The Celestial Toyroom (The Celestial Toymaker Episode 1)

The one where the Doctor is made both invisible and intangible...

The big problem with The Celestial Toymaker is that you can't watch it. If you look at the beautiful full colour photos that were taken on set, and then listen to the off-air soundtrack recorded by David Holman, your heart sinks. Because The Celestial Toymaker looks stunning. It's just a shame that we can only listen to it, because that makes for a very different, and much less rewarding, experience, sadly...

As the episode begins we're reminded of what happened at the end of The Bomb, when the Doctor seemed to disappear in the TARDIS. Dodo understandably attributes this to the Refusians from The Ark (because they too were invisible and intangible), but it seems a much more sinister force is responsible for this jiggery-pokery.

Dodo also wonders why the Doctor needs to open the TARDIS doors to get out if he is intangible. Why not just walk through the doors, she asks. Quite right too. This girl's been sleeping in the knife drawer, it seems. So far - four and a bit episodes in - I'm still quite liking Dodo as a character. She comes in for a lot of stick from fandom, but so far she's been energetic, feisty and inquisitive, all things the best companions should be. And Jackie Lane has given a strong performance every time the writer demands it of her, delivering her lines with conviction and pep.

The Toymaker is a fascinating creation. He adores games, and simply wants to be entertained by either playing games or watching others do so. He exists within a realm of his own making, where he controls the environment, like a magician. Quite why he dresses as a Mandarin is unexplained, but thank goodness the make-up supervisor Sonia Markham didn't choose to give Michael Gough slanted eyes and a droopy Fu Manchu moustache too! Gough performs the Toymaker with a genial self-confidence. He is a man who believes utterly in his abilities, and cannot conceive of his playthings turning against him or outsiders winning his games.

He has been waiting for the Doctor to return to his realm for a long time. The Doctor finds the Toymaker's domain "somewhat familiar" (I love the fact Dodo finds it "dead boring!"), and describes his adversary as a "power for evil". The fact the Doctor and the Toymaker have met before is intriguing. Is the Toymaker another of the Doctor's own race, like the similarly playful meddling Monk? There's a lot to learn about this character, but the truth is, he could just as easily have been Peter Butterworth's Monk, back again to wreak his revenge. He could've become the First Doctor's arch-nemesis!

While the Doctor is forced to play the rather dull Trilogic Game with the Toymaker - in which he must move some counters around a board in precisely 1,023 moves, while invisible - Steven and Dodo have to play a deadly game of Blind Man's Buff with two of the meddling Mandarin's golems, Joey and Clara the clowns. These characters are actually wooden dolls which the Toymaker lifts from his Victorian dolls' house and brings to corporeal life. Clara speaks with an ear-splittingly shrill voice which would smash Alpha Centauri's windows (and she's hard to listen to because of this), while Joey can only communicate using sound, either a comedy squeezy bulb horn or a bicycle bell, not unlike Harpo Marx.

Joey and Clara are quite annoying (especially Clara), but there's a hidden depth to them if you look hard enough. They are wooden toys made flesh by the Toymaker. They've essentially been given some form of rudimentary life or existence, if only to play a silly game with two complete strangers. So no wonder they're desperate to hang on to this new-found existence. At first I wondered why the clowns would cheat if the Toymaker gets so much enjoyment out of seeing people playing his games. Cheating is not sportsmanlike and spoils everybody's enjoyment. But if you consider that Joey and Clara may be as keen on winning as Steven and Dodo are (for the same survivalist reasons), then their rule-breaking behaviour is understandable. At the end Dodo shudders as she sees the clowns have been regressed back to "twisted wooden dolls" (as the BBC Soundtrack narration puts it), and there is a tiny element of sadness in that demise, is there not?

As an aside here, there's a moment where Dodo asks Steven to help Joey, who's teetering precariously on the assault course and is about to lose/ die. But Steven - the cold-hearted pragmatist that he is - simply says: "It's him or us". He's no hero. He's not the kind of man who risks his life for others, like Ian was, and the Doctor is. He's a much more self-centred character. This has never been clearer to me than in Destruction of Time, when the Doctor sends Sara and Steven back to the TARDIS, but while Steven dutifully obeys, Sara - who hardly knows the Doctor really - risks her life to help him, and stays back. Then there's that moment in A Battle of Wits when Vicki laments the apparent loss of the TARDIS to the ocean, and Steven heartlessly tells her to stop "moping about" ("Whatever's happened down there, it's happened"). He's a tough nut, is Steven Taylor.

It's not a lot of fun listening to Steven and Dodo play these games. It's all so unapologetically visual that not being able to see it renders the episode pretty pointless. There's a lot of physical activity and only the odd snatch of meaningful dialogue, so the soundtrack is sadly disappointing in that sense. You need to be able to see The Celestial Toyroom, but unless someone discovers the original tapes, we only have this sound recording to judge it by. This is going to be a hard slog...

Four legs, no feet;

Of arms, no lack;

It carries no burden on its back;

Six deadly sisters, seven for choice;

Call the servants without voice.

First broadcast: April 2nd, 1966

Steve's Scoreboard
The Good: The idea behind the story is really intriguing and fun, and has lots of potential.
The Bad: Carmen Silvera's voice for Clara is ear-piercingly awful.
Overall score for episode: ★★★★★☆☆☆☆☆

NEXT TIME: The Hall of Dolls...

My reviews of this story's other episodes: The Hall of Dolls (episode 2); The Dancing Floor (episode 3); The Final Test (episode 4)

Find out birth/death dates, career information, and facts and trivia about this story's cast and crew at the Doctor Who Cast & Crew site: http://doctorwhocastandcrew.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/the-celestial-toymaker.html

The soundtrack to The Celestial Toymaker is available on BBC CD. Find it on Amazon - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Doctor-Who-Celestial-Brian-Hayles/dp/0563478551. The existing episode 4, The Final Test, can be found on the Lost in Time DVD set - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Doctor-Who-Lost-Time-DVD/dp/B0002XOZW4