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From The Celestial Toymaker to The Giggle, the Toymaker has had an interesting journey through Doctor Who history. Let's explore it!
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00:00You know the Celestial Toymaker, right? That incredibly important villain in Doctor Who's
00:04history and... alright listen, I'm not gonna blame you if you don't, but funny enough they are an
00:09incredibly important villain in Doctor Who's history and they are returning in the form of
00:14Neil Patrick Harris. But what are they? Who are they? Let's take a dive. I'm Sean Ferragh for Who
00:20Culture and here are 10 things you didn't know about the Toymaker. Number 10. He almost came
00:25back multiple times. The first attempt to bring back the Toymaker was in a story outline pitched
00:30by creator writer Brian Hales. In 1975 Hales pitched a story called The Eyes of Nemesis for Tom Baker's
00:36Fourth Doctor. Weirdly the Toymaker was revealed late in the story outline only pitting him against
00:41the Doctor in the final episode. This idea was rejected. A decade later the 1980s showrunner
00:46John Nathan Turner planned to bring Michael Goff back as the Toymaker for season 23. A script was
00:51written by former producer Graham Williams which would have pitted the sixth Doctor and Perry
00:55against the Toymaker in an arcade in Blackpool. Doctor Who's 18 month hiatus killed this plan
01:00however with Jonathan Nathan Turner deciding to completely redraft his plans for season 23.
01:05This story was later novelised as The Nightmare Affair before being adapted as a big Finnish audio
01:10adventure in 2009. Years later Nathan Turner suggested bringing back the Toymaker in a straight to home
01:16movie for the video market. He even considered using the villain in what would eventually become
01:211993's EastEnders crossover Dimensions in Time. Toymaker might have dodged a bullet on that one.
01:26Number 9. He has a sister. Brian Hales later wrote The Queen of Time, an unmade second Doctor
01:31serial that would have introduced the Toymaker's half-sister Hecuba, the so-called Queen of Time,
01:36who had mastery over time in the same way that Toymaker has mastery over reality. She used those
01:40gifts to pluck unwitting people from across time and space as dinner guests and potential players of her
01:45temporal games. In Hales' story outline, Jamie and Zoe are forced to play various games including
01:51times and clocks, much like Steven and Dodo in The Celestial Toymaker. Meanwhile,
01:55rather than the Toymaker wanting to keep the Doctor as a worthy opponent, Hecuba wants him as her
02:00husband. It's hilarious to imagine Patrick Troughton's second Doctor being lusted after by the Queen of
02:05Time herself. Although, arguably, as the eleventh Doctor and River Song, Matt Smith and Alex Kingston
02:10provide a pretty good estimation of what that would look like. Hales' outline was rejected, presumably due to
02:15similarities with The Celestial Toymaker. The writer would have much greater success in the Troughton
02:20era when he created the Ice Warriors. Number eight, he was married to Doctor Who's Polly. The first
02:25Toymaker was played by Michael Goff, best known as Alfred Pennyworth in the 90s Batman movies and of
02:31course the 89 movie. He was Batman's loyal butler opposite Michael Keaton, Val Kilmer and George Clooney.
02:36Not a bad resume eh? Even back in 1966, Goff was a well-known actor of film and television who
02:42would have
02:42been a big draw for viewers. Of course, he also returned to Doctor Who in 1983 in the far less
02:48memorable
02:48role of Time Lord Hedden in Arc of Infinity. But The Celestial Toymaker and Arc of Infinity aren't the
02:54only connections between Goff and the Hooniverse. Between 1962 and 1979, he was married to Annika
02:59Wills, who joined the show as companion Polly Wright a few months after The Celestial Toymaker aired. The
03:05couple met on the set of the film Candidate for Murder and remained together for 17 years. Goff adopted
03:10Wills' daughter, who, coincidentally, was also named Polly. Polly believed that Goff was her
03:14biological father until her tragic death in 1982. Number seven, he was intended to be a Time Lord.
03:21In the age of 15 Doctors and the Timeless Child, it's worth remembering that in 1966,
03:26very little was known about the Doctor's backstory. Viewers had met the meddling moak in the 1965
03:31serial, The Time Meddler, but the names Gallifrey and Time Lord were still alien. To that end,
03:36script editor Donald Tosh had intended to make the Toymaker another member of the Doctor's race.
03:41The Doctor knows the Toymaker by name and reputation in the serial, warning Dodo and Steven about the
03:46villain's predilection for turning people into playthings. The Doctor's knowledge of the Toymaker
03:50could be because that's the sort of thing an intergalactic traveller would know, or it could be
03:54that he knows about him because they were at the Time Lord Academy together. The Toymaker was never
03:59confirmed to be one of the Doctor's own people in the serial, but the intention was certainly there.
04:04Perhaps Russell T. Davis could make good on this promise in The Giggle.
04:07Number six, The Trilogic Game Cursed Peter Purvis.
04:10The Celestial Toymaker was one of Peter Purvis' last serials as companion Steven Taylor. After it
04:16finished filming, the actor came into the possession of the Trilogic Game prop, the challenge set by the
04:21Toymaker to test the first Doctor, who played a key role in the serial. With Hartnell invisible for
04:26most of the story, it was down to Purvis to lead it. This was good news for the actor, as
04:29he felt that Steven
04:30had often been sidelined during his time on Doctor Who, but unfortunately for Purvis, he was further
04:35sidelined when he left the show a few serials later. He didn't work for a year and a half after
04:40his last
04:40day on Doctor Who, and he came to blame The Toymaker's cursed game for his bad luck. A day after
04:45disposing of the Trilogic prop, Purvis was offered a job on Z-Cars and then the presenter role on Blue
04:50Peter. While it's surely a cosmic coincidence, this sudden change of fate was enough to convince Purvis that
04:56the Trilogic Game was cursed. Number 5, The Celestial Toymaker was almost a regeneration story.
05:03The Celestial Toymaker was the seventh serial in William Hartnell's final Doctor Who season. By
05:07this time, Hartnell's relationship with the new production team was strained and his own health
05:12was failing. Producer John Wiles and script editor Donald Tosh considered replacing him with another
05:16actor. In the original plan, The Toymaker would have changed the Doctor's appearance, facilitating the
05:21casting of a new lead. Something similar was done to cover Frasier Hines absence in The Mind Robber,
05:26with the second Doctor choosing the wrong facial features when reconstructing a cardboard Jamie.
05:3157 years later and The Toymaker may well be responsible for the 13th Doctor's change of
05:37appearance. Did this trickster give the Doctor their old face back? Will the 14th Doctor's regeneration be
05:42triggered by the machinations of The Toymaker? With a being of such cosmic power and a showrunner like
05:46Russell T. Davis, anything is possible. Number 4, The Toymaker's flashbacks were the first ones ever.
05:51Despite what the Daleks in colour may suggest, it's actually 1966's The Celestial Toymaker
05:57that's the first Doctor Who serial to feature flashback sequences. In the serial's first episode,
06:01the Toymaker uses a memory window to try and dominate the minds of the Doctor's companions,
06:06Steven and Dodo. This reveals some of Dodo's slight backstory. The script reveals that her mother
06:11died when she was still in school, as she sees a sad schoolgirl in the Toymaker's memory window,
06:16forcing the Doctor to drag her vision away. The memory window also displays footage from the Daleks'
06:21master plan and the massacre as Steven sees himself on both the jungle planet Kemble and in 16th century
06:27Paris. This was the first time that Doctor Who deployed footage from earlier adventures. The
06:31irony being that all the stories in question no longer fully exist in the BBC archives, if only
06:36someone had an elderly Doctor Who fan and a memory window hooked up to a VCR. Number 3,
06:41he had an epic showdown with the Eighth Doctor. After the 1996 TV movie failed to lead to a series,
06:49Paul McGann's Eighth Doctor set a course for the multimedia landscape of the late 1990s. As well as
06:54a series of BBC books and eventual big Finnish audio dramas, there was also a mini Doctor Who
06:59comic strip in the Radio Times. However, for a generation of 90s Doctor Who fans, the Eighth Doctor's
07:04adventures began in the Doctor Who magazine comic strip. The first story, Endgame, featured the Eighth Doctor
07:09facing off against the Toymaker in another series of games and challenges. Written by Alan Barnes and
07:15full of so much memorable imagery, it's an epic start to the Eighth Doctor's comic book adventures.
07:20It also features a terrifying Marionette Doctor that does battle with McGann in the story's climax.
07:25With Doctor Who Weekly's The Star Beast being adapted for the first 60th anniversary special,
07:30it'll be interesting to see if RTD adapts elements of this classic comic strip for the giggle.
07:34Marionettes and puppetry was hinted at in the trailer after all.
07:38Number Two. He's only the third Hartnell-era villain to return.
07:42Of all the strange, strange creatures in the first era of Doctor Who, only the Daleks and the Cybermen
07:47have come back in the modern era. This means that the Toymaker is in very good company and could even
07:52take his place among those top tier baddies as a recurring villain in the new era. It's interesting
07:57to ponder why so many first Doctor villains haven't come back, especially as Russell T Davies' first Doctor
08:02Who era brought back the bloody Macra. The Sensorites and the Dravens have been name checked since 2005,
08:08but they've never actually appeared on screen. One possible reason is that a lot of Hartnell
08:12villains were historical characters due to the show's early commitment to educating as well as
08:16entertaining. Another possibility is that Davis and his successors, who are now also his predecessors,
08:21timey-wimey, felt that monsters like the Zarbi, the Monoids or the Vord wouldn't work in modern Doctor Who.
08:26Cowards. Number one, he's not actually called the Celestial Toymaker? Inevitably there will be
08:32comments that Neil Patrick Harris' character has been renamed due to Celestial being a racist term
08:38for a person of Chinese descent. This isn't the case as the character has always been referred to
08:43as just the Toymaker. The Celestial Toymaker is the overall name of the 1966 serial, not the actual
08:50character. While the Doctor does say the Celestial Toymaker, the actual script reveals that it's with a
08:56small c. This means that the Doctor is referring to the Toymaker's origins in the stars rather than
09:02his actual title. Dodo then asks who is the Celestial Toymaker, but she's clearly made the same
09:07misunderstanding that many others have since 1966. Script editor Donald Tosh always referred to the
09:12character as the Toymaker, omitting the c-word entirely. Gone too are the Oriental style robes that
09:19have added to the Celestial Toymaker's uncomfortable reputation. In bringing the character back in 2023,
09:24Davis will move the Toymaker on from his problematic legacy and give us a memorable villain that lives
09:30up to the character's modern day potential. That is it for our list. Thank you so much for watching
09:36along, you are awesome, you are wonderful. Remember you can follow us over on Twitter at WhoCulture,
09:40same on Instagram, same on TikTok. I am Sean Ferrick, you can follow me at Sean Ferrick on the various
09:45socials. Thank you so much to the wonderful Mark Donaldson for writing the article this video is based on,
09:49and thank you so much to James for editing it to make it look pretty. I hope you're enjoying
09:54the specials, I know I am. Keep things wibbly wobbly, thanks very much.
09:57And I'll see you next time.
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