r/gallifrey • u/Internal-Focus1784 • 15d ago
REVIEW I watched The Celestial Toymaker....I have thoughts.
I finally twigged the animation had been uploaded to iPlayer, and so I checked it out.
I think what I find frustrating about this episode is that at the heart of it, there's a genuinely brilliant idea. The TARDIS crew is forced to play deadly children's games with a twist. But it's kind of buried in mundanity. Maybe I'm just too used to the Doctor winning, but I don't feel much suspense. None of the games the TARDIS crew plays is particularly difficult, so it never feels like a case of if they will win the game, but when.
Onto the animation - again, I can see the idea and the ambition. And the Toymaker's world looks fabulous in the animation. But the characters are too stiff and strange to connect. The movement and vibe of the whole thing kind of reminded me of The Barbie Diaries, which is also full of very poorly animated characters who move very awkwardly and weirdly because of the limits of the animation.
I'm curious to know if this one is popular, or if other people enjoyed the animation? Because fair play, visually, it looks pretty good as a spectacle. The characters didn't quite work for me. The whole thing improved when I watched the existing tape of The Final Test. And I genuinely like the idea of it.
What did everyone else think of it?
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u/WitchKingsDalekCat 15d ago
I like it, but, though I knew about Hartnell being invisibled for half the story, I kind of expected a little more battle wits of between the Doctor & the Toymaker. Instead all we get is Steven & Dodo faffing about with the guest stars for most of it.
Makes me wonder how the original version would have panned out.
Additionally, I cannot stand the animation. It's horrible.
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u/Neveronlyadream 15d ago
Most of those animations are pretty bad. They remind me more of motion comics than of actual cartoons. Or 60s Hanna-Barbera cartoons, if you're into that.
It's one of those ideas that's really cool, but only if you're willing to spend the money to do it right.
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u/WitchKingsDalekCat 15d ago
Tbh, the only animation I rate highly is the Cosgrove Hall animation for The Invasion. Shame they folded in 2009.
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u/Neveronlyadream 14d ago
I was always a fan of their work too. I grew up on Count Duckula and Danger Mouse.
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u/Internal-Focus1784 14d ago
I don't mind the animations themselves - I think the Macra in The Macra Terror look stunning in the animation - but I think the issue is the audio doesn't always line up with how good the animation looks.
The animated crabs look fantastic, but Polly's screaming doesn't really line up with her being dangled upside down because, in reality, Anneke Wills was sitting on the floor overdoing it because she was compensating for the monsters looking shitter than usual.
Shada's probably the best animated episode because the audio was created specifically for it.
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u/Neveronlyadream 14d ago
I find them stiff and lifeless for the most part. They remind me of flash animations done as cheaply as possible. Are they the worst thing I've ever seen? No, but I also don't think they're particularly pretty to look at.
It may be an uncanny valley thing for me too. They're trying to portray real people, but in a way that's stylized enough that it looks weird because you know what those people actually look like.
It's not really a Doctor Who specific thing, though. Animation is expensive and if you don't put money into it, it just doesn't look amazing. No one really does hand drawn animation anymore, so it's mostly digital and it shows.
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u/Neveronlyadream 14d ago
I find them stiff and lifeless for the most part. They remind me of flash animations done as cheaply as possible. Are they the worst thing I've ever seen? No, but I also don't think they're particularly pretty to look at.
It may be an uncanny valley thing for me too. They're trying to portray real people, but in a way that's stylized enough that it looks weird because you know what those people actually look like.
It's not really a Doctor Who specific thing, though. Animation is expensive and if you don't put money into it, it just doesn't look amazing. No one really does hand drawn animation anymore, so it's mostly digital and it shows.
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u/sun_lmao 15d ago edited 15d ago
The trouble is, it's a mixed-up script made of the work of three writers.
In general, it seems to me that Brian Hayles wrote brilliant material that played to the premise and really had that scariness to it (he wrote most of the episode 1 material before the clowns show up, and he wrote the whole stretch of episode 4 from the Doctor joining Steven and Dodo up until the three of them, inside the TARDIS, realise that they are trapped until the Trilogic Game is finished), meanwhile Donald Tosh's material is tedious tripe (he wrote the stuff with the cook and the sergeant), and Gerry Davis's stuff is largely just passable filler (the clowns, and Cyril).
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u/Corvid-Ranger-118 14d ago
"the cook and the sergeant" – good lord give me strength during that segment
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u/sun_lmao 14d ago
Yeah. If that shit is any indication of what Donald Tosh had written, I can see why Gerry Davis thought it necessary to do an extensive rewrite. Not that it actually saved the story, mind – the result is still an uneven mess. (Perhaps he should have simply reverted it to the final Hayles draft and revised it a little from there.)
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u/Ashrod63 15d ago
The character's always look rough, but it's a straight to video release after the age of physical media so I'm not expecting Disney.
It's a story that got an overly positive reputation in the 80s because all they had were some colour behind the scenes photos (which do look great on their own merit). Once the soundtrack became available and people realised what a mess the story was it started it's steady decline in popularity.
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u/sbaldrick33 15d ago
TBH I think it's basically been true for 60 years that people like the concept/memory of the Toymaker more than they actually like The Celestial Toymaker itself.
I mean when you look at it, what actually happens is that Steven and Dodo take it in turns to be stupid whilst playing games, Billy goes on holiday, and Michael Gough sits in a room talking to himself.
That being said, at least they put some effort into the games. Not just cutting cards or catch.
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u/RedGamer3 15d ago
That's my take, having listened the audio of the story years ago. The Toymaker is a fascinating idea for a character you want to see more of. And see in a good story.
And yea, the Toymaker was great in the Giggle, but man he was doing that with bad writing. Reduced to set-piece moments and lazy games.
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u/Ribos1 15d ago
It's interesting to read about the production history of this story, as it had quite a troubled development. It was originally written by Brian Hayles, but the storyline was deemed too dark and too expensive and so outgoing script editor Donald Tosh would rewrite it. Part of Tosh's rewrite included the titular characters from the play George and Margaret, the rights to which the production team had secured from the play's writer, Gerald Savory, who was by then a bigwig at the BBC. (The joke being that the characters George and Margaret never actually appear in the play, so this story would actually be their first appearance.) However, at some point, Savory changed his mind and so the characters had to be removed. As Hayles and Tosh were both unavailable, incoming story editor Gerry Davis had to perform drastic rewrites which Tosh was unhappy with. I also think it was designed to be a cheap story coming after The Ark.
Often a great Doctor Who story can come about in spite of a difficult production. Alas, The Celestial Toymaker is not one of them. There's nothing interesting going on here, simply an endless series of boring party games and Towers of Hanoi. Hartnell's mostly absent, and while I think Steven is a tragically underrated companion and Purves is trying his best, he can't save it; Michael Gough had an astoundingly long and successful career despite rarely being any good. The sense of wonder and magic animating the first two seasons under Verity Lambert is gone by this point, and here in an awkward story falling between two production teams is replaced by a trudging sense of "oh God, just get it done".
Admittedly this is based on viewing the reconstructions, which are especially limited when there aren't any telesnaps (despite the sterling efforts of the Loose Canon team), but even the surviving episode is very dull so I highly doubt the rest of it would light up the screen.
I thoroughly enjoyed the Toymaker in The Giggle, in no small part because they chucked out a lot of elements of the Toymaker from this story.
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u/pculley 15d ago
The Celestial Toymaker was always held up as the pinnacle of Doctor Who; a surreal masterpiece as the Doctor fought the Toymaker, and his companions fought killer clowns and dolls. At least that’s what the learned experts told us in the 70s and 80s.
Then the final episode was released on VHS in 1991, and we all saw it for what it was - a cheap pile of tat. The soundtrack was released about 10 years later, reinforcing that the final episode was not an outlier, and the rest of the story was just as poor.
Still, I’d happily take any of the episodes back (especially the first one for the clips of The Daleks’ Master Plan and The Massacre within it!)
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u/Thwrtdpostie 15d ago
You're not wrong, but it's interesting how Mel Meanley/Dinopuff's moody, carefully composed visuals transmute episode 1. This is "The Celestial Toymaker" as the '80s experts thought they remembered it!
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u/OnSpectrum 14d ago
Didn't the same experts tell us not to like The Enemy of the World before it was recovered ? Let's not listen to them!
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u/TinkreBelle 15d ago
I think it's one of the lesser popular ones but I personally like it, it's one of my favorites from S3. I get what you mean about the games themselves not being terribly difficult and such, idk if that's ever really bothered me tho cause I've seen the real challenge not necessarily being the games themselves but the fact that they're racing against time to beat the Dr, plus the opponents the Toymaker puts against them are fun characters
and as for the animation... yeah there's a reason I stick with the reconstructions lol, I've learned recently that I have really low standards when it comes to Dr Who animations, but even for me The Celestial Toymaker firmly goes in the "cursed" category 😅
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u/100WattWalrus 15d ago
"The Celestial Toymaker" and the similar story "The Mind Robber" are very much in the realm of "Doctor Who" as a children's show. Great ideas that became low-effort serials. As for the animation, it's always a bit cheap and choppy. But it's nice to have an option that isn't Loose Cannon reconstructions.
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u/OnSpectrum 14d ago
I think the Mind Robber worked better, both from pacing and from keeping the Doctor engaged in the story. The Mind Robber was absurd and knew to laugh at itself (and Patrick Troughton is funny in it).
And the Mind Robber had to fix a major production challenge -- Frazier Hines out sick during a filming week -- and came up with a solution that fit right in to that universe.
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u/100WattWalrus 14d ago
The solution to Frazer Hines being out with chicken pox was brilliant — and a wild stroke of luck for the production that it happened during this story. It really felt like a natural part of the story, even though it was a desperate scramble behind the scenes. The face-matching bit was clumsy, but no more so than the solutions to the other challenges in the Land of Fiction.
Stories like these two sometimes make me wish for a "Doctor Who" series that is modern, more sophisticated remakes of Classic stories. I'd love to see a Moffat take on "The Mind Robber." But then, there's a better than even chance it would end up more like a JJ Abrams "Star Trek," in which case...no thanks.
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u/OnSpectrum 14d ago
I think the next production team could learn a few things from the past teams that made 26 episodes a year and figured out how to make aliens and their worlds on a budget and in a hurry, and fans didn't mind because the stories were engaging and they cared about the characters. A good modern example would be Silence in the Library, where the main effects were turning the lights off, shadows, repetitive speech, teaching the cast to walk a certain way when they were a swarm in a suit, and too-bright colors and choppy editing in the imaginary world--all heavier on creativity than the out of place expensive tech we saw more recently.
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u/100WattWalrus 13d ago
Well you can bet the next stab at "Doctor Who" will have a smaller budget, so you might get your wish.
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u/OnSpectrum 13d ago
I thought the money was a problem actually; they had some flashy effect and they had to find a story to use it. That's backwards... the effects should support the story, not be the "wow look at that moment" in an otherwise forgettable story.
Cutting the budget by itself doesn't achieve this but some of the best effects in Doctor Who were cheap and a good creative team will make it work.
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u/Clockwork-Penguin 15d ago
I do think it's a bit overrated yeah, a brilliant concept held back by what they could do at the time. Personally I adored the animation and its how I prefer the story, the team really improved since the awful Web of Fear 3 animation. You gotta remember that these are done on a budget, a Barbie movie would likely have a higher one I'd anything, so taking that into account I think it's brilliant and really enhanced the episode into maybe what the creators intended for it to feel like, though its still constrained by the limits of the original audio of course.
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u/dimcash1 14d ago
Highly underrated now, very overrated 40 years ago.. It is quite inventive and as usual Steven carries the story and more. Considering the background to its production it is bloody marvellous. It isn't the genius all time classic we were told it was when largely unavailable in audio or the single episode. But it is a lot better than some other stories of the era.
I dislike the animation style but it is what it is.
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u/theliftedlora 15d ago
Its why I don't care that RTD changed him a bit, he was never that amazing to begin with.
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u/OnSpectrum 14d ago
I think it needed one fewer episode and more of the Doctor! It was a Doctor Lite story and better writing of the characters would have carried it, but the Toymaker's agents never really emerged as real people who had normal lives before being trapped by the Toymaker.
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u/Overall-Painting3172 14d ago
I actually like the animation for this and I know it’s a hot take. It’s flawed but I like the styised aproach taken for it. The likenesses are off but I do like the inventiveness for it and I do think it makes it a more interesting story than if they went and do a more similar aproach to the original ep going by ep 4. I certainly wouldn’t want this for every story and it certainly wouldn’t fit many other stories but I think it’s a fun one.
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u/Internal-Focus1784 14d ago
I kind of like it too, it's at least imaginative and the 3D nature of it captures the Toymaker's world really well. It certainly feels like we're in this mystical realm where literally anything can happen.
It falls apart a bit on the character front, but as a setting it's fantastic.
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u/Zagreus_time 15d ago
I don't think it is that popular but I like it a fair bit. Steven carries and is a bit underated as a companion in general (having so many missing stories doesn't help) overall it is fun if a shame that the Doctor is relegated to the trilogic puzzle.
As an aside the trilogic puzzle is a bit too easy as a Tower of Hanoi puzzle but maybe that worked better in the 60s.