Jerusalem fucked around with this message at 04:52 on Nov 20, 2016

• The Doctor outplaying himself. From the moment the Doctor awakens in the cable car he knows something is up - he doesn't remember who he is, why he is there, or that he has been there many times before.... but he knows that he's not being the person he usually is and something isn't quite right. So he rather gleefully sets about investigating, rather enjoying not being in full possession of the facts for once, finding the rather clumsy machinations of the other "players" amusing as they try to get him to play his part and he cheerfully ignores them to inject chaos and confusion. But his opponent knows him better than he thinks, and every move the Doctor makes has been anticipated and prepared for to keep him off the scent just long enough for the day to complete and things to reset. There are shades of the (later produced) excellence that was Heaven Sent but the mid-story revelation of an old villain - the Celestial Toymaker - is but another misdirection as to who is really orchestrating all events. When the Doctor, of course, manages to throw everything into disarray and destroy the plans of his opponent he discovers the opponent was himself, he set everything into motion and put himself into the middle of the game with strict instructions to everybody else to keep him from uncovering it all so they could run out the clock and do away with the already defeated Toymaker. Now his inability to just let events take their course has doomed them all and he has to scramble on the fly to come up with a solution, something he actually completely fails to do. It's really well-handled and rather refreshing to see the Machiavellian 7th Doctor screw things up so badly.
  
  
• The Celestial Toymaker. It's a returning character who has been used poorly in the past, and even at their best people have had very understandable issues with the character in concept alone. Here they are used extremely appropriately though, and writer Ken Bentley does a good job or detouring around/obfuscating the more problematic aspects and just getting to the core of the character. The background is established neatly as we realize we've come into the story at the halfway point, an entire other adventure has occurred before the story ever started and THIS story is about mopping up the damage from that. The Toymaker was defeated by the Doctor and a collection of abducted human players who are now "infected" with aspects of the defeated Toymaker's powers. Considering that includes the ability to alter reality, even the memory/perception of the Toymaker as an entity would be enough to restore it to life, so the Doctor sets up a game in which all of them keep the memory of the Toymaker buried long enough for the energy they carry to burn out of them and take the Toymaker with them, destroying him forever. When that inevitably fails, the Toymaker returns to life in the form of a ventriloquist's doll, stealing the voice of another character and cheerily torturing them all anew to regain its powers by wiping them out one by one. What could easily have been laughable or pathetic comes across as menacing and implacable, it's a very well-realized turn with the character and possibility a rehabilitation of them from their now dated origins.
  
  
• The end of the "game". With the Doctor having outplayed himself and failed to have worked out a feasible back-up plan, the villain seems to have the upper hand. The rather clever way it is defeated is extremely well handled, as two characters come to the realization that the Toymaker's games can only end with a winner and a loser, so why not end the game with neither? Playing chess on a giant board they themselves previously set up to be lethal, they use their family connection to come to an unspoken agreement, and play out a game of chess that ends with both players unable to avoid ending up in a position that will prove lethal to the human players. The Toymaker requires a surviving winner to regain his lost powers which have been jumping from winner to winner, and so finds himself locked in an eternal stalemate - should he force the game to end both players will die and his power will go nowhere and he will die, but leave the game as it is and he is trapped forever in his little wooden form unable to escape. It's an ending that feels earned in both a narrative and character sense, all the elements were put into place well ahead of time, and the relationship between the two surviving players has been established so that their ability to communicate between each other without explicitly saying what the other is thinking feels natural.
  

• Ace, Hex & Queenie. There is actually nothing wrong with the performances by any of the actors involved, and the characters themselves are well incorporated into the story. It's just that.... they shouldn't be. It's early on established that Ace and Hex (who get to put on some lovely ridiculous accents) are working under orders and doing what they can to keep the Doctor in the dark, while Queenie is a chaotic element who forces herself into the mix... but they shouldn't be. For the story to work, certain characters need to be part of the "game' being played which means they need to be at risk of death should they fail. It's established that Ace and Hex were actually not part of the unseen adventure and are thus free to work as outside elements.... except later on in the story it turns out they WERE part of the unseen adventure and ARE part of the game. Except then why do they NOT have aspects of the Toymaker inside themselves? The answer is because then by the rules of the story they would have to be viable "players" for the "game" and at least one of them would need to die, so instead they just.... aren't. It's even commented on by the Doctor who says words to the effect of,"Oh I guess you just got left out of this (nasty, lethal) part of things " and it's not particularly satisfying. Queenie is DEFINITELY not part of the game, one of the big reveals is that she should not be there and once they figure out exactly where "there" is, she absolutely, positively could NOT be there... but she is. And as far as I can tell it's never really explained how she got there, how much she knew etc. I may have missed an explanatory line, maybe she was drawn by a subconscious pull of her father unknowingly using the Toymaker's power but at the end of the story I thought,"Hang on.... how the hell did she even get into that cable car in the first place?"
  
  
• Mrs Kerniddle. I kept waiting for this to go somewhere and it never did. She's a mute (by choice) character with some terrifying secret hanging over her past but an obvious intelligence and talent for games. Then she dies. That's it.
  
  
• The Three Companions. Again there is nothing wrong with the characters or even the story in this little short audio (part 1 apparently) that features correspondence between Polly and the Brigadier who uncomfortably attempt to bridge the gap of their shared acquaintance having literally been different men when they knew him. It's actually rather sweet, as the Brigadier fondly reminisces about the characteristics of the 3rd Doctor until Polly responds that she never knew that version and he sounds quite unlike the two she knew. The Brigadier knew the 2nd Doctor of course but far less than the 3rd (or even 4th) and even their shared memories of Jamie come from a time AFTER Polly's departure, and he has no memory of the 1st Doctor at all. But what ruins (perhaps too strong a word) this story is the capper, as the correspondence is revealed to have been intercepted and read by.... sigh.... Thomas loving Brewster. A character I never particularly liked who I thankfully thought was gone for good is apparently making a return, working for some shadowy figure who I presume has some interest in the Doctor. I can't say I'm looking forward to Brewster returning even in a limited capacity, even if it comes with the Brigadier as a package deal.