Day 114: The Final Test

The final game that Steven and Dodo are put through is a twisted version of Snakes and Ladders, with electrified floors and the like. However, there is a major problem with this, in that there is no strategy to be had with Snakes and Ladders, it is instead a game of chance. It's why their opponent comes across so well here, because even though he blatantly cheats and causes problems for the two companions, he is attempting to implement some sort of strategy. He has spotted the trick to winning the game, not to play by the rules, but to amend them as you go to allow for a more fun experience. In some ways, this sums up the complete adventure, The Celestial Toymaker. It is an adventure where rules are set out, and the outcome is often left to chance more than our heroes' intelligence. And whilst the adventure is reasonably entertaining, you are left empty inside, because our heroes didn't do anything interesting, they just took part in things that seem interesting, but they have no impact on the eventual outcome. Like Snakes and Ladders, it may seem like a cool game to play, but when you realise that there's no strategy to it, it loses its charm.

Meanwhile, the Trilogic game is incredibly interesting, and I will come back to that in the future. Yes, I know that tomorrow I'm going to start a new adventure, and the Trilogic game doesn't appear at all in the future of Doctor Who, but at some point in the future, there will be something on this blog about the Trilogic game. As for now, We've still Got Work To Do.

Day 113: The Dancing Floor

The Doctor is barely in this one, reduced to a hand moving game pieces across a puzzle. The story behind why this is happening is actually quite interesting. William Hartnell is not a well man, and he is also not getting along with his producer John Wiles, who is reducing Hartnell's role in the series because it is becoming more and more apparent that he is unable to cope with the making the show. And so, when this story came about, it was suggested that the Doctor would reappear with a new face, allowing Hartnell to be quietly written out of the programme. This was vetoed by the head of serials at the BBC, and thus John Wiles left the series in protest. On the one hand, you can see why they kicked him out, because he was being unfair to this older actor, who was actually capable, it was just that his health was failing him. But that doesn't mean that he was wrong, because the problem was still there of a show that had a protagonist who was not in his best of health. This is still an issue, and it needs to be addressed quite soon.

Meanwhile, because I feel that I never properly said so, I would like to say farewell to John Wiles. He's overseen some very good stories in his tenure, although to be honest he was given the unworkable brief of a 12 part Dalek serial, and his tenure was unfortunately short due to the aforementioned Hartnell problem. Yet, he still managed to pull things off and produce some fine television. It's a shame that his era remains mostly missing from the BBC archives, as an awful lot of it is absolutely brilliant, leading the programme into a slightly darker time.

Day 112: The Hall of Dolls

The annoying thing about this episode is that, for the interesting idea of having to play games for an omnipotent being in order to fight for your freedom, the programme fails to do anything unique with it over the course of the episodes, which is to say, it follows the same pattern as the last episode. Steven and Dodo play a game against the Toymaker's playthings. They win the game, but their TARDIS is in another castle, amd so they must continue onto the next game. Meanwhile, the Doctor annoys the Toymaker by continuing to solve the puzzle of the Trilogic game. Granted, there are some differences between this episode and the last, such as in the portrayal of the Toymaker's minions. In The Celestial Toyroom, they were evil little people who created mischief and cheated at every turn. This episode, the new minions are slightly nicer, although there is a strain of evil within them, as they try and get others to potentially commit suicide before them in order to further their goals. But the crux of the matter is that the same structure has been used for the past two episodes, and I can pretty much guarantee that it will be used for the next two as well. It's not looking good for this story so far...

Day 111: The Celestial Toyroom

A new serial brings with it a new nemesis, this time The Celestial Toymaker. He's introduced as something that we've never really seen before, a character with godlike powers who has captured the TARDIS crew. And not only that, but he's captured them presumably in order to meet the Doctor again, and to beat him in his twisted games. This whole fantasy like concept, with godlike creatures and deadly parlour games is a realm that Doctor Who has never travelled to, although it possibly should have. When the series was first proposed, it was deemed that there would by three possibilities for story ideas: trips to the past, trips to the future/alien worlds and 'side trips' where odd things would happen to the TARDIS crew, such as being shrunk down, or driven insane by the TARDIS going faulty. Here, we get what is arguably the third of these 'side trips', with a weird fantasy world and an all-powerful game player behind it all and it becomes apparent to see why these concepts haven't really occurred in Doctor Who before. It has previously been a show that, despite the science fiction elements, has had a degree of possibility and rational explanation behind it. Here, we've broken the rules and can do whatever we like because we're in fantasy land now, and we don't need things like rationality for us. It's an interesting experiment, and we'll see how it plays out over the course of the next couple of episodes.