The Celestial Toymaker (1966) Review

René and Edith have certainly been through hell lately...

The Celestial Toymaker would be fun if it existed in its entirety. And had interesting sets.
Oh well.

The Doctor and co. are captured by the Doctor Who version of Q, who wants to play deadly games with them in his own reality. It's not entirely clear what the endgame is(at times, he wants the Doctor to become his eternal combatant, at other times, he'd "hate for him to lose"), but it's bad. While the Doctor plays "the trilogic game", Steven and Dodo are forced to play other childish challenges with various cartoon characters.

William Hartnell spends most of his time as a disembodied hand.

Dodo has quickly become my second favorite companion. I think I actually might have a crush on her. It's the doe-like attitude which appeals to me. Just click here to see what I mean.

Steven doesn't work with Dodo at all. He's just too intense and serious throughout the story, not accepting that it's meant to be silly. Yes, not for the characters, but for the actors and for the audience. They have no chemistry.

My favorite villain of the lot was the sinister schoolboy Cyril, who could've easily been the Toymaker himself instead of Michael "Go from move *insert number*" Gough who quite frankly, was a little bland(heresy, but truth) as the Toymaker. Like Steven, he took himself far too seriously. Cyril was funny, he kept your attention, he bended the rules and he was a little annoying(intentionally so).

While the games themselves were mostly enjoyable despite the reconstructed nature of the episodes(god, I would've wanted to see Episode 1), the dialogue was badly written and silly. I did say Dodo was right not to take it too seriously, but believing the phantoms were real or at least trying to help them was a bad idea. They might've been real, but sure as heck they were under the Toymaker's control. And seriously, Cyril's trick was just baffling in its stupidity.

Another example is when Steven asked the Toymaker twice in one conversation, what would happen if they lost. And then Dodo pointing out he never asked about the Doctor when in fact he did. Bad dialogue, very bad.

The games were enjoyable yes, but with the exception of the "hunt the key" game, impossible to follow(I knew the rules, but I didn't know what was happening).

Despite its flaws, The Celestial Toymaker was ahead of its time and I certainly would've liked to see the Colin Baker counterpart they were planning to make(no, I'm not listening to audio any time soon).