024 - The Celestial Toymaker

Broadcast:

2^nd - 23^rd April 1966

Doctor:

William Hartnell

Companions:

Steven, Dodo

Adversary:

Celestial Toymaker

Written by:

Brian Hayles (Extensively rewritten by Donald Tosh)

Director:

Bill Sellars

Music:

Dudley Simpson

Script Editor:

Gerry Davis

Producer:

Innes Lloyd

Average Viewers:

8.3m (8.0, 8.0, 9.4, 7.8)

Summary: Trapped by the Celestial Toymaker, the travellers must play his games to win their freedom, but will he play fairly?

Continuing Doctor Who's transition, The Celestial Toymaker was the first under new producer Innes Lloyd and with Gerry Davis he wanted to refresh the show and take it in new and exciting directions. However, due to the show's almost constant production they would first have to get past stories inherited from John Wiles and Donald Tosh. The credit for The Celestial Toymaker is given to Brian Hayles but his original draft fell short of what Wiles and Tosh had wanted and was therefore rewritten (with the agreement that Tosh would receive the main credit while Hayles would receive a "From an idea by" credit - this would have been possible because Tosh knew he would no longer be Script Editor when it was transmitted). However, Lloyd wasn't happy with it when he took over and chose to have further rewrites carried out by Davis, including an idea to write out and replace William Hartnell. Unsurprisingly, Donald Tosh was unhappy with the new scripts and refused to have his name associated with it so the credit fell back to Brian Hayles despite bearing very little relation to his work!

While children were watching Steven and Dodo playing the Celestial Toymaker's twisted games, their parents were following political developments as Prime Minister Harold Wilson bolstered his fragile and unworkable majority by winning a snap election with an extra 91 seats. In Russia, Leonid Brezhnev became General Secretary of the Soviet Union, as well as Leader of the Communist Party of the U.S.S.R. while the Soviet space probe Luna 10 became the first man-made object to enter orbit around the moon. Back in the UK, Barry Butler, captain of Norwich City F.C. was killed in a car accident, Ian Brady and Myra Hindley finally went on trial and Hoverlloyd inaugurate the first Cross-Channel hovercraft service. The music charts were topped by "Somebody Help Me" (The Spencer Davis Group) and "You Don't Have to Say You Love Me" (Dusty Springfield), while cinemas were showing the likes of Battle of the Bulge, The Great St. Trinian's Train Robbery (the fourth in the series) and The Ugly Dachshund.

When viewers had last seen the Doctor at the end of The Ark he was fading out and had become invisible so they would have been eager to find out what was going on...

Given the mid-story twist in The Ark it would be perfectly understandable if viewers were expecting further continuation here and Dodo's suggestion that the Doctor's invisibility is somehow related to the Refusians seems vaguely plausible. The Doctor, however, suspects that it is a darker force at play when he discovers that he is also intangible and can not operate the console. All very intriguing and exciting but it doesn't last... shortly after leaving the TARDIS he is back to normal and set to depart again just three minutes into the episode!

Gerry Davis had another twist up his sleeves however when he introduces the Celestial Toymaker and we learn the Doctor knows of his ways and has encountered him before. This time he has duplicated the TARDIS (or at least the Police Box) a hundred times and there is no way of knowing which is the real one and so the games begin...

What follows is a variety of physical and mental games which Steven and Dodo must win to gain access to one of the Police Boxes. Meanwhile the Doctor is set his own challenge to complete the 1023 moves of the Trilogic Game perfectly and without delay - the catch being that Steven and Dodo must complete all their games before the Doctor completes his or the Toymaker won't release any of them. After the Doctor tries to advise his companions the Toymaker makes all but his hand invisible (so he can still play his game) and later prevents him from speaking too. This of course allowed William Hartnell to have two weeks off but it was also the point at which Innes Lloyd wanted to replace him by having the Toymaker return the Doctor to 'normal' with a new appearance (ie the replacement actor). The idea was vetoed by department heads and while this may have given Hartnell a boost of confidence that he was irreplaceable, it put the idea in the air that there was a way around the troubles of having an ailing and increasingly difficult actor - he would be gone by the end of the year, after just five more stories.

This is an interesting story but lacks a bit in substance. I'm sure younger viewers would have enjoyed it but it has a definite pantomime feel to it with a limited cast playing different characters for each game, including clowns and the King and Queen of Hearts. It was interesting to see Carmen Silvera (best known for playing Edith in "Allo Allo" twenty years later) take on these various roles but a little grating to witness lines like "A playing card?!" (in the style of Lady Bracknell's "A Handbag?!") and "We were not amused" (in the style of Queen Victoria) and the third episode really does decent into manic pantomime farce.

There really is little more to say about The Celestial Toymaker. It does very little go beyond the idea that is set up at the start other than including twists and cheats to hinder everyone's progress. This idea of hundreds of Police Boxes lined up is exciting but I'm not sure if the Loose Cannon reconstruction uses a genuine image or not, however there are a series of cupboards that are made to look like the TARDIS which are a joy to see (though they are white rather than dark blue). Also, following each game, Steven and Dodo open the TARDIS that they have won only to find it an empty box (which of course the prop always has been) with a door at the back of the Police Box that they have to go through - making narrative use of what normally have been production trickery. There is an interesting sounding dance sequence in which the companions must cross a dance floor but are controlled by the music when they do so and their final encounter involved a Billy Bunter like character that got the BBC into a spot of bother - the character's name was Cyril, which would have been fine but the actor Peter Stephens ad-libbed the line "my friends call me Billy" which made no sense other than suggesting he actually was Billy Bunter rather than someone similar. Since this line came with the character's introduction at the end of the third episode and was part of the reprise in the fourth the BBC were required to add a disclaimer to the continuity announcement.

Having only seen the final episode before (since it is the only one in the BBC archives) I was looking forward to seeing the full story and while it was enjoyable and a little reminiscent of "The Adventure Game" which I loved as a child, it failed to thrill me a great deal and Steven's irritation at the childish games only served to bring the enjoyment level down. It was suggested that while the Doctor had got away for a second time it was likely not the last but the Toymaker was never seen again. A rematch was eventually pencilled in twenty years later for a Colin Baker story but it was part of the aborted Season 23 and was scrapped when the "Trial Of A Timelord" series arc was chosen instead.

As for scores, The Celestial Toymaker comes in a little below average, though above the season average so far with a mediocre 64%. Like the Doctor's final experience with Cyril's sweets, there's a nice sweet and sticky taste but an awful pain left behind. The next episode might be called "A Holiday For The Doctor" but he needs to see a dentist first!