The classic First Doctor (William Hartnell) adventure, The Celestial Toymaker, is now available to watch on BBC iPlayer… despite the fact that three of the four episodes of Doctor Who are actually missing.
Okay, so what’s actually on the streaming service (included for anyone with a TV license) is the four animated episodes, synced with the surviving soundtrack, alongside the fourth episode in its original black and white.
The four episodes were animated for release on DVD and Blu-ray back in 2024, but were met with a mixed reaction. Largely because they look hideous. It’s classed as “experimental”, but in reality, the animation looks cheap and scary; some have nonetheless praised it, so maybe it looks better in reality than the stills and trailer footage would have you believe.
Either way, you can now test that theory out, for free, via BBC iPlayer’s “Whoniverse” section, which includes hundreds of Doctor Who episodes — like other missing story animations of Galaxy 4, The Power of the Daleks, The Reign of Terror, The Tenth Planet, The Invasion, The Evil of the Daleks, and The Moonbase (the latter is, for my money, the best animation of all; genuinely excellent).
The last episode of The Celestial Toymaker does exist, and can be watched on iPlayer too; it was found in Australia and returned in 1984. That is worth a watch, even if you don’t want to check out the animated parts.
This story will likely be of interest to a fair few folk, considering the Toymaker finally came back, to face off against David Tennant’s Fourteenth Doctor, in The Giggle.
