Doctor Who: The Celestial Toymaker cover art

Doctor Who: The Celestial Toymaker

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About this listen

 William Hartnell stars as the first Doctor in this classic four-episode story from 1966, which pits the TARDIS crew against one of the most powerful enemies they have ever encountered.

The travellers arrive in the dangerous domain of the Toymaker, where their failure to win at a series of games could result in them becoming his playthings for eternity. Apparently innocuous nursery characters reveal deadly intent, and for companions Steven and Dodo the stakes are raised with every game of blind man's buff and musical chairs. The Doctor, meanwhile, is rendered invisible and given the challenge of completing the fiendishly difficult Trilogic game.

This fondly-remembered story, only one episode of which survives in the television archives, is narrated by Peter Purves who also played Steven in the story. Michael Gough is the Toymaker and Jackie Lane is Dodo, whilst Carmen Silvera adopts a number of roles.

©2001 BBC Worldwide Ltd; (P)2001 BBC Worldwide Ltd Entertainment & Performing Arts Science Fiction
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One of the more bizare Doctor Who adventures, The Celstial Toymaker sees the film actor Michael Gough put on a sinister turn as the eponymous villain. Played out like a demented gameshow, this imaginative little romp will delight casual listeners and dedicated fans alike.

Macabre & sinister fun

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The story is told using the surviving audio of the lost serial but sadly it doesn't really work in audio form as the Celestial Toymaker was obviously a very visual story which doesn't really translate well this format

A decent attempt to restore a lost classic

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So this is one of the many missing story’s from the classic era of dr who and it’s a good one that flys by without you realising it the only thing that bugs me with these digital releases is that when new audio sources come along they don’t attempt to fix up older releases as with episode 3 there are random points where the audio quality just randomly drops then picks up again like nothing happened I get these are releases taken from fan recordings (not that I’m against that I love that that’s a thing)but it’s still a bit odd

The only other thing which is a nitpick is that why is the last couple minutes of the previous story the ark included as a first chapter

Beyond all that though this is well worth your audible credit so go for it

Fun creative story

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As with all old episodes of Doctor Who, its amazing we still have some version of this still existing to this day. With the importance of The Toymaker in more recent years of the show, its great that I was able to return to this myself and experience where it all started!

That being said, although I did enjoy my time with this particular adventure, its clearly something for the nostalgic or Whovians to dive into. I cannot imagine there is much here to be found by a more casual audience. The writing is spotty at best and thanks to Hartnells health at the time, he spends a lot of the serial invisible and silent! Unfortunately this serial is a bit of a mixed bag all round, although with some interesting concepts scattered throughout. If you are a big fan of Hartnells tenure or of Classic Who in general you will have a pleasant time, but if you've just watched 'The Giggle' and coming to this in search of answers, you might be left somewhat disappointed!

Only for hardcore Whovians!

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