Synopsis:
Steven and Dodo have been presented with a clue to their next game, which lies beyond a fake TARDIS:
"Four legs, no feet, of arms no lack;
It carries no burden on its back;
Six deadly sisters, seven for choice;
Call the servants without voice."
After negotiating a door covered in complex locks, they pass into another chamber of the Toyroom.
Within are three tall-backed wooden chairs.
When the Doctor tries to warn his companions about the chairs, he is silenced by the Toymaker - rendered mute for the remainder of his game.
Steven and Dodo are wondering what the new room holds when they are confronted by the King and Queen of Hearts, who look just like playing cards brought to life.
Whilst the King comes across as an amiable figure, his wife is arrogant and haughty.
Contemplating the riddle, they realise it refers to the chairs, though there are only three of them.
The King and Queen are soon joined by the Knave of Hearts - a lazy, greedy boy - and the Joker. The Knave is named Cyril.
As the Hearts confer, Steven and Dodo look down a side passage and find a second room of chairs - four this time - as well as a number of large TARDIS-shaped cabinets. Within are life-size wooden dolls, four decorated in playing card style and three like ballerinas.
They remove the first four before the cabinet automatically locks away the ballerina ones.
They observe on a monitor that the Doctor is now half way through his game.
It transpires that the game they must play against the Hearts Family is that of Musical Chairs. Six are deadly, with only a single safe one.
Dodo and Steven argue about the nature of their opponents. Steven sees them simply as beings created by the Toymaker, conjured up from his imagination. Dodo, on the other hand, sees them as real people.
They decide to split up and play in the second room, whilst the Hearts remain in the first.
Steven and Dodo know of the hidden extra dolls, which the Hearts do not.
They will use the dolls to test each chair. One slices the doll in two, whilst another dematerialises with its occupant. One is electrified, and another shakes its doll to pieces.
The Queen attempts to trick Cyril into sitting on a chair when they run out of dolls.
Dodo accidentally reveals to the Queen the existence of the other three dolls still in their cabinet.
The Queen is going to order the Joker to sit on one of the two remaining in the first room, but Dodo decides to gamble and sits down on the final chair in the second room.
She begins to freeze, but Steven is able to pull her free.
The Joker refuses to sit down, so the King and Queen agree to test a chair together. They sit down and at first nothing happens - then it suddenly collapses and traps them.
Steven sits on the last chair - winning the game.
The TARDIS appears - but it is another fake.
Its telephone rings and they hear the Toymaker. He tells them that the Doctor is close to completing his game, so they are running out of time. He then gives them their next clue:
"Hunt the key that fits the door,
That leads out on the dancing floor,
Then escape the rhythmic beat,
Or you'll forever tap your feet"
They notice that the King and Queen have been reduced to playing cards. As they move down the corridor to their next test, Dodo calls out for the dolls to appear, recalling a line from the very first clue - little realising that anything will actually happen.
Behind them, the three ballerina dolls jerk to life and leave their cabinet, following them down the corridor...
Next episode: The Dancing Floor
Written by: Brian Hayles
Recorded: Friday 25th March, 1966 - Riverside Studio 1
First broadcast: 5:50pm, Saturday 9th April 1966
Ratings: 8 million / AI 49
Designer: John Wood
Director: Bill Sellars
Additional cast: Peter Stephens (Knave of Hearts), Reg Lever (Joker)
Once the twelve part Dalek story was out of the way, it had originally been John Wiles' intention to dispense with William Hartnell at the earliest opportunity.
The actor was becoming increasingly irritable, making no attempt to hide his dislike of the producer. This was coupled with his failing memory and struggle to master his lines, and the negative impact he was having on the production as a whole. Donald Tosh was able to placate the star some of the time, but on another occasion Hartnell's behaviour would trigger a walk-out by the dressers, which put the whole studio session at risk.
Due to its surreal nature, it was decided that the Doctor could be changed in some way during The Celestial Toymaker, allowing for the part to be recast. He would be rendered invisible for a couple of episodes, and when physically brought back he would be made to look different - a twisted quirk of the Toymaker.
Accounts vary as to why this did not happen at the time. Obviously Wiles moved on from the series, though he was heavily involved in setting this story up.
One story is that the HR department of the BBC simply never got the message and automatically issued Hartnell with a contract extension. This doesn't quite wash, as each contract had to be negotiated with the actor's agent. We've already seen how some actors - like Purves and Maureen O'Brien before him - were issued much shorter contracts than they were expecting.
It is much more likely that the BBC top brass, which included Sydney Newman, agreed that Hartnell had to go, but wanted to take their time to work out how exactly this would be carried out.
The game selected for the second episode was a deadly version of Musical Chairs, and the protagonists would be the Hearts Family, who derive from a standard pack of playing cards. Famously, they had already been turned into living characters by Lewis Carroll in his Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865). The Queen of Hearts was the main antagonist.
In this episode, she comes across as a haughty, bossy figure, who is exasperated by her husband's weakness and her son's laziness. She wants to play to win, whilst the King comes across as far too nice, and his heart - no pun intended - isn't really in the game.
Dodo finds it difficult to see them as a threat - building on her feelings towards the two clowns last week. She sees their opponents as living beings, with emotions of their own, and so finds it difficult to take them seriously as a force for evil. Steven, on the other hand, sees them simply as opponents conjured up by the Toymaker - toys brought to life but still just playthings in the end.
Dodo's attitude has helped colour our opinion of the character. Whilst the writers might have been trying to paint her as an empathic figure who tries to see the good in everyone, many fans simply think her gullible and her actions annoying.
Had the script made more of the fact that these toys were once innocent victims of the Toymaker, tragically doomed to play his games for eternity, they - and Dodo's stance - might have elicited more sympathy.
Joining the cast were Peter Stephens and Reg Lever. Stephens, like Campbell Singer and Carmen Silvera, would play more than one role throughout the serial. Lever would feature in this episode only.
The script described Cyril as a "Billy Bunter type character" - something which the production team would make more obvious later on, almost to their cost.
Story Editor (and scripter for the broadcast story) Gerry Davis had actually envisaged an Artful Dodger character instead.
Having played Joey and Clara last week, Singer now portrayed the King of Hearts, with Silvera taking on the role of Queen.
The week prior to recording, William Hartnell had recorded a couple of voice tracks to be played into studio in the early part of the episode, as the Toymaker very quickly renders him mute as well as invisible.
The reprise from the previous week omitted Steven and Dodo seeing that Joey and Clara had been turned back into dolls.
The elaborate door they had to get past was simply a painted flat (above).
Each of the chairs was of a different geometric design, whilst the cabinets containing the dolls were white-painted copies of the TARDIS frontage. One of these had a built-in monitor to display the Trilogic Game score.
The fake TARDIS was pushed out from the back, and inside was a normal police box interior, including a telephone (not in the door panel).
The four prop dolls were designed to look like wooden peg-dolls, decorated like playing card figures. The trio of ballerina dolls left behind, which emerge at the conclusion of the episode, were played by actresses wearing exaggerated doll-like make-up. The prop dolls were taller than Jackie Lane - causing problems for her and Purves when moving them around the set.
To achieve the deadly chair effects, one was shaken off camera, and the head of the doll removed. When the camera cut back to it, it looked like the head had been shaken off.
Flash charges and a firework were used to simulate the electrified one.
The third had a curved blade swing out from the back, whilst the disappearing one was achieved using the roll-back-and-mix process often used for the TARDIS arrivals and departures.
The freezing chair was simply a case of Lane's acting abilities, whilst the final one was designed to collapse when Singer and Silvera sat on it.
A couple of playing cards were then left on the prop as the actors vacated the set.
As with the previous week, the new riddle was superimposed over an image of the Trilogic Game, just before the end credits rolled.
- The viewing figure remains the same as the previous week, and the appreciation figure even manages to rise - albeit by only one point.
- The move to the later time slot had played a part in improved viewing figures, but in the London region Doctor Who's competition was now a rural soap opera named Weaver's Green.
- Peter Stephens will return in The Underwater Menace, playing Atlantean High Priest Lolem.
- Musical Chairs goes by the alternative name of "The Trip / Journey to Jerusalem" - which might hint to it having medieval origins, from the time of the Crusades. A Welsh variation of the game has boys remaining seated, with the girls dancing round and having to sit on a boy's lap when the music stops.
- The standard 52 card deck is known as the English pattern of the French-suited cards. Continental packs found their way to England in the late 15th Century.
- The original model for the King of Hearts was Charlemagne (748 - 814), King of the Franks and Lombards, who rose to be Holy Roman Emperor.
- The Queen of Hearts was modelled on Judith, the Biblical heroine who slew the enemy general Holofernes after allowing him to seduce her.
- The Knave of Hearts was modelled on "La Hire", nickname for Etienne de Vignolles, Chatelain de Longueville (1390 - 1443). He led the French army to many victories during the Hundred Years War.
- Around this time an alternative Doctor, with grandchildren John and Gillian, first encountered the Dalek-like Trods (from issue 748 of TV Comic).
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