Doctor Who, season 3 continues …

The Celestial Toymaker, is another Doctor Who story that I’ve wanted to watch for years but, with three episodes missing from the BBC archive, it’s taken until I discovered the CGI recreations by Who Recons before I’ve made the effort to watch.

Based on the first two episodes so far, The Celestial Toymaker isn’t proving to be up to the hype.  The first episode isn’t too bad, but then the Doctor vanishes and the second episode has become an episode of tedium.  To cut a long story short, Steven & Dodo have to play a selection of “games” and win them all before the Doctor wins his trilogic game.

Prior to watching, I didn’t realise that the Doctor’s game is spread over the entire four episodes.  Nor did I realise that he was missing for both episodes 2 & 3 – it’s not been that long since his last holiday.

Reading up on it, it seems that this point in the series history was when Hartnell and producer John Wiles were most at loggerheads.  It was Wiles’ intention to have the Doctor come out of his enforced mute invisibility with a different appearance – thus sacking Hartnell and replacing him with another actor.  But the head of serials, Gerald Savory, said “no” – Wiles quit instead, and Hartnell returned.

Whatever the facts, the adventure is turning into a bit of a yawnfest.  This second episode seems to be consisting entirely of Dodo and Steven choosing which chair out of seven is the “safe” one.  Talk about tedium incarnate.  I’ve paused it and stepped away for a moment to write this post before I force myself back into it.

It doesn’t help that the CGI is struggling to show us what the characters are really doing.  You’re left mostly with guesswork looking at unmoving characters.  Not that even the best animation would be likely to relieve the tedium here.

Next time … The Dancing Floor