The Celestial Toymaker - The Final Test

The final part of this story is the only thing of this story that exists on DVD and its nice to see how creative this story could have been. The first thing that I noticed is that Cyril bears an uncanny resemblance to Captain Mainwaring from Dads Army. The game that Dodo, Steven and Cyril have to play is quite good now that we get to see it as its clear the Steven and Dodo will have a challenge to defeat Cyril. However what I like it that Cyril gets caught out by his own trap when he puts some slippery stuff on the square.

Like previous episodes we get a little bit of the Toymaker and the mute Doctor. I still don't fully understand the point of the Doctors game and think that its even stranger when the Toymaker is shouting for the moves to race ahead. Its not long before William Hartnell's voice makes a welcome return. It's not until the penultimate move before we get to see William Hartnell. We finally get a bit more of the Toymaker, after three episodes we get the right amount of Michael Gough and we get to see what a great performer he is.

Now it might seem like once the Doctor wins his game and Dodo and Steven win their game then that would be it but what I like about this episode is that there is a final plot twist. If the Doctor makes his final move then the TARDIS will be destroyed and so there is a wonderful bit of stalemate. Thanks to Steven the Doctor works out how to foil the Toymaker and its a clever way. Certainly makes up for the parlour games that we have had to endure over the last couple of episodes. The whole thing is played out well enough and it doesn't require any music and instead relies on the direction and also the performances.

The final scene is a nice explanation as to how they were able to defeat the Toymaker and it again took Steven to do the explaining because William Hartnell didn't exactly do a great job himself. Whereas Steven had a positive effect on the story, Dodo had the opposite because its due to her offering the Doctor a sweet that led to his discomfort. Sadly the discomfort will be on the viewer because The Gunfighters is next but if anything has been shown, its that my opinion could be changed but after two stories would it be three in a row? Only time will tell.

It's difficult to compare this episode in relation to the previous episodes because this is the only one that exists on DVD. However I think that its a good episode where things are tied up nicely and we got more of the Doctor and the Toymaker which made up for the lack of both in previous episodes. As a four part adventure, the story should be credited for being quite creative. I have appreciated this more than I have done in the past and think that it should be watched/listened to again because there are some good moments.