The Celestial Toymaker - a Classic Doctor Who review

Hinzugefügt: 2026-05-07

[00:00:05]You know, I kind of I kind of want to dub over the Toymaker with the Jigsaw voice. I want to play a game.

[00:00:13]>> [laughter] >> Classic Doctor Who review time, man. I'm knocking out another one of the animated recreations. This one, one of the more recent ones, might actually be the most recent. I haven't been keeping track.

[00:00:23]The Celestial Toymaker.

[00:00:28]>> [sighs] >> Okay. Elephant in the room first.

[00:00:33]I hate this animation style. I have increasingly had my criticisms about the animated recreations as they have, it seems like over time, gotten more ambitious and more about creating what the original makers of the Doctor Who episodes were trying to do as opposed to trying to recreate what actually existed. I pointed this out when I did the Underwater Menace that you can just do a quick comparison to the surviving episode and see how radically they redesigned everything. But at the very least, even in that one, while they redesigned costumes and made the sets bigger than they possibly would have been in the actual event and all that, and I am annoyed by that on principle, at the very least, the structure, the shot choices, the angles, were all still pretty representative of what they likely would have been if not the exact same shot composition as the old show.

[00:01:38]This Okay.

[00:01:42]First of all, I just think it's ugly.

[00:01:45]You can have your criticisms for the 2D style that they've used for the animated recreations up to this point. It can be a matter of taste, for sure. But again, it does feel far more representative of the actual era.

[00:01:59]These fully 3D characters are so dead in the eyes. I didn't even realize how bad it was until I got to the last episode, and that one is surviving. So I watched that one, the actual, you know, preserved version of it, and realized how much more personality there was to the characters than this ever brought across. And look, it's it's a problem to a certain extent even with the 2D recreations because they're it's just stilted animation by its nature, but these dead-eyed 3D renders that are just, again, I'm sorry, hideous. I do think that low-budget 2D animations can still look appealing.

[00:02:44]Low-budget 3D just looks bad.

[00:02:48]It looks really bad. Particularly like the character that I'm thinking of is Cyril, who is the last I'll get to the story in a minute. Let me get this rant out of my system, who is the last sort of person that Steven and Dodo have to actually sort of compete against. I really couldn't stand him in the animated version. I'm like, oh god, he's so irritating. There's like nothing here. But then seeing the actual performer and like the little acting choices that he makes, you know, these these small subtle things, whereas the animated recreation is all it's all overly broad, and there's there's no like little touches of personality that an actor just brings naturally. Not even necessarily meaning to. There's just way more life to the performance than there is in this damn thing. And again, you could argue that that is a problem with any of the animated recreations. It is so much more noticeable in here. And that's before we even get to the fact that this is in no way representative of the way that it actually looked. In the strictest sense, they kind of took the concepts and some of the design designs, but none of it is even trying to come across the same.

[00:03:57]Like in that last game, you know, they're jumping on these squares to get to the end, and the floor is electrified. But because the wording that Cyril used to describe it, he didn't say the floor is electrified, he said the space between the tiles is electrified. For this, they decided to actually have it be a drop, and they have like electricity shoot in just through the air when they choose to demonstrate this. It's at There is no need. There is no need for this.

[00:04:30]I don't I I I don't understand the concepts and in the methodology behind the idea of, oh, well, we'll make it like in a way that they never could have done it at the time. What's the point of that?

[00:04:49]I And like at that point, why are you even using the original audio? If you're going to redo it from scratch that much, just record new performances. And no, that's not me saying that they should do that, but I'm saying by the time you've done so many changes to this thing, top to bottom, visual and conceptual in terms of the way that you present any of these ideas, you you you really there's no point in hanging on to any vestige of the original stuff at that point.

[00:05:16]I I might end up doing I'm Okay, here's what I'm going to say. I am going to end up doing a longer video talking about my disgust and infuriation that I feel with the updating of classic Doctor Who because this isn't limited just to the animated recreations.

[00:05:36]Recent Blu-ray releases have fixed or updated the special effects, and I hate it. Like they made the Merka LOOK HALFWAY DECENT.

[00:05:48]WHY?

[00:05:49]IT'S >> [laughter] >> THAT'S NOT WHAT THE RESULT WAS. I understand you're like, well, we're trying to do what they wanted it to be.

[00:05:55]Yeah, but that's not what they made.

[00:05:58]It's not what they made. A piece of art is not just the result of trying to see a vision through, it is a time capsule.

[00:06:06]It is a representation of what was able to be created at the time by those people with those resources and those limitations.

[00:06:15]It is disrespectful to go, oh, well, that looks bad, let's do it better. And I'm not saying the Merka looked good. The Merka looked like garbage. I am spending too long on this.

[00:06:25]I got to I got to save this up and do another thing.

[00:06:27]But short version, I hate the visual presentation on this. I hate it.

[00:06:33]And I was so glad that I could do the last episode just watching the the actual thing.

[00:06:39]Trying my best to set all that aside, how's the actual story?

[00:06:45]It's not great.

[00:06:47]I will say this, there's a lot of potential in the concept of the Toymaker. I can definitely see why fans kind of thought it would be a good idea to bring back, and why Russell T Davies brought him back. There's definitely some interesting things to be done with the idea of this being who loves games, is kind of obsessed with games, is immortal, and is trixy in this way. There's a there's a lot of things that you can do, and this is trying to do a fair number of things. They just don't pull together. I Honestly, I think part of the problem and why I'm never going to get fully on board with this being a particularly good story even separate from the animated recreations issues, is I don't think there's anything in this that's like the good elements of this that wasn't then done better in the Mind Robber with Patrick Troughton. And the Mind Robber is great. I love the Mind Robber. But it does the trippier, more abstract ideas better. The sort of supporting cast of characters who are, you know, created by by the enemy, but maybe they're trying to help, or maybe at the very least they are fully-fledged people to some degree in their own right, but at the same time they are still serving the intent of the villain of the piece. That was done better in the Mind Robber. The the concepts of, you know, narrative and how much of this is real was done better in the Mind Robber. The games that they have them play in this are not especially interesting, and it's it's just it's just underbaked.

[00:08:25]And then there's some of the really obvious stuff like, okay, look, uh there were a couple of points in Patrick Troughton's run where it was very obvious he wanted the week off, and they just wrote a way for that to happen. And sometimes they had him be knocked out.

[00:08:42]This has got to be the most contrived one.

[00:08:45]The Toymaker turns him invisible.

[00:08:48]And and and then and then takes away his power of speech.

[00:08:56]So that's it.

[00:08:57]>> [laughter] >> That's it. There's this just There's just the whole stretch of the snake where where William Hartnell just didn't have to show up to work cuz the doctor's invisible and can't talk for this bit.

[00:09:10]Oh, that's contrived as hell.

[00:09:13]And look, it's not like the the doctor gets knocked out for an entire episode isn't also contrived, but it's more flowing and natural than this.

[00:09:23]As far as the characters go, Steven, I haven't had a ton of experience with. I haven't had that much with Dodo, either.

[00:09:29]She's I don't know how she is overall. I think the only other time I've seen her, at least the only other time that's coming to mind, is The War Machines, which is weird cuz she leaves halfway through that very unceremoniously.

[00:09:46]Um but here, she I don't know I I don't want to say that this is true of her entire time as a companion cuz I don't know.

[00:09:58]But she seems to cause more problems than she solves.

[00:10:01]And almost everything she does or tries to do at minimum doesn't help.

[00:10:10]And like that's probably not true as an absolute. There's probably one or two moments where like she said something or stopped Steven from doing something, but she makes way more mistakes than she does and she like repeatedly takes Cyril at his word after it's been proven that he's a liar and a cheat and she's still like treating things he says and does as if they're sincere at at a point where that's just a really foolish thing for anyone to be doing and they're just having her do it.

[00:10:37]It really it feels like the writers had no respect for the very concept that Dodo had any intelligence to bring to the table at all.

[00:10:49]I mean, they named her Dodo. That probably didn't help. But yeah, that So there isn't much to her and Steven is not specially interesting either. He's just kind of the generic hero you know, kind of guy template that they saddled William Hartnell's doctor with because he couldn't be the action hero and Steven is the closest thing that they've got for that, but he doesn't at least in this story doesn't seem to have a lot of personality beyond that if we're being honest.

[00:11:19]Um that having been said, to be fair again, when I got to see the actor actually in the final episode as opposed to the horrible 3D recreation of him, he came off better because again, there is more personality in just the in just the nature of acting. Like I kind weird point to bring this up, but I kind of brought this up when I did my review of Haywire that the reason Gina Carano wasn't ready to be a leading actress cuz cuz she didn't know how to act and I don't mean like she was bad at line delivery. I mean like she would when she had a stage direction to just stand there, she would just stand there. You didn't get the sense that there was any thoughts going on.

[00:11:58]She wasn't looking at something. She wasn't bringing across personality with like small movements or you know, oh well, this is how my character would stand. It just felt like she was told to stand there and she stood there.

[00:12:07]And that's what I mean by just what actors bring because what the actor who plays Steven brings in the final one where I was able to watch the real thing are all those little tiny moments and acting choices and things that again, a lot of actors just kind of do naturally because they know they're meant to be conveying some sense of personality in a character, all of which is lost in the freaking animated recreations even aside from the fact that they look hideous. So I it's possible I'm being a little harsher on Steven than I need to be because like there is a little bit more personality when it's actually him except at the same time that's not super true of Dodo or maybe I just feel that way because I felt like her most egregious and foolish things that she did were in the last episode where I got to actually see the actress. So yeah, I feel I feel like the problems with Steven was stiffness but and that's a problem that if it exists in reality at all is severely exacerbated by the 3D recreation if not actually completely created by the 3D creation. Whereas my problems with Dodo have a lot more to do with how the character's written and that's going to be true whether she's animated or not.

[00:13:16]So yeah.

[00:13:18]Again, I get why this is a story with a certain you know, air of ooh, there was something there though. Because like some of the core concepts are interesting or at least could have been interesting if you know, taken in other directions and and had more done with them.

[00:13:38]But again, most of its good ideas got done better later by The Mind Robber and the Toymaker himself as a character was better explored with the Giggle.

[00:13:50]Not to you know, denigrate Michael Gough as the Toymaker. He does a perfectly fine job. He's got a solid presence. He's got this little kind of smirking grin, wonderfully punchable, very good for that. But again, he mostly just kind of stands around as like, yes. You you must play my game. And he doesn't really get much more to do than that. Again, when I actually get to see him and not the animated recreation, he does still bring a presence that is something, you know, enough that it was worth bringing the idea back, but this itself was not some kind of lost gem.

[00:14:25]And the animated recreation Oh my god.

[00:14:30]Oh god, it's so ha it's so hideous. I really hate it. I really hate it.

[00:14:37]I don't hate the story. The story is meh.

[00:14:39]The story's meh and kind of middling and I'd probably think better of it if The Mind Robber didn't exist.

[00:14:46]Uh but the animated recreation Celestial Toymaker.

[00:14:52]>> [laughter] >> What do other people think of this? Am I being too harsh? Maybe I am. I don't know. What are your thoughts on this?

[00:14:58]Whatever they are, drop something down in the comments. Let's talk about it.

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