The Celestial Toymaker is a visual story that had its original ideas
rewritten by the production staff and the story was altered beyond
recognition. It changed from a surreal
piece to four episodes of children’s party games with Michael Gough, but as it
would turn out writer Brian Hayles didn’t give up the concept of
extra-dimensional beings capturing the Doctor.
He would turn in his script for The
Queen of Time to the production office, only for it to get rejected and the
surviving materials sent to the exile of Frazer Hines’s garage. Big Finish however was able to get ahold of
the information and adapt the materials into a four episode Lost Story in 2013.
The plot has a similar
premise to The Celestial Toymaker opening
with a very tense TARDIS scene where everything is normal until a record starts
playing and an invitation appears on the scanner inviting the Doctor to
dinner. A pretty face appears and the
TARDIS is captured in the domain of Hecuba, the titular queen of time, who
makes the Doctor sit through dinner with her while Jamie and Zoe have to escape
her domain of clocks. While the story
never really reaches the levels of The
Mind Robber in terms of surreal atmosphere, it still feels a lot like the
atmosphere of time screwing around is a really good one.as we get to at least
have vivid imagery. It takes a style
similar to a thriller story with some gross out imagery with the actual dinner
for the story to work. The biggest
problem in the story is that it does go over the ground of The Celestial Toymaker, because on audio you can’t really go with
the idea of surreal atmosphere that the script really wants. A lot of the imagery that happens is the
disgusting food and a scene where Zoe just ages both ways over and over again
which really sort of goes on way too long.
The actual challenges are just dealing with these parodies of historical
figures and the theme is just time goes on and on. You aren’t really expecting a lot of the
weirdness the story features.
Caroline Faber as Hecuba
is Doctor Who does femme fatal. Hecuba
obviously wants the Doctor in more ways than one and she’s ready to go to any
lengths to get him under her power.
Faber has this silky quality to her voice that lures you in, but also makes
you a little wary. She gets Jamie under
her power causing a lot of the mess the story goes into. The listener cannot really tell what she’s
thinking before everything is about to fall apart. She plays the part like a temptress, enjoying
herself as she plays with the Doctor and his companions. It helps that Lisa Bowerman only had three
people for the entire story, Faber and the two regulars reprising their
roles. It makes the story feel very
tight and Bowerman’s direction focused on getting the actors to give good
performances which overall works for the story.
Frazer Hines again is brilliant as the Doctor, so much so that his
performance as Jamie actually suffers in this one as a result. The Doctor toys just as much with Hecuba as
she does with him which is something extremely interesting for the story as it
goes into just how manipulative in general the Doctor becomes. He is trying to find a way out of the game as
he simply has to watch as Jamie and Zoe are the ones doing the playing. It’s also Wendy Padbury being able to
recapture the magic as Zoe that helps with a lot of the danger coming through
in the story.
The writing style from
Brian Hayles also touches upon what could have made The Celestial Toymaker a great story and improves The Queen of Time which is lacking
without any real visuals. The Doctor is
allowed to have fun in this story as he has to play the game and keep Hecuba
entertained throughout a revolting dinner.
He is cracking jokes throughout the entire thing and trying to get little
hints to Jamie and Zoe as to how they can get out of this situation. The music by Toby Hrycek-Robinson should also
be noted for how much it sounds like it was meant for a period piece. It has this gramophone type quality that just
sort of works for this type of story as it takes place outside of time as a way
to signal how this situation works.
To summarize, The Queen of Time is an interesting look
at exactly how a story could have worked with an extradimensional being as the
villain of the piece. The concepts of
the story are honestly great, even if it treads a lot of the same ground as The Celestial Toymaker. The direction and music score add to the
atmosphere the story is evoking and the acting performances from the three
performers are great, but Jamie McCrimmon suffers extremely as a result of the
Doctor being in the foregrounds for the story’s duration. Hecuba is a great villain and Caroline Faber
is a great actress. 85/100
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