The Dancing Floor (The Celestial Toymaker Episode 3)

The one with a food fight in a kitchen...

William Hartnell has hardly been in his own TV series these last few weeks. His part in The Massacre of St Bartholomew's Eve was much reduced (despite him having two roles to play!), and his physical presence has been absent from episodes 2 and 3 of The Celestial Toymaker. The fact the Doctor is both invisible and mute for much of this story means poor old Michael Gough has nobody to bounce off, and ends up talking to himself mostly. He does get a brief exchange with Sergeant Rugg and Mrs Wigg, but other than that, Gough is virtually performing a monologue. Shame.

Rugg and Wigg are this week's characters for Campbell Singer and Carmen Silvera to bring to life, and once again they come up trumps. Brian Hayles doesn't so much write characters in The Celestial Toymaker as conjure caricatures, so there's not much depth for your average actor to dig into. By all accounts, there were probably too many voices trying to be heard in the production of this story - producer John Wiles had his preferences, and so too did outgoing script editor Donald Tosh and his replacement Gerry Davies - so it's hard to know just how much depth Hayles gave his creations, but I'd wager what we get is a good example of what he wrote. Which is not much.

Obviously keen to make a good fist of it, Singer and Silvera leap off the screen (or out of the speaker!) with some colourful, larger-than-life performances. Singer makes Sergeant Rugg full of bluster, all mouth and no trousers. Rugg has a go at Steven for not coming up to scratch, for not being enough of a man, but as soon as Steven challenges him (and let's face it, it doesn't take much to get a rise out of Steven), Rugg backs down.

Dodo gets on Rugg's good side by flattering his pomposity, and manages to get him to help look for the key to the door out of Mrs Wigg's kitchen. Dodo treats these characters as people, real human beings, typified by her exchange with Steven at the end where she hopes Rugg and Wigg are safe because she found them "rather funny". When Steven reminds her that they are figments of the Toymaker's imagination, mere "phantoms", she admonishes him for not seeing in them their real humanity. "They have wills and minds of their own," insists Dodo. "They really do have a secret life of their own... Why do they lose to us? And always through doing something silly and human."

She's right. They may have started life as wooden dolls or playing cards, but when given a corporeal existence by the Toymaker, they are, to all intents and purposes, alive. They live and breath and think and feel and laugh and scheme, just like real people do. And they value their newfound existence, resorting to cheating at the games in order to preserve their existence. It's about the only aspect of The Celestial Toymaker with any real depth, and I'm glad Steven and Dodo pause briefly in that cupboard to mull it over.

Otherwise, The Dancing Floor is probably the weakest of the three so far. It's even more visual than the other two, believe it or not, involving a treasure hunt in a kitchen, and then a deadly waltz on a ballroom dance floor. I'd normally find it rather incongruous, seeing a kitchen in Doctor Who, but when you think about it, there are more kitchens than you first think. There's the obvious Kandy Kitchen from The Happiness Patrol, and the infamous Security Kitchen from The Ark, but there's also Locusta's kitchen in The Romans, and the Monk's rudimentary kitchen in The Time Meddler. Beyond that there's Mrs Farrel's CSO kitchen in Terror of the Autons, Shockeye's in The Two Doctors, and the Rezzies' in Paradise Towers. There are plenty more too, with many featured prominently in the new series, such as Jackie Tyler's kitchen, Lady Eddison's in The Unicorn and the Wasp, and Craig and Sophie's in Closing Time.

I'm getting sidetracked by listing all of the kitchens that have ever appeared in Doctor Who. Silly sausage! But frankly, it's more interesting than much of what happens in The Dancing Floor, which largely consists of the racket of Sergeant Rugg and Mrs Wigg throwing crockery and food at one another ("Look at the kitchen!" scolds the Toymaker), or the sound of Steven and Dodo's enforced waltz on the dancing floor. I'm actually quite glad I can't see the dancing floor scene, because I can only imagine how awkward and embarrassed Peter Purves was, and how silly it all looked.

The Dancing Floor is a cross between 1980s kids' show The Adventure Game and a particularly juvenile Carry On film, and apart from Singer and Silvera trying their hardest to justify their Equity membership, there's little to commend it (the colour photos reveal some beautiful set and costume design, however).

The episode ends with a reappearance of Peter Stephens as Cyril, this time dressed as a "fat, jolly schoolboy", as the Toymaker puts it - "the most deadly character of them all because he looks so innocent". Going by Stephens's past work on this serial, it doesn't bode well. YA-ROOOO!

Lady Luck will show the way;

Win the game, or here you'll stay.

Perish the thought...

First broadcast: April 16th 1966

Steve's Scoreboard
The Good: Only Campbell Singer and Carmen Silvera are really trying here. After all, it's basically a three-week showreel for them.
The Bad: Food fights are always tedious, but when they last as long as this, it's just lazy storytelling.
Overall score for episode: ★★★☆☆☆☆☆☆☆

NEXT TIME: The Final Test...

My reviews of this story's other episodes: The Celestial Toyroom (episode 1); The Hall of Dolls (episode 2); 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