One of the problems with The Myth Makers is the clumsy way it pivoted from three episodes of comedy to the massacre of Troy. Donald Cotton seems to have taken a lesson from it, as this episode sees a more gradual fade from character comedy into grim horror.
Continue readingKate is magnificent: at the start of the episode, she sweeps in to save the day, waving a gun at the Clantons and putting the thugs in their place, before telling Dodo to vamoose, ordering Steven to play piano, and changing the mood entirely with her own, saucy rendition of The Ballad of the Last Chance Saloon. She dominates the episode in a way most female characters don’t get to during this era of the show.
Continue readingThe establishing shots do their job in clarifying the TARDIS’s latest destination: a familiar Wild West main street; cowboys wandering through as the jaunty, jangling keys of saloon music play. This is Tombstone, and there is the O.K. Corral. The cowboys turn out to be the Clanton brothers, here to wreak bloody vengeance on Doc Holliday for the death of their brother Reuben.
Continue readingThe final test turns out to be a board game. Which is, at least, more fun than last episode‘s challenges. Jumping about between spaces above an electrified floor is an easy danger to understand, and the kind of fun game children play anyway. Equally, Cyril, with his sly and murderous pranks, is a more dangerous opponent than the Hearts or Mrs Wiggs and Sergeant Rugg.
Continue readingSomething I’m appreciating as I watch The Celestial Toymaker episode by episode are the performances of Carmen Silvera and Campbell Singer as the Toymaker’s various animated dolls, cards and fairy tale characters. While Michael Gough tends to get the attention, Silvera and Singer are the heart of the story – The Hall of Dolls‘ haughty queen and absent-minded king are now a homely cook and a blustering soldier. Through them, we understand, as Dodo comes to see, that the Toymaker’s servants are his victims, and their humanity makes them perhaps too kind to make Steven and Dodo’s tasks impossible. Without Silvera and Singer, this would be a much flatter episode.
Continue readingThe episode begins with the Toymaker’s neat precis of what is going on, and what is at stake: he plans to turn Steven and Dodo into dolls, and trap the Doctor in his power forever. Having got that out of the way, the rest of the episode sees Steven and Dodo unravel last week’s cryptic clue to reveal the purpose of the second game: find the one safe chair, and avoid the six deadly ones.
Continue readingAt the conclusion to The Bomb, the Doctor was rendered invisible and intangible by a mysterious external force that threatened the TARDIS. At the beginning of this episode he’s restored to normal, for a time, before again being made invisible and intangible by his opponent, the Celestial Toymaker. Meanwhile, Steven and Dodo take turns playing a game of Blind Man’s Buff with some clowns. This kind of repetition doesn’t bode well.
Continue readingIn a strange way, the Monoids are a more compelling bunch of characters than the humans on the Ark. As they gossip between themselves, they share their worries and hopes for the future. One covets Refusis as ‘a new planet of our own where we can establish our own way of life’. He’s becoming a proper tin-pot dictator, gesticulating wildly and giving every impression he enjoys his position. His chief rival, Four, sees through his increasingly grandiose plans though – ‘Your orders? You have given too many and delivered them unwisely.’
Continue readingThere is a good effort to mark the passage of time since The Plague: the statue, just a giant plinth and feet last time, is now complete, and the floor of the jungle is covered in autumn leaves. The Ark is nearly at Refusis Two.
Continue readingThe episode begins with a fairly weighty discussion on the morality of time travel, and the possibility that the TARDIS has been spreading deadly germs throughout time and space. ‘I don’t want to think about it, it’s too horrifying,’ says the Doctor, closing down any further discussion. So the question is never resolved. To an extent, it’s slightly pointless to raise such a significant idea only to leave it hanging, and I wonder if it’s part of an effort by Wiles and Tosh to question the ethics of the Doctor’s travels. As with The Family of Blood 40 years later, the audience is asked to consider if the Doctor didn’t land here, on a whim, would anybody have died? Neither Wiles nor RTD has an easy answer, but it’s clearly an idea that’s unsettled both.
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