the same time to win the game. A similar transgression later leads to him being made mute.

Steven and Dodo face different challenges. The first to appear are two clowns, Joey and Clara, full of childish tricks and a rather dangerous game of Blind Man's Buff based on buzzed clues which is not as simple as it first seems. The clowns are made to replay the game when it is clear they are cheating, and the second time round Joey loses his footing on an obstacle course and the challengers are transformed into twisted dolls on the floor. Steven and Dodo then venture down a corridor into another chamber with three beautiful chairs and a challenge from living playing cards, the King and Queen of Hearts, along with a Knave and a Joker. An adjoining room has a further four chairs and Steven deduces from a rhyme that six of the seven chairs are deadly to sit on. Seven mannequins are provided to be used for testing on the chairs. The King and Queen play alongside them, and some of the mannequins are destroyed as seats are proven unsafe and eliminated. Dodo herself sits in the freezing chair and starts to freeze, only being rescued in the nick of time. The King and Queen, however, perish when they sit in a chair, with Cyril the Knave and the Joker having abandoned them to their games.

The next hurdle for Steven and Dodo are the comical Sgt. Rugg and Mrs. Wiggs, who hold court in a kitchen. They challenge them to hunt the thimble – or rather the key to the exit door – beyond which the TARDIS is presumed to be. Rugg and Wiggs are soon fighting, hurling crockery and food around, and in the chaos Dodo finds the key inside the large pie which Mrs Wiggs was making. She and Steven depart and enter another room with the dancing floor. There they encounter the three mannequins not destroyed by the chairs, who transform into ballerinas, and start to dance. At the far end of the floor is indeed the TARDIS. Sgt Rugg and Mrs Wiggs turn up too, determined to please the Toymaker and stop Steven and Dodo from reaching their craft. Steven and Dodo get trapped as partners with two of the dolls, and only manage to free themselves by swapping their partners for each other. They pelt on to the TARDIS, leaving Wiggs and Rugg to their fates, but the Police Box is once more a fake.

With the Doctor making good progress with the Trilogic Game, the Toymaker now chooses Cyril the schoolboy to take on his companions. Dodo and Steven now find themselves in a vast game of hopscotch against the schoolboy, who delights in tricks and traps to prevent them winning. The TARDIS is the alluring prize at the end of the game, and to reach it you need to win dice throws, relying on luck, and avoid the electrified spaces beyond the proper squares. It is, however, Cyril who literally falls foul of his own traps when he slips on a square he has made booby-trapped and is electrocuted. Dodo and Steven thus are at the TARDIS.

In the Toymaker’s study at the same time, the Doctor is at the final stage of the Trilogic Game. He has been returned to visibility and voice, and holds the final piece of the puzzle in his hand. The three friends are now reunited, with Steven and Dodo sent into the TARDIS for safety while the Toymaker challenges the Doctor to complete the Game. The Doctor realizes that when he makes the move and the Game is won, the Toymaker’s domain will disappear – and the TARDIS with it. He cleverly orders the last piece to move using the Toymaker’s voice, allowing them to depart while the Toymaker’s world is destroyed. The Doctor celebrates with a sweet from a bag given to Dodo by Cyril, but it leaves him in agony...

Cast

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The Celestial Toymakers' Dolls' house

Crew

References

  • Steven sees himself on the planet Kembel and in 16th century Paris in flashbacks to The Daleks' Master Plan and The Massacre of St. Bartholomew's Eve respectively, and also refers to the Monoids from The Ark.
  • Dodo initially speculates that the Doctor's intangibility is due to the Refusians.
  • When the Doctor imitates the Toymaker's voice, the last piece of the Trilogic moves over slowly, whereas when the Toymaker commanded the pieces they moved instantly.

Story Notes

  • This story had working titles The Trilogic Game and The Toymaker.
  • The Celestial Toymaker was to return in The Nightmare Fair, and Michael Gough was approached to reprise his role, but this was never made due to BBC-1 Controller Michael Grade having unexpectedly decided to postpone the series for eighteen months. This was part of the unmade Season 23 in 1986.
  • Radio Times credits 'Michael Gough as the Toymaker' for all four episodes and 'Dancers: Beryl Braham, Ann Harrison, Delia Lindon' for The Dancing Floor, with the other supporting cast members credited without specific roles under the heading 'with' in the programme listings for all four episodes.
  • In The Hall of Dolls, whilst deciding which of the seven chairs – six of which are deadly, while one remains safe – to choose, the King of Hearts recites a politically incorrect version of the children's counting rhyme "Eeny, meeny, miny, moe" (used to select a person to be 'it' for games and similar purposes), which includes the racial slur "nigger" in the second line. On BBC Audio's CD release of the story, this offending section has been obscured by placing part of Peter Purves's narration over the top.

Ratings

  1. The Celestial Toyroom - 8.0 million viewers
  2. The Hall of Dolls - 8.0 million viewers
  3. The Dancing Floor - 9.4 million viewers
  4. The Final Test - 7.8 million viewers

Myths

to be added

Filming Locations

Production errors

  • When the Doctor is on move 905, he moves a piece so it counts as move 906. However, when the Celestial Toymaker asks the pieces to go to move 930, they only jump 21 times so it should be move 927.
  • In one spot of the Trilogic Game, the smallest piece can be seen to be on top of the 5 piece. In order to get the minimum 1023 moves for the game, the smallest piece can never be put on top of another odd numbered piece – so the Doctor shouldn't be able to do it in 1023 moves.
  • Also, at 1000 moves, there are pieces on all three edges of the board. In the optimum solution of 1023 moves, one of the edges should be blank at 1000 moves.

Continuity

Timeline

DVD, Video and Other Releases

  • The surviving episode, The Final Test, was released on VHS as part of Hartnell Years (with the "Next Episode" caption rather clumsily cut from the cliffhanger scene, as it was at the time missing from the existing 16mm Black & White Film telerecording).
  • The Final Test was also released in digitally re-mastered form on the Lost in Time DVD box set (with the "Next Episode" caption reconstructed and restored).

Novelisation

Celestial Toymaker novel.jpg
Main article: The Celestial Toymaker (novelisation)

See also

to be added

External Links

Template:Season 3

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