The same for me, David, it was my 10 birthday in the middle of this story's broadcasts, we were certainly in the programmes initial main target age group. I loved the surreal aspect of it, in the same way I loved the original 'The Prisoner' series, Jonathan Miller's 1966 version of 'Alice in Wonderland' and some of the more out there episodes of The Avengers, like 'The house that Jack built'. I realise though through my nostalgic memory of most of those 1st and 2nd Doctor stories they felt much better than what had actually appeared on my TV, now I can watch so many of them on BBC I-Player without the naivety of that period they were pretty hammy and camp. I appreciate the ambition and commitment though, but they hadn't the budget and, ironically, neither the time or space, to realise the writers ideas with any real justice. The thing I noticed most was how, with the smaller TV screen ratio, how difficult and critical it was that all the actors hit their marks. Scenes with 3 or 4 characters with dialogue all invading each others personal space vying for position to maintain keeping their faces in shot. Once you notice it it does become almost comical.

Thank goodness.😂

My thoughts exactly

Elizabeth Sandifer is a figure in fandom who has been gleefully trying to browbeat everyone into taking her POV on how to deal with problematic Doctor Who, which often amounts to shaming it without mercy. One of her evicerations of The Celestial Toymaker starts with her acknowledging she has not watched anything to do with it in many years, but she's proud of helping to take it down. There's no nuance to this kind of criticism, and it doesn't improve our society or perceptions if we can't acknowledge why something is problematic but also note that it can be entertaining and contextualized as well. Life's more complicated than some culture warriors want to admit.

Read a few of Sandifer's books, found it dismally subjective and so ludicrously pretentious as to be briefly convinced it was a deliberate parody of overblown fan review books before eventually realising that it was in fact written to be taken seriously. Really, I can't say they add anything to the fan community other than in pure comedy value. @@meiray

He was on holiday, but it's also true that there were discussions about replacing him at the time. Eventually they found a different way, but the idea of replacing him with a different actor when he became visible again is well known.

Thank you very much. That means a heck of a lot. 🙂🙂🙉🙉

moreover, the original title of Agatha Christies "And Then There Were None" was "10 Little N-Words", and apparently it was still printed in the UK with that title up to 1985 (according to Wikipedia)

Shame then. Shame now.

In Fawlty Towers though it was a deliberate joke to make fun of older racist people. There is another use of this rhyme in an episode of Dad's Army that shockingly I've never heard anyone complain about.

Dinopuff's animation of Part 1 though... has some amazing moments in it.

It actually was if you do research. Celestial was used to refer to Chinese immigrants in the USA, Australia, and the UK for a while

@@voiceinyourhead8284 - Absolute nonsense. Since 1543, since the day of Nicolaus Copernicus, the word "Celestial" has refered to an object or system in outer space. So what if once upon a time, a few people referred to someone or something with a common word ? Did you know theres a candy bar called a Milky Way, which is made of chocolate, which is sometimes used to describe black people, which makes it racist, which means we must outlaw candy bars !! Your ideas are insane. Learn to speak English.

@@voiceinyourhead8284 - You know, if YOU do your research, you'll find that "Celestial" was used in reference to Chinese immigrants because Chinese people refered to themsevles as CELESTIALS. It's sort of like calling Italians "Italian" or German people Germans. Fool. they called China , "The Celestial (Heavenly) Empire"

🤓👍

I agree with you. Celestial means heavenly, like the angels etc. If the Chinese wanted to be called that, well fine. But thus word is not owned by anyone...its free to use in this instance, for a classic Dr Who 60s episode.

Thank you for requesting this one.😀 I hope you enjoyed my take on it.🙉

@@TheChosenChimpOh I did! I’ve always enjoyed this story despite it’s many flaws, with many I do agree with, so it’s really nice to see a more positive review of it with a perfect sum up which is exactly how I feel about it 😊