I’ve always been a fan of this story ever since seeing the existing part four – The Final Test – on The Hartnell Years VHS release.  With 3 episodes missing it was also turned into a reconstruction by the magic hands of Loose Cannon and is, I think, one of their best recons.

So it was a bit of a surprise when over recent years I’ve seen the story fall from favour amongst fandom.  It’s funny how these things happen (and always makes me despair at the negative attitude of a lot of fans towards Moffat’s Doctor Who).  Stories which were revered are re-examined and re-evaluated by fans and sometimes their faults become more obvious and fans become less forgiving.  Conversely, stories which were traditionally seen as the dregs of the series are championed by larger and larger groups of fans.  This is why I can’t see the point of fans constantly complaining about ‘new’ Who.  Give it 10 years and suddenly they’ll be a bunch of fans who adore The Rings of Akhaten, Nightmare in Silver or In the Forest of the Night.  Others will emerge who are bored by The Empty Child.

The Celestial Toymaker was one of those stories which ‘received fan wisdom’ told us was wonderful.  It spawned a fan favourite in the Toymaker – a villain who has returned in comic strips, novels and audio.  He was even to return in the aborted Season 23 in a story now available for us to experience thanks to the efforts of Big Finish.  But suddenly, fans don’t like it any more.  Now I’m not saying ‘fan wisdom’ should ever be taken as verbatim.  Indeed, I strongly believe fan wisdom is a fallacy.  Our fan language (our ‘fanguage’, if you like) was moulded and set in the 70s, 80s and 90s by the upper echelons – fans such as Jeremy Bentham and Ian Levine.  Fans who ‘remembered’ the stories when they were broadcast; fans who wrote the articles in Doctor Who Weekly, Monthly and Magazine.  They told us what was good and what wasn’t.  The Celestial Toymaker was good.  The  Gunfighters was bad.  Genesis of the Daleks was good.  Revenge of the Cybermen was bad.  All of Season 24 was a travesty.  And so it went on.  Statistics like audience appreciation figures and viewing figures were wheeled out to prove points with little or no context.  In pre-internet days we knew no better.  It was only as these stories started appearing on VHS, and latterly DVD, that fans started to realise maybe we had been misled a little all these years.  Suddenly people were saying they enjoyed The Gunfighters.  There were even people not convinced by the glory of Genesis of the Daleks and – shock horror – someone even liked Delta and the Bannermen enough to make it their username online and have it as a theme for their 40th Birthday cake…

And it seems the poor old Celestial Toymaker has plummeted in favour.  But I still rather like it, although maybe more for the potential than for the realisation.

Negatives out of the way first.  The Doctor’s role in the story is terrible.  The whole trilogic game is dull as ditchwater and it is rendered even more ridiculous on audio with Peter Purves intoning lines like ‘2 moves on to 4 and 3 on to 8’ with as much drama as he can muster.  The absence of the Doctor is something the series has dealt with well on numerous occasions both before this story and since.  Unfortunately, I think the behind the scenes ructions and the possibility of replacing Hartnell as the Doctor, have led to a quick fix solution which isn’t very satisfying.

Dodo, in this story, is hugely irritating.  The script can’t make up its mind whether she is scared of the Toymaker’s domain or entertained by the games and fun.  She is ridiculously naïve around the Toymaker’s minions and it’s a wonder Steven doesn’t leave her to her fate when, even in the final episode, she’s is falling for Cyril’s tricks.

Whilst I like the games Steven and Dodo are forced to play, and the characters they play against, it is frustrating that, time after time, they win the game merely due to the mistakes of the other ‘team’.  There is a real sense of them merely blundering through each stage of the contest and winning purely by luck rather than ingenuity or cunning.  It’s a shame, because more could have been made of them sussing out the Toymaker’s  modus operandi and maybe playing him at his own game by the third or fourth episodes.  As it is, they approach each game as if it’s their first with Dodo even stating ‘I think I’m going to enjoy this game’ before embarking on TARDIS Hopscotch in the final episode.  It doesn’t make sense that they don’t learn anything from the earlier games and it undermines Steven and Dodo as characters.

So what do I like?  I think Michael Gough is great as the Toymaker and I can see why the character was a fan favourite for returning is various comics, novels and audios.  The concept of an all-mighty being that delights in playing twisted versions of familiar games is ripe with potential.  I know a criticism that’s levelled at this story is that the potential isn’t realised but I disagree.  The musical killer chairs is a great sequence with each chair killing in a different way; the version on the Loose Cannon recon of the demise of the King and Queen of Hearts is chilling, although admittedly we have no way of knowing how that was realised on screen.  I also rather enjoy the hunt the key/dancing floor games.  The idea of being trapped on a dance floor with no control over your actions has echoes of fairy tales such as Snow White (which saw the Wicked Queen put into hot iron shoes and made to dance to her death).

I also love the different characters the Toymaker sets against Steven and Dodo.  Carmen Silvera, Campbell Singer and Peter Stephens are all great, particularly Silvera and Singer who manage to give three very different characters in each episode.  Clowns are always spooky and the silent Joey and the slightly hysterical Clara work well, I think.  Sergeant Rugg and Mrs Wigg and their verbal battles are also lots of fun but the best of the bunch, for me, are the King and Queen of Hearts.  It is from these characters that we get more hints as to who these creations are.  Steven keeps asserting that they are just toys brought to life but I think the script hints to us that they are more than this.  They are previous victims of the Toymaker – ones who lost the games he forced them to play.  The King and Queen act autonomously, willing to sacrifice the Joker and the Knave in an attempt to win and be released from their servitude.  The Toymaker refers to them as ‘the Heart family’.  Could this actually be a family caught in his world – ‘the Hart family’ for instance.  Likewise, Rugg and Wigg.  I can see how Rugg or Wigg may have been caught in a deal with the Toymaker much as we see in the comic and novels which came later.  Cyril, too, with his cheating ways, could easily be a human desperate to escape and amoral enough not to care what happens to Steven or Dodo in his stead.  Look at his ‘yaroo!’ when he thinks he’s won, enough to forget his trap of slippery powder and fall to his death.  Those are the actions of a human, a desperate human.

It could be argued that these implications are aspects of character I’m applying after the fact.  Having read Divided Loyalties, read Endgame or listened to The Nightmare Fair, where different authors have extrapolated the concept of the Toymaker, his power, his minions and his world, maybe I’m retconning the characters and events of The Celestial Toymaker and seeing things that aren’t necessarily in the script as written or produced.  But then, does that matter.  Not really.

The climax of the story, with the Doctor restored but unable to complete the game lest he destroys himself along with the Toymaker’s world is a good ending too.  It is a battle of wits that fits the two characters, especially as they seem to know each other of old.  The concept, too, that despite the Toymaker’s world ending, he, as an entity, will go on to build new worlds, is also tantalising.  The widening of the Doctor Who mythos to include these ‘god-like’ entities is important as it isn’t something the series had ever really touched on before.  Whether retro-fitting the Toymaker into the same pantheon as the Black and White Guardians, as later fiction does, is a successful extrapolation is a discussion for another time but even just the titbits of information we are given here are enough to intrigue.

This is, of course, something that Russell T Davies seems to be running with in the 15th Doctor's first series after the return of the Toymaker in The Giggle.  It's interesting that the show is finally exploring some of the potential housed in The Celestial Toymaker that I saw myself.  I am also looking forward to the soon-to-be released animated version of this story which also looks as though it will be exploring the potential of this story.

A curio.