The Celestial Toymaker
The Celestial Toymaker is the seventh serial of the third season of the British science fiction television programme Doctor Who. Written by Brian Hayles and directed by Bill Sellars, it was broadcast on BBC1 in four weekly parts from 2 to 23 April 1966. In the serial, the First Doctor and his travelling companions Steven Taylor and Dodo Chaplet are pitted against a powerful adversary called the Toymaker, who separates them and forces them to play a series of games.
Hayles had submitted several story ideas to Doctor Whos production team before The Celestial Toymaker was accepted. Script editor Donald Tosh redeveloped the scripts at Hayles's approval to fit within the programme's budget and means; after he resigned from the BBC, the scripts were rewritten by his successor, Gerry Davis, which Tosh disapproved. The Celestial Toymaker was Innes Lloyd's first credited work as Doctor Whos producer. Hartnell was largely absent from the second and third episodes for a holiday; the production team considered replacing him with a different actor in his absence, but his contract was renewed. Filming took place at Riverside Studios from March to April 1966.
The Celestial Toymaker received an average of 8.3 million viewers across the four episodes, an increase from the preceding serials. Contemporary reviews were mixed, though retrospective reception was generally positive, with praise for the designs, surrealism, and Gough's performance. The serial's film prints and videotapes were wiped in the 1970s, though the fourth episode was recovered in 1984; the first three episodes remain missing episodes|missing]. The Celestial Toymaker received print and audiobook adaptations, and was released on VHS and DVD with reconstructions of the missing episodes using off-air recordings; an animated version was also released on DVD and Blu-ray.
Plot
The First Doctor and his travelling companions, Steven Taylor and Dodo Chaplet, arrive in the realm of the Toymaker, an eternal being of infinite power who sets games and traps for the unwary to become his playthings. The Toymaker abducts the Doctor, who he has faced before, to his study, where he is given the Trilogic Game, a ten-piece puzzle whose pieces must all be moved and remounted in a 1,023-move sequence.Steven and Dodo face different challenges. The first is a game of blind man's buff against two clowns, who are made to replay after cheating; they lose and are transformed into dolls. Steven and Dodo enter a two-room chamber with seven chairs and a challenge from living playing cards, the King and Queen of Hearts. Steven deduces that six of the chairs are deadly to sit on; seven mannequins are provided to test on them. The King and Queen participate, and some mannequins are destroyed as seats are proven unsafe. Dodo is nearly killed by a chair that almost freezes her before Steven helps her stand. The King and Queen are trapped when they sit in a chair which folds in on them.
Steven and Dodo meet the comical Sergeant Rugg and Mrs. Wiggs, who challenge them to hunt the thimble—the key to the exit door—which Dodo finds inside Wiggs's large pie. In another room with a dancing floor, Steven and Dodo encounter the three remaining mannequins, who transform into ballerinas and start to dance. Steven and Dodo get trapped as partners with two of the ballerinas and free themselves by swapping their partners for each other. They then find themselves in a vast game of hopscotch against Cyril, who slips on a triangle he has booby-trapped and is electrocuted, before reaching the TARDIS.
In the Toymaker's study, the Doctor is at the final stage of the Trilogic Game. He reunites with Steven and Dodo, sending them into the TARDIS while the Toymaker challenges the Doctor to complete the Game. The Doctor realises that, upon making the last move and winning, the Toymaker's domain will disappear along with the TARDIS. Using the Toymaker's voice from inside the TARDIS, he orders the last piece to move, departing while the Toymaker's world is destroyed. The Doctor commemorates their victory with sweets given to Dodo by Cyril, and immediately yells in pain.
Production
Conception and writing
Freelance writer Brian Hayles submitted several story to Doctor Whos script editors in 1965, including The Dark Planet to Dennis Spooner and four to his successor, Donald Tosh. Producer John Wiles was enthusiastic about Hayles's participation in the series, having worked together on English by Television and Legend of Death. Hayles, a fan of science fiction and eager to work with Wiles again, submitted Doctor Who and the Toymaker, which received positive responses from Tosh and Wiles. Tosh suggested that the titular Toymaker be referred to as the Celestial Toymaker; at one point, he considered making the character an evil, superior member of the Doctor's race. Hayles was commissioned to write the first episode on 29 July; the script was due on 17 September, with options for a further three scripts by 1 October. Around this time, the serial was titled The Trilogic Game.Hayles delivered the first episode's script on 13 September, and the remaining three were commissioned four days later, due on 26 November; they were delivered on 16 November, 30 November, and 9 December, respectively. Tosh and Wiles sought several changes to the scripts to fit within the programme's means and budget, and to remove some darker elements; however, Hayles was busy with other work, including on the television series United!, and agreed that Tosh could redevelop the scripts. It was proposed that Tosh would be credited for the scripts and Hayles for the original idea. Hayles was commissioned for two more serials—The White Witch and The Hands of Aten—in November 1965, but his submissions were declined in January 1966 as they did not match the vision of the incoming production team.
Tosh's rewrites in late 1965 altered several games and described the Toymaker as "a happy looking occidental Mandarin character". He sent his rewritten scripts of the third and fourth episodes to Hayles in mid-January 1966 and thanked him for allowing him to "massacre" his original work, which he called "bloody good scripts". Wiles and Tosh resigned from the BBC in January, replaced by Innes Lloyd and Gerry Davis, respectively. Lloyd, assigned as producer by Savory and series creator Sydney Newman, trailed Wiles during work on the previous serial, The Ark; The Celestial Toymaker was his first credited work on the programme. Bill Sellars was assigned the serial's director. He was happy with the scripts, though they required some expansion; Tosh was paid for his rewrite on 25 January, and Wiles approved them on 16 February.
Tosh considered including characters named Charles and Marjorie, named after his own uncle and aunt. He renamed them George and Margaret, characters originally referenced but unseen in a 1937 play by Gerald Savory ; Tosh wanted the characters to finally be seen in The Celestial Toymaker. Shortly before production began, Savory changed his mind and approved for Davis to rewrite the scripts in four days to replace George and Margaret with other characters. Davis had also taken issue with the scripts' "pseudo-smart Noël Coward" dialogue, which he found too "precious" for the audience. Tosh and Wiles disapproved of the rewrites, with the former disliking the "banal" dialogue and the latter feeling the Doctor's storyline had become secondary; he complained to Savory that they did not do justice to the original work. Hayles, however, told Davis he was happy with the final scripts; he received the sole writing credit after Tosh asked to be removed.
Dudley Simpson recorded around 16 minutes of incidental music for the serial in four-hour sessions on 21 and 22 February, using several instruments to evoke different tones. The sound accompanying the moves in the Trilogic Game were made with wood blocks and cymbals. John Wood was the designer; he based the giant robots on a Japanese tin toy owned by his son. The Toymaker's office set included a dollhouse partly based on Queen Mary's Dolls' House; an early idea was to have figures like children moving inside the house, and Wood later regretted making it so large as it no longer resembled a dollhouse. The script described the Toymaker's office as "the modern equivalent of an eighteenth-century gentleman's study-cum-library.... ultra-modern but extremely comfortable". All seven sets fit within the studio. The opening episode was Doctor Whos first to display a flashback to a previous serial, as Steven watches a clip of himself from The Daleks' Master Plan.
Casting and characters
William Hartnell was largely absent from the second and third episodes as the Doctor is rendered invisible; Hartnell was on holiday during filming. As his contract was due to expire during the serial, the production team considered replacing him with a different actor when he reappeared, partly due to Hartnell's fragile health and conflict with the team; however, before this could be enacted, Hartnell's contract was renewed on 15 February 1966. Peter Purves and Jackie Lane enjoyed the episode as their characters, Steven and Dodo, were featured extensively and independently. Lane was happy with her outfit, which she had shopped for in Knightsbridge, though Purves felt his pullover made him look fat. Hartnell had a better relationship with Davis and Lloyd than their predecessors, though Purves sought more humour and felt Lloyd, like Wiles, took his work too seriously. Purves acquired the prop of the Trilogic Game after production as it was one of his favourite serials, though he felt it gave him bad luck.Lloyd wanted his era on Doctor Who to feature believable characters played by talented actors. Michael Gough was cast as the Toymaker; he had liked some earlier episodes of the programme and enjoyed working on the serial, though he struggled to understand the scripts and found Hartnell occasionally difficult to work with. The Toymaker's coat, described in the script as "a splendid-looking bejewelled floor-length coat", was reused from Marco Polo. Campbell Singer and Carmen Silvera were originally cast as George and Margaret; Sellars had previously directed Silvera on Compact, and he later cast Singer in The Newcomers. The actors remained contracted after the characters were replaced, ultimately playing three roles each: Singer as Joey, King of Hearts, and Sergeant Rugg, and Silvera as Clara, Queen of Hearts, and Mrs. Wiggs. Joey's communication via horn instead of voice was inspired by Harpo Marx, while Clara's rising speech pattern was inspired by the all clear air raid siren. Make-up assistant Sylvia James painted Silvera's face as the Queen of Hearts using carmine pigment, which required scouring powder to remove after filming.
Choreography for the third episode's dancing game was provided by Tutte Lemkow, who had previously appeared in Marco Polo as well as The Crusade and The Myth Makers ; his participation was limited as he was sick with the flu. Several lines of Purves and Lane's dialogue were pre-recorded to allow them to focus on their movements. Beryl Braham, Ann Harrison, and Delia Linden portrayed the ballerina dolls. Braham and Linden recalled that they had no time to warm up before recording; the former was bruised and in tears from the pain and cold. It was Linden's first work in television; she did not recall Lemkow's involvement, only remembering being given simple dancing instructions and told to be "menacing" and "expressionless".
Peter Stephens portrayed the Knave of Hearts, Kitchen Boy, and Cyril. The script described the latter as "a 'Billy Bunter' of a boy", though Davis had suggested the character be more like the Artful Dodger from Charles Dickens's Oliver Twist. Cyril says his nickname is "Billy", though this was not in the script. Literary agent Hope Leresche, on behalf of the estate of Billy Bunter creator Frank Richards, complained about the depiction on 18 April; the BBC clarified that the character was pretending to be like Billy, and a continuity announcement was made before the fourth episode to apologise "for any apparent similarity". Newspaper reports claimed that viewers had complained to the BBC about Cyril, believing that Billy Bunter would not have been so cruel to Steven and Dodo.
Filming
Early 35 mm filming took place at Ealing Studios on 2 and 3 March 1966. Albert Wand was hired as a double for Hartnell's hand, as the character was invisible; Hartnell recorded several lines of dialogue to be dubbed into the first, second, and fourth episodes. Rehearsals for the serial started on 21 March, and weekly recording began on 18 March in Studio 1 of Riverside Studios. Two camera images were superimposed to achieve the effect of the Toymaker appearing and vanishing when talking to Steven and Dodo, though some shots simply used specific camera angles instead. Frank Cresswell's studio lighting during blind man's buff in the first episode became progressively darker to indicate the game had become more menacing.The first three episodes displayed the Toymaker's riddle on screen before the closing credits. The final episode was recorded on 8 April. The destruction of the Toymaker's world was depicted using 38 inches of 35 mmstock footage from the BBC's film library. The Celestial Toymaker had a limited budget due to the expensive production of The Ark: the first two episodes were budgeted at and but cost more, while the last two were budgeted at each but cost less to offset; the fourth, at, is the cheapest Doctor Who episode ever recorded. The serial cost a total of .
Reception
Broadcast and ratings
Episode is missingThe Celestial Toymaker was broadcast on BBC1 in four weekly parts from 2 to 23 April 1966. Viewership saw an increase from the two preceding serials, attributed to the later 5:50 p.m. timeslot; the first two episodes received 8 million viewers, increasing to 9.4 million for the third and dropping to 7.4 million for the fourth. Viewed by 15.6% of the UK population. the fourth episode was the beginning of the programme's collapse in ratings, which lasted for five months until Hartnell's departure. Doctor Who was the fifth-most-watched children's programme for April, with an estimated 4.45 million households watching the first, third, and fourth episodes. The Appreciation Index scores were low, dropping to 43 for the fourth episode and continuing a downward that hit its nadir in the next serial. The serial was sold extensively overseas from 1966 to 1973; BBC Enterprises stopped offering it for sale by 1974. The film prints were junked by 1973, and the 405-line videotapes were wiped by 1976. A 16 mm telerecording of the last episode was recovered in the ABC's vaults in Australia in early 1984, returned to the BBC Film and Videotape Library the following month. Only off-air audio recordings exist for the first three episodes; no telesnaps were captured.
Critical response
Leicester Mercurys A.B. criticised the serial's "ugliness and general unwholesomeness". Junior Points of View viewers complained about the Doctor's difficulty with the Trilogic Game as many found it easy, and one criticised the Doctor eating "a sweet given... by an enemy". A third of Audience Research Report respondents disliked the fourth episode, criticising the lacklustre game, "ham" acting, and "fantasy gone mad", though many praised the performances, clever scripts, and welcome departure from "the more obvious horrors like Daleks and monsters". The Celestial Toymakers positive reputation was reevaluated after its recovery; Doctor Who Magazine readers ranked it the eighth-best First Doctor story in 1998 but it dropped to 23rd in 2023.Several retrospective reviews lauded Gough's performance as the Toymaker; Radio Timess Patrick Mulkern wrote that he "exudes menace", and Doctor Who Magazines Jamie Lenman felt the role filled "the authority gap left by" Hartnell's absence. David J. Howe and Stephen James Walker considered the character to be the serial's "greatest legacy to the Doctor Who universe". Mark Clapham, Eddie Robson, and Jim Smith lauded Purves's performance in Hartnell's absence, and Mulkern described his work as "capable" and Lane's as "her best outing" on the programme, while Lenman enjoyed the performances of Silvera, Stephens, and Singer.
Paul Cornell, Martin Day, and Keith Topping of The Discontinuity Guide called the serial "an unqualified success" at exploring surrealism, and Mulkern described it as "a triumph", praising the costumes, designs, and Simpson's score. Fantasy Empires John Peel lauded the story and villain, calling the serial "a rare treat, a blend of magical qualities", and Peter Haining considered it a sinister version of a Brothers Grimm tale. Clapham, Robson, and Smith called the story "quietly sinister in its abuse of the iconography of childhood", though felt it had been toned down in rewriting. Valerie Estelle Frankel felt the childrens' games emphasised Dodo's childlike treatment by the Doctor and Steven. Mark Campbell found the serial "not as interesting as its reputation might suggest", and Starbursts Paul Mount criticised the storyline's "sluggish pace and repetitive nature" and the confusing, uninteresting games. Doctor Who Magazines Jacqueline Rayner liked the story's concept but found it "terminally dull in execution", and Clayton Hickman thought the games were boring to watch.
Commercial releases
A novelisation of The Celestial Toymaker was written by Alison Bingeman with input and a foreword by Davis. It was published in hardback by W. H. Allen on 19 June 1986, and in paperback by Target Books on 20 November 1986, with a cover by Graham Potts. Target reissued the paperback with a cover by Alister Pearson on 3 December 1992. Fine Arts Casing released a bust of the Toymaker in 1986 and a model figurine in 1987, while Harlequin Miniatures released metal figurines of the First Doctor from the serial in December 1997 and the Toymaker in January 1998.The off-air recording of the serial was released on CD by BBC Worldwide on 2 April 2001, with linking narration by Purves; it was included, alongside digital copies of the scripts, in The Lost TV Episodes: Collection Two by BBC Audiobooks on 14 February 2011, and released on vinyl by Demon Records on 30 September 2022. The existing fourth episode was included in the VHS Doctor Who: The Hartnell Years, released by BBC Video on 3 June 1991, and the DVD Lost in Time, published by BBC Worldwide on 1 November 2004. The releases obscured or removed the utterance of a racial slur during a character's recital of "Eeny, meeny, miny, moe", including by masking with Purves's narration.
Animated reconstruction
BBC Studios released an animated version of The Celestial Toymaker on DVD and Blu-ray on 10 June 2024. A limited edition SteelBook version was also available. The release includes black-and-white and colour versions, a documentary on the animations, audio commentaries, restoration of the fourth episode, and a 73-minute feature of cast members in an escape room. Australian company Shapeshifter Studio created the 3D animations using motion capture, allowing actors to physically perform movements atop the off-air recordings, as well as facial capture for lip syncing. The first episode was directed by David Devjak, who co-directed the second with Chloe Grech, while Adam Boys directed the third and fourth. Audio engineer Mark Ayres enhanced the original soundtrack and added new sound effects.Producer Gary Russell found Shapeshifter's involvement appropriate, given Australia's history with Doctor Who. Shapeshifter worked with Big Finish Creative on Doctor Who animations from 2015 and convinced the BBC to experiment with 3D animations with The Web of Fear in 2019; after its mixed response, the company worked to improve its techniques, including moving to a larger motion capture studio with more performers, and the BBC approved its use for The Celestial Toymaker. Shapeshifter worked on the project for around 18 months from August 2022. They rebuilt their pipeline and introduced new software, animating with Unreal Engine and Houdini.
The animators wanted to avoid a hyperrealistic style, instead opting for a painterly look in line with previous 2D Doctor Who animations; the directors sought to pay respects to the original material while trying new approaches to make the world richer, and Russell wanted the animation to be scarier and more "psychedelic". He felt the existing fourth episode exposed the production's cheapness and wanted to take advantage of the new technology. Devjak found the story's location—the first Doctor Who serial outside of the observable universe, where the same rules do not apply—made it the most appropriate for the animation style. The animators used behind-the-scenes photographs as guidelines, particularly for the colours. They pitched several ideas early in production, and were able to maintain most for the final product. Ayres acknowledged the animation style was "experimental" and could "divide opinion" but felt the techniques had been refined and improved since The Web of Fear.
Starbursts Mount noted the animation style was divisive among fans but found it "much more unnerving and convincing than anything the tiny Riverside Studios in London could possibly hope to achieve in 1966"; he praised the fluid animations of Steven, Dodo, and the Toymaker, though felt the Doctor "looks a bit like a caricature" and criticised the escape room feature as "unwatchable". Doctor Who Magazines Lenman similarly enjoyed the creative liberties, no longer confined to the original sets, though found some of the animations awkward. Purves approved of the animations and found the technique impressive. The animations were screened at BFI Southbank in March 2024 and added to BBC iPlayer in December 2025.
Sequels
The Toymaker has returned in several sequels to The Celestial Toymaker. He was originally set to return in Graham Williams's The Nightmare Fair in season 23 before it was cancelled; Williams novelised the story in May 1989, and his scripts were adapted as part of Big Finish Productions's The Lost Stories in November 2009, with David Bailie portraying the Toymaker. The character returned in several comic strips for Doctor Who Magazine, including John Peel's The Greatest Gamble in 1981 and Alan Barnes's Endgame in 1996, as well as in Gary Russell's novel Divided Loyalties in October 1999 and Matthew Sweet's audio story The Magic Mousetrap in April 2009.Bailie reprised the role in John Dorney's audio story Solitaire in June 2010. The character later appeared in George Mann and Cavan Scott's comic story Relative Dimensions in December 2015 and Jacqueline Rayner's short stories "Murder in the Dark" and "Trick or Treat" in September 2017. More than 57 years after the Toymaker's last appearance on television, the character returned as the antagonist in "The Giggle", the third and final of the 60th anniversary specials in 2023, portrayed by Neil Patrick Harris; writer Russell T Davies avoided reference to the character's "Celestial" moniker as it can derogatorily refer to China. The Toymaker was portrayed by Annette Badland—the character's first female representation—in Aurora Fearnley's audio drama Matryoshka in June 2024.