I had "missed" this one in my initial viewing of Classic Who thanks to the missing episodes. Long familiar with the reputation of this serial, I was never really in a rush to pursue it, further pushed by the fact I was never much of a Dodo fan.

Pleasantly, The Celestial Toymaker wasn't a miserable experience for me, but it was also just sort of a tolerable one. It's interesting to know how production around the Ark and with changing show runners as these things heavily inform the end result of The Celestial Toymaker. It does the story no favours, and once again Hartnell is just sort of awkwardly written out of most of these episodes, but Michael Gough is entertaining enough as the Toymaker. I don't love his outfit - it is very clearly evoking the very racist "mysterious Asian" trope, but the actual games Dodo and Steven are playing can be pretty creative and sometime employed an at least somewhat entertaining cast - the living playing cards were pretty fun for me, for example. I think this is also a pretty good use of Dodo, especially by the standards of this era. She is every much a part of this action as Steven, it feels. So, it was okay, but not something I'd be in a rush to revisit any time soon.