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The Celestial Toymaker
(Gerry Davis and Alison Bingeman) |
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 Name: The Toymaker
Format:
Television show, Book, Comic and Audio.
Time of Origin: Unknown, he comes from another
Universe.
Appearances: "The
Celestial Toymaker", "Divided
Loyalties", "The Nightmare Fair", "The
Magic Mousetrap", "Solitaire", "End Game" and "The Giggle".
Doctors:
First
Doctor,
Fifth
Doctor, Sixth
Doctor, Seventh
Doctor, Eighth Doctor, Fourteenth Doctor and Fifteenth Doctor.
Companions:
Steven
Taylor,
Dodo,
Adric, Nyssa, Tegan
Jovanka, Peri, Ace, Hex, Charley Pollard, Izzy Sinclair, Donna Noble and Melanie
Bush.
History: The Toymaker has a rather
interesting history. He is completely alone in this Universe,
cast out from his own by some unimaginable catastrophe. Since he is not
from this Universe he
obeys a different set of physical laws, giving him unbelievable
powers and abilities, and since the two Universes are receding from each
other, the laws
of relativity dictate that his own life span is increasing.
The Toymaker is already millions of years old, and he will live for millions
more, and the
isolation and loneliness have driven him mad; he long ago
abandoned the empty thrills of creation and destruction, and now seeks
distraction in the random
hazards of gameplay. Upon arrival in this Universe, he joined
the Council of Guardians, and became the Crystal Guardian of Dreams. This
is another factor in
his games - since The Black
Guardian and The White Guardian create chaos
and conflict to justify their existence, he creates games and illusions
to justify his. He
always sticks by his chosen rules, and often only tricks
The Doctor by not mentioning some rules.
The Doctor's first encounter with The Toymaker particularly significant on several levels, as The Toymaker The Doctor's first ever
opponent, first meeting The Doctor while he was still at school. At this time,
The Doctor was the member of a Time Lord elite known as the Deca, the best of
their year at school. Its members were The Doctor, Koschei, (Later to become
The
Master) Ushas, (Later to become The Rani) Mortimus, (Later to become
The
Meddling Monk) Magnus, (Later to become the War Chief) Vansell, (Later to
become a Coordinator for the CIA, as revealed in 'The Sirens of Time') Jelpax, and
lovers Rallon and Millenia.
The
Toymaker incident started when The Doctor refused to return home to
Lungbarrow for Otherstide and his Name Day because Kithriarch Quences
seemed to expect his automatic, unthinking obedience. His tutor Delox,
learning of his refusal, suspended him from the Academy until he had
learned humility. It was on this day that The Doctor visited the hermit
behind the Academy and learned the secret of life in a daisy. Armed
with his new determination to prove to the Time Lords that things
could change, he convinced his friend Mortimus to hack into the Time
Lords' secret files and find something of interest that he could investigate.
Mortimus found an entry on a legendary being, or beings, called the
Toymakers, and The Doctor set off to investigate with his friends
Rallon and Millennia, stealing a TARDIS
with the help of their fellow student Magnus. Upon entering the realm
of the Toymaker, however, Rallon was consumed and possessed by the
spirit of the Toymaker, an ancient collective intelligence that took
on Rallon's physical form and forced The Doctor to play its games
while imprisoning Millenia. The Doctor won a game of Capture the Flag
against a tin soldier by setting a trap on the muddy battlefield,
and the Toymaker, impressed by The Doctor's skill, decided to release
him in order to let him mature; he would prove a worthy opponent later
in life. The Doctor was forced to return to Gallifrey in disgrace,
having led Rallon to his death and Millennia to a worse fate, trapped
forever as one of the Toymaker's living dolls. He was expelled from
the Academy, and sentenced to 500 years of service in the records
area and traffic control. However, if The Doctor managed to obtain
his doctorate in his spare time, he could reapply to the Academy.
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| The Celestial Toymaker |
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The
Doctor
and the Toymaker eventually met again following The Doctor's
saving the remains of the human race from enslavement ten million and seven
hundred years in the
future. The Toymaker made The Doctor invisible and forced
him to play a game called Trilogic, in which The Doctor had to move different
sized pieces from
one corner to another on a triangular board, to rearrange
them perfectly from the A corner to the C corner in only 1023 moves. If
he made one mistake he
would loose, and become a doll of The Toymaker, but even if The Doctor won his game, he had to win his
game after
Steven
Taylor and
Dodo had
won theirs, and if he finished his game first, they would become the Toymaker's
dolls anyway. Also, The Doctor was incapable of warning
his friends of the
danger, because the Toymaker removed The Doctor's voice
and made him invisible and intangible barring one hand. As if it wasn't
hard enough already, whenever
The Doctor began to slow down, the Toymaker moved him forward
a certain number of moves, bringing him ever closer to his 1023rd move before his companions would win theirs.
The first game
for Steven and Dodo was a game of blind man's buff against two clowns, in which
one person had to wear a blindfold and be guided by their partner through an
obstacle course. Steven and Dodo lost, but they discovered that the clowns
cheated by using a transparent blindfold, so the game was played again, so
Steven and Dodo won. The second game consisted of seven chairs, six of which
would kill however sat in them. Dodo and Steven were forced to play against the
King, Queen, Joker and Knave of Hearts, using a series of four dolls only.
Despite Dodo briefly sitting in a chair designed to freeze her to death, both
she and Steven survived while the Knave and Joker left the game, while the King
and Queen were killed by a melting chair. Steven and Dodo then narrowly won a
game of hunt the thimble, and managed to outmanoeuvre some dancing dolls to get
to the next game.
Their next game was against the Toymaker's ultimate player,
the schoolboy Cyril, the most deadly of all as he was so innocent. The game was
called TARDIS hopscotch, with numbered triangles at odd angles set into the
floor. At the end is a raised platform on which stands a police box. Each
player started at triangle 1, took a die and rolled it. The number thrown would
appear on a pole-shaped dice indicator (So that nobody could cheat!). The
player then moved the number thrown. The first one to reach number 14 - where
stands the police box - is the winner. The only catch was that they could only
jump - the area between the triangles was electric, and they'd be killed! Cyril
tried to get rid of Steven and Dodo by coating triangle 12 with a slippery
substance, but he accidentally walked on it himself and was killed. The Doctor,
by then, had managed to join his companions, now having acquired the TARDIS,
but he could only leave after he'd made his last move, which he could only make
it standing right next to the game board, and once he'd made his move, the
Toymaker's realm would collapse. However, The Doctor managed to win the game by
disguising his voice as the Toymaker's, and instantly escaped just as the realm
collapsed.
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Divided Loyalties
(Gary
Russell) |
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After that, the Toymaker and The Doctor didn't meet again for
four regenerations. When they finally did meet, The Doctor
had received a telepathic call for help from Rallon during a dream, and then
materialised on a space station orbiting the planet Dymok, a planet whose
permanently comatose inhabitants apparently powered the Toymaker with their
psychic abilities. The Doctor, Tegan
Jovanka and Nyssa went down to the planet, and
Tegan was met by a mysterious figure called the Observer and several Dymova,
who hailed her as their Chosen One. Her forthrightness and strength of will
were the key to saving the Dymova from the Toymaker, but at the same time the
Toymaker was preparing his latest game for The Doctor, having made Nyssa and
Adric doubt him. The Toymaker had brought The Doctor there because Rallon was
dying and the Toymaker couldn't separate himself from Rallon, so he intended
that The Doctor would replace Rallon if he lost. Adric and Nyssa had to play a
chess game as the white King and Queen of the game, while The Doctor had to
complete a double-sided jigsaw with his face on both sides at the exact same
time as his friends finished their game. The Dymovans then attempted an attack
on the Toymaker, focussed by Tegan's strength, but it apparently failed, the
Toymaker diverting all the power back on Dymok, destroying it.
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The Nightmare Fair
(Graham
Williams) |
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The Toymaker
appeared to have won, and summoned the crew of the space station and The Doctor
companions to witness his defeat. But Adric, Nyssa and Tegan refused to let The Doctor sacrifice himself for them, and in that brief distraction, Rallon played
his final card. Dymok never existed; it was an illusion created by Rallon to
lay the groundwork for this plan, and the Observer was simply Rallon's Watcher,
the wraith of his future selves. In that distraction created by The Doctor and
his companions, Rallon forced himself through all twelve of his remaining
regenerations at once, expelling the Toymaker from his body, thanks to Dymok's
destruction channelling all the Dymova's power into Rallon. After a brief
farewell to Millenia, really Nyssa pretending to comfort him, Rallon died at
last. The Observer then merged with the Toymkaer, to keep him in check in
future. As The Doctor left, he knew that this change meant a change for The Toymaker too - although he still looked the same and wanted the same things, he
was a bit less mysterious now. Meanwhile, as he and his servant Stefan waited
for the toyshop to repair itself, the Toymaker decided to visit a theme park in
Blackpool.
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The Nightmare Fair
(BF Audio Lost Story) |
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However, some-time after arriving at the theme park, the
Toymaker discovered that the Sixth
Doctor and his companion Peri were there as
well. The Toymaker tricked the two of them into going to the Space Mountain
ride at the park, where he managed to capture The Doctor and then lure Peri to
the closed Broken Neck Gap ride, eventually capturing her. The Toymaker than
tried to attack The Doctor, stuck in a cell powered by the Toymaker's own mind,
with a monstrous crustacean, but The Doctor convinced it that he was an
intelligent life form. The Toymaker than locked The Doctor, Peri, and a man
they'd met called Kevin, in a cell with a video game in it. The Doctor was
meant to play the game, but instead dismantled it for its circuitry. Meanwhile,
the Toymaker finished his latest, greatest game - the ultimate video game,
depicting a lone player's battle against alien creatures in a blasted urban
landscape. However, it had a catch - once the player lost all three of their game lives, a monster stepped out of the screen and killed them. The Toymaker, pleased, prepared to send out blueprints of the game, and then had The Doctor
summoned to play the game himself.
The Doctor
had, at the time, managed to interconnect the cells and was working with
the
crustacean
on a device to get them all out. However, then The Doctor
was forced to play the Toymaker's new game, and while playing
it, The Doctor worked out the truth
behind the Toymaker. However, just as a game monster was
about to kill The Doctor, the device the crustacean had
finished was attached to Peri, causing her to disorientate the Toymaker
with a psychic scream,
knocking the Toymaker
out and allowing The Doctor to escape the game monster.
While the Toymaker was unconscious, The Doctor rewired the
cells so they imprisoned only the Toymaker -
since they were powered by the Toymaker's mind, the Toymaker
would be trapped for the rest of his life. While The Doctor
regretted having to do that, he knew
he had no choice. Kevin met his brother again, captured
by the Toymaker, and, on The Doctor's advice, the two of
them started their own company thanks to the
Toymaker's blueprints for a non-deadly version of the game.
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The Magic Mousetrap
(Matthew Sweet) |
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Despite the
seemingly final nature of this defeat, The Doctor met the
Toymaker again in his seventh incarnation, when the Toymaker had brought
the inhabitants
of the Hahlbrook Sanatorium into his realm to play a new
series of games. Under unspecified circumstances, The Doctor was able to
rally the Toymaker’s
current players to compete against the Toymaker in various
games all at once, resulting in the Toymaker being defeated and his power
becoming fractured
among the subconscious minds of the players, the Toymaker
being reduced to a ventriloquist’s doll. Attempting to defeat the
Toymaker for good, The Doctor transferred everyone back to the Sanatorium,
arranging
for his current companions Ace and Hex to monitor the rest
of the players - himself included - making sure that they didn’t
remember their confrontation with the Toymaker, knowing that the fragments
of the Toymaker’s
power in their minds would eventually ‘die’ due to the Toymaker
being cut off from his realm. Although The Doctor’s plan nearly failed
when his investigations into his lack of memory resulted
in him discovering the doll-Toymaker - as well as the realisation that
they were still in
the Toymaker’s realm - prompting the Toymaker to challenge the inhabitants
to individual games to regain his parts once again, he was
eventually defeated when Doctor Ludovic ‘Ludo’ Comfort, his
last opponent, who possessed an equal amount of the Toymaker’s power
while confronting him in a game of chess, used his power to send the other
players back to
Earth, subsequently resolving to never make his next move
in the chess game, thus leaving the Toymaker locked in a permanent stalemate
and unable
to regain his original powers.
(How these
events can be reconciled with the Toymaker’s fate in "The Nightmare
Fair" is unclear; the most likely explanation is that, for the Toymaker,
these events occurred before his encounters with the Fifth and Sixth Doctors,
with his transformation into a doll and the subsequent restoration of his
powers - having somehow manipulated Ludo to make his last move - damaging
his original ‘link’ to Rallon, thus forcing him to seek out
The Doctor once again and beginning the events of "Divided
Loyalties").
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Solitaire
(John Dorney) |
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The Doctor’s next encounter with The Toymaker took place when The Toymaker managed to capture the Eighth Doctor and Charley Pollard, trapping them in a new game that he had just received. Although The Toymaker was able to trap The Doctor in the form of a ventriloquist dummy while playing against Charley in a version of the Toyroom that shrank every time she failed to work out the goal of the game, Charley realised that the nature of this game, which meant the player forgot when they had started playing, meant that The Toymaker was the one playing rather than Charley or The Doctor, as he had been unable to resist testing the game himself before using it on anyone else. This revelation left The Toymaker trapped in his own shrinking Toyroom while Charley retrieved the dummy-Doctor and left in the TARDIS, The Doctor (using Charley’s voice) assuring her that he would resume his human form once they left the Toyroom. The Toymaker expressed certainty that he would be able to return to his usual form after the Toyroom had collapsed and the game 'reset'.
The Eighth Doctor faced The Toymaker again when the TARDIS materialised in what appeared to be Shoreditch, a village The Doctor had become fond of during previous visits, only to learn that everyone in the village had been replaced by living dolls apart from his old friend Maxwell Edison and Max’s young friend Izzy Sinclair ("End Game"). Realising that they were currently in a toy Stockbridge created by The Toymaker while the original village was frozen in time, The Doctor was able to use the technology that created the doll duplicates to create a duplicate of The Toymaker himself. The two Toymakers were thus left locked in stalemate while The Doctor escaped with the Stockbridge residents, returning them to Earth before he left with Izzy as his new companion.
The Toymaker remained absent from The Doctor’s life for several incarnations and centuries after this, only returning after the Time War between the Daleks and the Time Lords ("The Day of The Doctor") drove several higher beings into exile from the universe. When The Toymaker returned, he claimed that he had defeated God and had trapped The Master’s essence in his gold tooth, as well as defeating the Black and White Guardians. The Toymaker also claimed to have made a ‘jigsaw’ of The Doctor’s history, suggesting that he may have contributed to some of the conflicting details of The Doctor’s history such as the contrasting details of what happened to Ace to make her leave The Doctor or the Eighth Doctor’s complex history. However, the distortions to The Doctor’s timeline can also be explained as a result of The Doctor having essentially ‘rebooted’ the universe on various occasions since his initial encounter with The Toymaker, such as The Master’s manipulation of the Cult of the Heretic ("The Two Masters"), the Eighth Doctor’s confrontation with the Council of Eight ("Sometime
Never...") and the Pandorica crisis faced by the Eleventh Doctor ("The Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang"), to say nothing of the trauma of the Time War. With these ‘reboots’ in mind, it is likely that The Toymaker’s history with The Doctor is one of the most significant distortions, particularly when some of The Doctor’s attempts to trap The Toymaker basically relied on the nature of the universe remaining constant, so universal resets could have changed those rules. On a wider note, while The Doctor and The Toymaker agreed that they had each only won one game each, ignoring their intervening encounters, this may be explained as their games in those other encounters saw The Doctor basically trap The Toymaker in a draw - either with himself or other players - or outright avoid actually completing the game they were playing. Given The Toymaker’s fixation on games, he and The Doctor could make a reasonable argument that those meetings don’t ‘count’ in their contest with each other as neither of them definitively won those games, whereas this encounter saw them directly compete once again.
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| The Giggle |
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Regardless of what The Doctor and The Toymaker remember of their history, this particular clash revealed that The Toymaker had planted a secret subliminal code in every electronic screen throughout human history by establishing a toyshop in 1926 and selling a ventriloquist dummy to one of the men involved in the invention of the television ("The Giggle"). Through The Toymaker’s influence, this dummy now existed as a subliminal message on every electronic screen that everyone on history could see at some point in their existence. The signal provoked every member of the human race to become convinced that they were ‘right’ to the extent that they would vent about even subconscious prejudices and beliefs that they would never have reacted on otherwise, as well as dangerous actions like pilots landing planes wherever they felt like. The only people immune to the signal were some of The Doctor’s past companions, including Donna Noble and Melanie Bush, suggested to be because of their time in the TARDIS. UNIT were able to devise armbands that would keep peoples’ emotions in check, but in the current climate mass distribution of that technology was impossible as too many people were suspicious of it. The Doctor, his companions and UNIT were able to identify the source of the signal and trace the origin of it to the puppet, The Doctor invoking his status as President of Earth during a crisis to destroy the satellites before going back in time to the date of the first transmission. Tracking down the shop where the doll had been purchased in 1926, The Doctor quickly identified the shopkeeper as The Toymaker and challenged him to a game to make him stop his current scheme, also confirming that The Toymaker’s signal in the future was intended to reflect the ‘game’ that everyone in the future had an opinion, making everyone right so that they could always win or lose.
The Doctor lost a subsequent card game, but argued that this left him and The Toymaker in a draw based on him winning their first game, allowing him to provoke The Toymaker into a final confrontation in 2023. Entering UNIT headquarters playing Spice Girls’ ‘Spice Up Your Life’, The Toymaker literally danced through UNIT’s soldiers, turning a couple of soldiers into balloons and turning any bullets fired at him into rose petals. This concluded with The Toymaker using UNIT’s galvanic beam - a weapon capable of shooting satellites out of orbit - to kill The Doctor directly to provoke a regeneration and play the next game with another Doctor. However, this triggered a unique event termed ‘bigeneration’ (considered a myth even by the Time Lords) where the regenerating Doctor, aided by Mel and Donna, was literally split into two separate people, the Fourteenth Doctor continuing to exist as an independent individual while the Fifteenth Doctor manifested as a separate physical entity alongside his ‘predecessor’. The two Doctors used this opportunity to challenge The Toymaker to another game, arguing that The Toymaker had to accept the challenge as he had changed the rules by bringing two Doctors into the equation. The two Doctors and The Toymaker thus engaged in a game of catch, tossing a ball at each other until the two Doctors managed to coordinate and toss the ball over the edge of the tower. With that victory, the Fourteenth Doctor declared that his prize would be to banish The Toymaker from existence forever, forcing him back into the jack-in-the-box that had been his toyshop in 1926. The Fifteenth Doctor was subsequently able to use his own ‘prize’ to create a duplicate TARDIS for himself, allowing the Fourteenth Doctor to basically ‘retire’ and deal with his own trauma while the Fifteenth Doctor moved on with a fresh perspective on their existence.
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