Doctor Who Project: The Celestial Toymaker

I’m not sure that I like these clowns!

As we near the end of Doctor Who‘s third season, the Doctor and his intrepid companions have confronted many foes since in 1963: dastardly Daleks, malicious Monoids, tetchy Trojans, and an aggressive Animus, to name a few. So perhaps we can forgive whoever commissioned Brian Hayles to provide the Doctor with his most frightful opponents yet in “The Celestial Toymaker” (Story Production Code Y)—clowns. And also an overgrown schoolboy, characters from a pantomime, and some living playing cards.

In fairness, the notion of the Doctor meeting an immortal gamemaster, the eponymous Celestial Toymaker, who seeks to entrap the Doctor for all time as a worthy opponent, sounds quite promising. With his mind alone, the Toymaker (Michael Gough) has the power to affect the TARDIS and the Doctor himself, making him a more dangerous foe than any the Doctor has yet met. And, more to the point, the Doctor has met him before and escaped.

Screencap of The Celestial Toymaker via the BBC

While most of the stories to this point have featured lead-outs from the prior story, providing a thin narrative continuity, “The Celestial Toymaker” continues referring to the events on “The Ark” for a good portion of the first episode. The Toymaker has the ability to make the Doctor disappear and become intangible, changes taken at first to be linked the similarly incorporeal Refusians. It’s not until the Doctor realizes that he is confronting the Toymaker that he definitively dismisses the notion that the Refusians are involved:

Well, I don’t think it was the Refusians’ influence that made me become intangible. No! I think it was something here, and I don’t like the feel of the place any more than you do, but, ah, we have to face up to it. You know, I think I was meant to come here.

The Toymaker seems to have the measure of the Doctor. He realized that getting the Doctor out of the TARDIS was a simple matter of blanking the screens, knowing that his insatiable curiosity would lead him to investigate. And the Doctor, for his part, acknowledges that the Toymaker is a notorious figure who lures unwary travelers to his realm in order to trap them, for his own amusement. The Toymaker does seem to adhere to a particular set of rules, however, and he offers the Doctor, Steven, and Dodo the chance to escape, by winning his games, albeit games tilted to his favor.

A battle of wits between old foes should be in the offing; instead, we get electrified hopscotch and two episodes of a disembodied hand playing Solitaire. Oh, yes, and the clowns.

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Doctor Who Project: The Ark

Remember your journey is very important, young man. Therefore, you must travel with understanding as well as hope.

No sooner do we see Dodo running into the TARDIS than we see her running back out, into a jungle. In a spaceship. With an elephant. Wearing medieval clothing. (Dodo, not the elephant.) All watched over by a single-eyed humanoid creature. Paul Erickson and Lesley Scott waste no time getting the narrative going in “The Ark” (Story Production Code X), cutting from a lushly realized jungle setting to a futuristic control room, where a human judge wearing flip-flops sentences an unmindful technician to the punishment of seven hundred years of miniaturization for having failed to pay attention to a gauge. And did we mention the elephant?

Hey, look at him, then!

“The Ark” exists in full on film, and happily so. Director Michael Imison and crew put together a quite lavish studio production, with wonderful high angle shots and detailed sets. There’s a panning shot that catches a moving snake on a tree for no more than half a second—even the elephant serves as little more than a quick prop to establish the profusion of Earth wildlife contained inside the giant generation ship our travellers find themselves on. I can only imagine the effort taken to get an elephant into the studio. Careful placement of trees and doors, accentuated by weaving camera work, further provides a sense of space and dimension, allowing the setting to become a character in its own right, one arguably more interesting than the other characters we meet in this four-episode story.

Not much money for costumes after the elaborate sets

The Doctor quickly realizes that they have landed in no ordinary jungle, noting the odd combination of wildlife but mostly because, as he tells Steven, “it’s a jungle with a steel sky!” He further determines that the jungle floor vibrates slightly, but before he can explore further, he and his companions are captured by the human Guardians and their servants/slaves, the mute Monoids. A brief expository interlude fills in the gaps in our knowledge: the Earth is dying, roughly ten million years in the future, and being left “for the last time,” with all of Earth’s humans and a sampling of the wildlife on board a generation ship bound for the distant planet Refusis Two (a planet name one might expect from Terry Nation). Most of the humans and Monoids have been miniaturized for the generations-long journey, due to be completed in seven hundred years.

For so advanced an era, though, much knowledge has been lost through war and general decay. Rather than using some form of automation, the few non-miniaturized humans who serve as the giant ship’s crew rely on the Monoids as servants, even though preparing food takes little more effort than dropping a pill in water. They know little about the planet they’ve set their sights on colonizing, and frankly plan on annihilating the indigenous inhabitants on landing if they put up a fuss.

Curse of the Fatal Sneeze

Not very advanced, then—more caretakers of tradition than technology—but still, all seems well and good. The Commander of the spaceship, which Dodo christens the Ark, seems content that the Doctor and friends mean no harm, despite some misgivings by the Deputy Commander, and our intrepid adventurers about to return to the TARDIS when Dodo sneezes. And causes a plague.

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Doctor Who Project: The Massacre of St. Bartholomew’s Eve

Even after all this time he cannot understand. I dare not change history.

Early Doctor Who specialized in the “historical” story, in keeping with its original remit as an educational show and, indeed, as a means of leveraging the BBC’s enormous investment in period costumes, sets, and actors. By the middle of the third season, the show had already visited prehistoric times, Kublai Khan’s China, the Aztec empire, revolutionary France, Nero’s Rome, the Crusades, and mythological Greece, not to mention Britain in various times and places. But is an historical Doctor Who story actually an “historical” if no one knows the history involved?

In John Lucarotti’s “The Massacre of St. Bartholomew’s Eve” (Story Production Code W), the Doctor and Steven arrive in sixteenth century France just outside of Paris, fresh from the deaths of pseudo-companions Sara Kingdom and Katarina—though notably the story does not make mention of those events. One might have expected lighter fare after the dark ending of the prior story, but instead we are treated to the eponymous massacre of Protestants by Catholics in Paris and surroundings in 1572. Even for contemporary viewers, the history on display here is not considered common knowledge. Lucarotti spends several scenes establishing the animosity between Protestants and Catholics in the era, ostensibly for Steven’s benefit, as he is as lost as the viewer. Prior historicals never spent this much explicit effort setting the stage for events.

The effect mirrors the kind of exposition one finds in stories taking place in far futures, where, say, the conflict between the Sensorites and the humans needs to be explicated for the plot to function. There’s a tension in this story that is lacking in the other historicals—while the title hints at what is to come, the viewer’s own historical knowledge doesn’t fill in the gaps in the same way that the presence of Nero guarantees that Rome is going to burn by the final episode. Thus, there’s a real uncertainty as to the target of the assassination plot by Catherine de Medici revealed early in the story: is it King Charles of France, the Protestant prince Navarre, a member of the court? The end result is the most compelling of the historicals to date, mostly because the Doctor doesn’t actually do anything at all in the whole story.

Lucarotti’s story features less of the Doctor than any other story to date (though not less of William Hartnell), as our time traveller is absent from the middle two episodes, leaving lone companion Steven to carry the narrative burden, which Peter Purves carries off nicely. Steven could have avoided all the trouble in the story, though, if the Doctor had given him sous instead of golden écu.

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Doctor Who Project: The Daleks’ Master Plan

Three time machines in one infinitesimal speck of space and time! Tsk. Of course, a coincidence is possible—but hardly likely.

They just don’t make them like they used to. The multi-episode story structure used by Doctor Who allowed quite a bit of flexibility when planning a season, and while most stories of the First Doctor’s era fit into the standard four-episode format, one story in particular stretched the limits: Terry Nation and Dennis Spooner’s twelve-episode epic “The Daleks’ Master Plan” (Story Production Code V), which first aired in weekly installments from November 13, 1965 through January 29, 1966. Nothing like it had been seen in Doctor Who before. Except, um, Terry Nation’s “The Chase” and “The Keys of Marinus,” six-episode stories from which the structure of “The Daleks’ Master Plan” is cribbed.

Both “The Chase” and “The Keys of Marinus” feature whirlwind tours of disparate locations, either climactic extremes (jungles, deserts, acid oceans) or quasi-realistic settings played for laughs (top of the Empire State Building, an animatronic house of horrors). So too with “The Daleks’ Master Plan”—the deserts of ancient Egypt; the lush jungle of planet Kembel; the swamps of planet Mira; northern England at Christmas; the, ah, manicured cricket lawns of The Oval; and 1920’s Hollywood are all stops for the TARDIS in this story. And why does the TARDIS flit from place to place? Because it’s being chased through time and space, not just by Daleks (as in “The Chase”) but by the Mark IV TARDIS of the Meddling Monk, also known as “The Time Meddler,” because, as a Dennis Spooner creation, he’s of course in this one, too. Can’t let Nation and his Daleks have all the fun.

Still, even if we know, broadly, what to expect from a Terry Nation story, “The Daleks’ Master Plan” works, well, masterfully, with but few exceptions. The story starts somewhat slowly, with the usual Nation technobabble—in short order we are introduced to two different types of spacecraft by brand name (the Spar 7-40 and the Flipt T4) and both ultraspace and ultrasonics, neither of which get any explanation. But most importantly, we are introduced to Mavic Chen (Kevin Stoney), the idolized Guardian of the Solar System (essentially the leader of all humans), whom we quickly find to be in league with the Daleks. Why rule a mere solar system, when you can rule whole galaxies?

Today the Solar System, Tomorrow the Universe!

Meanwhile, the Doctor desperately needs medicine for a wounded Steven and lands, by happenstance, on the planet Kembel, last seen as the location of a secret Dalek base in “Mission to the Unknown.” Before long, the Doctor, Katarina (picked up in ancient Troy during “The Myth Makers“), Steven, and a headstrong Earth security agent named Bret Vyon (future Brigadier Nicholas Courtney) stumble into a conference being held by the Daleks with representatives from several different galaxies. It’s at this conference that the Daleks’ Master Plan is unveiled.

Gearon, Malpha, and the Dalek Supreme. Or is that Celation?

And, as with most Dalek plans, it’s actually kind of stupid.

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Doctor Who Project: The Myth Makers

Now come on, start thinking! It’s you against the Doctor now!

After a story (well, an episode/teaser) where the Doctor and his companions aren’t present at all, we have a story where they might as well not be. The real stars of Donald Cotton’s “The Myth Makers” (Story Production Code U) are the Greeks and Trojans: Achilles, Odysseus, Agamemnon, Paris, Priam, Cassandra, and Troilus, thanks to a classical British education that made these characters quite readily familiar via the Iliad and the Aeneid.

Long stretches of “The Myth Makers” are given over to the various Greeks and Trojans absent our time travellers, who conveniently separate from one another and then find one another at the worst possible moments to provide some semblance of narrative motion. And the guest actors make the most of their screen time, playing with gusto. This story has perhaps the least dialogue for the main characters of any since “The Crusade.”

But at no point does the viewer have a sense that the Doctor and company are in any danger, because of the assumed familiarity with the underlying story. Not, of course, that even the most casual of viewers would think that they could ever be in real danger—we’re still several stories from the first regeneration and have yet to experience the first companion death—but even the episode cliffhangers lack drama, because everyone knows that the Trojans wheeled the Horse into Troy and were thusly caught unawares by the Greeks. As Vicki herself says to Cassandra, “I don’t have to prophesy. Because as far as I’m concerned, the future has already happened.”

Indeed, the only real danger is to the set, because the actors playing Paris (Barrie Ingham) and Cassandra (Frances White) practically chew the scenery. For a story that ostensibly took some pains towards historic verisimilitude (alas, the footage is missing, leaving only audio recordings), the Greeks and Trojans speak mostly like contemporary Englishmen fresh off the West End stage.

Still, unlike the earlier historicals, where the Doctor inadvertently causes, inspires, or otherwise motivates historical events to occur (Nero’s burning of Rome, the fall of Robespierre), in “The Myth Makers,” the Doctor gives the Greeks the notion to build the Trojan Horse, even though he initially rejects the idea as “some good dramatic device” invented by Homer.

This direct intervention in history, albeit under duress, can, perhaps, be squared with his insistent “hands off” approach formulated in “The Aztecs” by noting that the Doctor here doesn’t change history; he merely sees it through to its “proper” end. The Greeks conquered the Trojans, according to the myths, and just because they conquered the Trojans with the Doctor’s help doesn’t mean that they didn’t always have his help, even though the Doctor gets the idea for the Trojan Horse from stories about the Trojan War written after he helped. Chicken, egg, time, loop . . .

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Doctor Who Project: Mission to the Unknown

It is done. The seven great powers of the galaxy are one.

Obviously, far too much time has passed since the Daleks last appeared on Doctor Who in “The Chase,” a whole eight episodes ago. And so, to set up their epic return in the twelve-part “The Daleks’ Master Plan” one story hence, we are treated to Terry Nation’s “Mission to the Unknown” (Story Production Code T/A), a one episode “prologue” also known as the Dalek Cutaway but mostly known because there’s no Doctor in it. At all.

From the start, one imagines “Mission to the Unknown” to be Terry Nation’s vision of the Daleks outside of Doctor Who, with neither the Doctor nor his Companions even mentioned in the episode. The music itself seems a departure from the established series norm, with an excessive use of musical “stings”—quick, crashing, slightly discordant sounds more commonly associated with horror or thriller films.

Opposing the cumbersome pepperpots this time is not a Time Lord but Marc Cory, an agent of Earth’s Space Security Service (also called the Special Security Service in this episode). Had Marc Cory survived the episode, I would have suspected an Earth vs. Dalek spin-off series in the making. But one feels nothing for the deaths of Cory and his unwitting colleagues Garvey and Lowery; they are essentially set dressing.

Ultimately, the episode serves as an info-dump more than a teaser. The actors (Dalek and human alike) fairly stumble over big blocks of text as Terry Nation spends most of the story in expositional mode, setting up the scenario (a thousand years after the last Dalek invasion of Earth) and letting us know what the Daleks have been up to in the intervening years (conquering planets millions of light years away). And now they’re back for another crack at Earth, this time in a great alliance with the galaxy’s six other great powers, noted in the script as Gearon, Trantis, Malpha, Sentreal, Beaus, and Celation. And note, too the black dome of the Dalek Supreme.

As is somewhat typical of early (and, who are we kidding, current) Doctor Who, astronomical terms are thrown around with imprecise abandon. One of the delegates at the Daleks’ alliance meeting, from Malpha, proclaims:

This is indeed an historic moment in the history of the universe. We six from the outer galaxies, joining with a power from the solar system: the Daleks.

Universe, galaxy, solar system? Even the location of the planet Kembel, where the action takes place, is unclear. Cory and his fellows suggest that Earth has a huge galactic network, though, so Earth is no slouch in terms of colonization and, perhaps, conquest.

As with “Galaxy 4” before it, “Mission to the Unknown” no longer exists on film, and given the effects work hinted at in the publicity stills and the script, one hopes fervently that a copy turns up at a jumble sale somewhere after decades in an attic, if only to see the giant headed cone alien walk around.

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