4 episodes
Aired between 2nd April 1966 and 23rd April 1966
Written by Brian Hayles
Produced by Innes Lloyd
Directed by Bill Sellars
Synopsis
The Doctor, now both invisible and intangible, speculates that there's an evil force at work that has penetrated the TARDIS. When they check the scanners for clues, nothing shows up, but the Doctor is instant that it's working correctly. Naturally curious, he users both Steven and Dodo outside to see what it is.
Once outside, the group encounter a life size childs robot with a TV screen in its chest. It shows images of Steven on Kembel, and again in France, just before the Massacre. These are supposedly the lowest times in his life. The Doctor warns him to stop looking at the screen, as it's hypnotic. He turns inexplicably visible again, and determines that they are in the realm of the Celestial Toymaker: and immortal and malevolent being. The Toymaker wants nothing more than to mess with their heads and trap them in his realm, so they become his playthings forevermore.
Dodo's picture comes up too, showing her crying on the day her mother died, but again, the Doctor warns them to stop watching. The Celestial Toymaker turns up and invites them to play some games with him, The TARDIS crew are all for turning right back around and getting out of there, but they soon discover that the Toymaker has replicated the TARDIS many times, and mixed it up among the fakes. The Toymaker laughs and disappears, along with the Doctor.
He takes him elsewhere and sends two of his clown toys to entertain Steven and Dodo whilst he pits his will against the Doctor. He informs Steven and Dodo that the clowns are adversaries, who will play a game against the companions.
If Steven and Dodo want the TARDIS back, they have to win multiple games, at the end of each game, they will be given one of the TARDIS' to open. If they lose, they will be forced to stay forever, as one of the Toymaker's dolls.
The Toymaker then turns his attention to the Doctor, explaining that he's incredibly bored, so he brought the time traveler here to play against a brilliant mind by the introduction of a Trilogic game.
The Trilogic game focuses on a pyramid of ten levels. The pyramid must be transported from point A to point C. The difficulty comes in only being able to move one piece at a time, and a larger piece can never be placed on top of a smaller piece.
Similar to the rules for Steven and Dodo, if the Doctor loses or refuses to play, he must stay forever. If he wins, they will all be given freedom. The Toymaker adds in an extra couple of twists however. Because he's got a keen mind, he gives the Doctor only 1023 moves to complete the puzzle. In addition, if the Doctor completes the Trilogic puzzle before Steven and Dodo finish their games, they lose.
The Doctor has little choice but to begin playing, but not without warning Steven and Dodo to watch out for the evil clowns first. The Toymaker takes retribution by making the Doctor intangible again, with the exception of one hand that can be used to play the game.
Elsewhere, Steven and Dodo hear the Doctor's call, and are introduced to their first game. It's an obstacle course that one player from each team must cross. The problem is, they must do it blindfolded whilst the second player tells them where to go by use of an electronic control board that farts and whistles different noises for different commands.
The Clowns go first and storm over the various obstacles, leaving Steven to don his blindfold and give it a go. As he progresses over the obstacles, one of the Clowns keeps cheating by making it harder for Steven, until he threatens to hit the Clown, Dodo finds out that the clowns blindfold was see through, and so Steven forces them to do the course again, this time with the blindfold Steven had. Sure enough, as they try, the clown falls off and loses the game. The two dolls revert to doll size, and Steven and Dodo are presented with a TARDIS, which surprise, surprise, turns out to be a hollow cabinet.
Inside the cabinet, they find a riddle "Four legs, no feet; of arms no lack, carries no burden on its back. Six deadly sisters, seven for choice; call the servants without voice".
Stepping through the TARDIS cabinet, Steven and Dodo find themselves in front of two adjoining rooms. Inside the rooms there are seven chairs in various designs (this accounts for the first part of the riddle).
The Doctor watches Steven and Dodo's progress from the Toymakers monitor, and tries to shout out which chair they need to sit in, but is stopped by the Toymaker, who silences the Doctor's voice. He decides to send the pair some new adversaries in the shape of the royal hearts from a playing card deck.
Sure enough the King, Queen, and Knave (Jack) of hearts show up, followed by their Joker.
Steven simply ignores the bumbling playing cards as if they were figments of his imagination, and works out that the second half of the riddle means they must choose one of the seven chairs to sit in; the rest will be deadly.
Dodo and Steven find some TARDIS cabinets in the adjacent room where seven dolls are dumped inside. Steven thinks these are the servants without voice, but they are unresponsive when he calls. He decides to use them anyway and gets Dodo to agree to dump them in turn on the chairs. The royal cards turn up again and see the dolls, demanding that they be shared. Although (incredibly) Dodo disagrees with hiding three of them, Steven convinces her that it's a good idea and they do just that. They share the rest of the dolls out between the two groups and begin.
The King's doll is shaken so violently by the first chair, that it's head falls off.
Dodo's doll is electrocuted.
Steven's gets its head chopped off.
The Queen's doll vanishes along with the chair.
Now believing they've run out of dolls, the King and Queen hatch a stupid plan to get their joker to sit in one, but the Joker is having none of it, and runs off. The king turns to the Knave, who equally legs it.
Whilst all this is going off, Dodo seemingly gets fed up (probably of life) and just sits down on a chair. Steven notices just in time as Dodo begins to freeze to death. With great effort, he manages to pull her free.
The Doctor is now on move 690.
Left with no option, the King and Queen agree to sit on a chair together, and have it collapse on them. This leaves one chair untried, and so Steven and Dodo have won. They are again presented with a hollow TARDIS box, and a riddle: "Hunt for the key to fit the door, that leads out on the dancing floor; then escape the rhythmic beat, or you'll forever trap your feet."
As Steven and Dodo leave the area, they see that the royals have become playing cards again, but they fail to notice the remaining three dolls coming after them until they are almost on top of them.
Luckily the next door opens inexplicably, and they are cast inside an old fashioned kitchen, where they meet their next adversaries: Mrs Wiggs and Sergeant Rugg, accompanied by an obnoxious kitchen boy. They all look very similar to the royal hearts.
Steven and Dodo ask the adversaries the direction of the dancing floor, and Mrs Wiggs cheerfully tells them that it's beyond a locked door. They then spend the next fifteen minutes searching around the kitchen for the key, whilst periodically insulting and persuading their enemy to help them. They eventually find the key in Mrs Wiggs' pie.
The Doctor's game is sped up by an annoyed Toymaker to move 813.
As Steven and Dodo escape onto the dancing floor, the Toymaker appears and threatens his toys with destruction unless they stop Steven and Dodo from finding the next TARDIS.
On the dancing floor, they encounter three ballerina dolls with the TARDIS at the far end of the room. As soon as they try to make a move towards the ship, music starts and soon, they're all forced to dance, being trapped by the ballerina's.
They all change partners until Steven ends up with Dodo, and they are able to jump off the dance floor to the TARDIS, leaving Mrs Wiggs and Sergeant Rugg to dance "forever".
Again, the TARDIS is a fake, and they receive another message: "Lady Luck will show the way, win the game or here you'll stay".
The Toymaker decides that the gloves are coming off and sends in his most ruthless and evil toy to face the final challenge - Cyril the schoolboy!
The Doctor is on move 903.
Sure enough, Steven and Dodo meet the obnoxious schoolboy who is exactly the same person as the Knave of Hearts, and the kitchen boy. He announces that the final game will be TARDIS hopscotch.
The game is to roll a dice and move along a track. The first to square fourteen gets the TARDIS. The drawback is that the squares are raised, and if they step off them, they will be instantly electrocuted.
Steven thinks it's too easy, and it is, as Cyril "forgets" to tell them that if they land on the same square, or come out of their square for any reason, they must go back to the start.
The Doctor is pushed to move 1,000
As the game progresses, Cyril tricks Dodo and Steven into returning to the start for various reasons, until he rolls a "5" and wins. As he rushes over the squares, he slips on some of his own booby trapped powder, and is fried.
Steven and Dodo make it to the TARDIS, triumphant.
The Doctor gets to move 1,022 and is allowed to materialise again. He can see that they've won and brooks no argument or persuasion from the Toymaker. Triumphant, he meets back up with Dodo and Steven and enters the TARDIS. They try to take off, but the ship refuses, alluding to the fact that the Toymaker is still holding them.
The Doctor rushes out and demands to be released, but the Toymaker says that the final move must be made, and thereby the realm will be destroyed and the TARDIS and crew will go with it (he's a very sore loser).
The Doctor asks if the Trilogic game can be moved inside the TARDIS, but the Toymaker refuses, as he knows the Doctor will preset the ship for take off and escape the realm as he makes the final move.
This inspires the Doctor, who does indeed preset the controls and calls out in the Toymakers voice to push the game forward past the final move. The Trilogic game responds, believing it to be the voice of its master, and the TARDIS dematerialises, leaving the Celestial Toymaker alone and defeated.
As the TARDIS flies through time and space, Dodo offers the Doctor a sweet from a bag the obnoxious Cyril gave to her. The Doctor does indeed take a sweet and immediately grabs his jaw in pain as he bites down.
Trivia
- The Trilogic game is real. It's supposedly played with a hundred pieces by Buddhist monks who make one move every single day. It's said that once they complete the game, the world will explode. No, I don't know why they don't just stop either.
- Remember the plan John Wiles came up with to get rid of William Hartnel without cancelling the show? Well, this is it. Some sources however said that once Innes Lloyd took over, there was a change of heart and they signed him back on for a bit.
- The more likely story that's speculated, is that they wanted to fire Hartnell, but the BBC admin automatically renewed his contract by accident, which left them having to finish the next block of recording. He will be dropped like a hot potato as soon as that's up.
- The final episode had to have a disclaimer tagged on at the end, that stated Cyrill wasn't in any way meant to represent the popular children's character "Billy Bunter".
What worked
- The clowns were a bit sinister
- There's also a hint of the sinister about the childhood toys being murderous.
- At times, Steven offers the voice of sanity, and it's quite satisfying when he seems to be as fed up with this story as we are
What didn't work
- From the looks of it, the sets were really cheap and tacky (I think because of a massive overspend on The Ark)
- Showing people playing the games is totally boring
- What's even worse than that, is the stupid scene of "hunt the thimble" in the kitchen whilst a solider and a cook argue!
- Even then, Cyril is probably the most annoying character in the entire history of Doctor Who!
- The way that Steven has to reiterate the rules every five minutes is equally as bad as Dodo happily being friendly to the playing cards, thinking everyone is innocent and wanting to help their opponents.
Overall Feelings
From start to finish this story is painful to watch. I can't even imagine young kids watching the stuff and retaining their attention. I can see that the writers were aiming for a grudge match between two titans of power, whilst Steven and Dodo were thrown into a sinister world of childhood fears. In that way, it hints of comic villains that have mastered the craft, e.g. DC's Joker, or Marvel's Arcade.
The problem is that the script was messed around with so much that it just ended up being executed with an appalling result. The sets are cheap, the rules are re-iterated numerous times in a single episode, and Dodo hasn't even got the sense to not help her opponents, and there's no explanation for the Doctor's rematerialisation at the end.
Some sources try to hint that this story is something wider than it is, taking on metaphors for society's conformation to authoritarian rule, and maybe even glimpses of communism...but even if this is the case, it's still garbage, and I find it unbelievable that some great stories were made less than a year ago, and now we're receiving this.
Rating
2 out of 10
Stupid and repetitive
Rewatchability Factor
3 out of 10
In many way's, it's worse than the Crusade.
Watch this if you liked...
- Amy's Choice (Doctor Who Series 5)
Consulting the Matrix
Are there any childhood toys / things that freak you out? If so, what?
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