The Toymaker

The Toymaker, also known as the Celestial Toymaker, was a powerful being who ensnared sentient beings in seemingly childish games, with their freedom as the stakes. However, the Toymaker hated to lose and the games were always rigged in his favour.

There were many contradictory accounts of the Toymaker's identity; one equated him with the Chinese trickster-god No Cha, (PROSE: ) and others claimed that he was one of the Guardians of Time, either the Crystal Guardian, (PROSE: ) or the Guardian of Dreams. (PROSE: ) The Sixth Doctor believed the obfuscation of identity was deliberately encouraged on the part of the Toymaker as another game to keep him entertained. (AUDIO: The Nightmare Fair)

Whatever he really was, the Toymaker had a sister named Hecuba, who was known as the Queen of Time. (AUDIO: The Queen of Time)

Origins
According to the Sixth Doctor, much of the Toymaker's past was up to speculation: not even the Time Lords were able to confirm the Toymaker's true origins, as anyone who researched into him became tired of all the games they had to face along the way in their efforts to understand. (AUDIO: The Nightmare Fair)

The First Doctor believed the Toymaker to be native to the same universe as himself, and as having "only" lasted for "thousands of years" by the time of their first encounter. He told Steven Taylor and Dodo Chaplet that "this Toymaker" was "immortal, like all toymakers", explaining that "the urge to create toys that are ultimately destructive [was] unfortunately part of [their] universe", such that the world was metaphorically full of "destructive toymakers" like him. (PROSE: The Celestial Toymaker)

In contrast, the Sixth Doctor claimed that the Toymaker originated in a universe before his own and was hauled into the primary universe by "some kind of catastrophe", was immune to the usual laws of physics as a result. (AUDIO: The Nightmare Fair) This echoed the Sixth and Seventh Doctors' accounts of the nature of the Great Old Ones; (PROSE: Millennial Rites, All-Consuming Fire) in fact, some accounts claimed that the Toymaker was the crystal-coloured Guardian of Dreams, counterbalancing the other five Guardians of Time, the most powerful Great Old Ones who had survived from an older universe in which they had been the equivalent of Time Lords (PROSE: Divided Loyalties, The Quantum Archangel) that were in attendance for the creation of the universe. (PROSE: The Whoniverse)

According to the Eighth Doctor, the Toymaker originated in "the Dark Places", (COMIC: ) with the Twelfth Doctor similarly claiming that the Toymaker was spawned in the chaos before time. (COMIC: Relative Dimensions) Likewise the Seventh Doctor described the Toymaker as an Elder God originating from the Old Times at the beginning of the universe. (AUDIO: The Magic Mousetrap, Black and White) In fact, one account equated him with the Chinese trickster-god No Cha, depicting him as one of the magical entities from the chaotic "time before this" who had survived the Time Lords' imposition of reationality upon the universe. Only when rationality's foothold on the universe lessened, such as during the reign of the Carnival Queen, was the Toymaker able to descend from his realm outside time and space, and interfere in the physical world once again. (PROSE: )

In contrast, one account mentioned the "chap" who became "obsessed with games" and took to dressing like a Chinese mandarin as a member of one of the elder races from the original palimpsest universe; in this account, this original state of reality before the Great Houses' interference was one of perfect linearity, and it was only after the introduction of time travel to the universe that various members of the elder races went mad and turned their powers to evil or mischief. (PROSE: )

Creating the Celestial Toyroom
In a confession to the Sixth Doctor, the Toymaker stated that he eventually got bored of thousands of millennia of pointless creation and destruction after using his powers for other things in the beginnings of the universe, and found a new source of amusement in games. (AUDIO: The Nightmare Fair) According to the First Doctor, the Toymaker succeeded in creating a universe of his own, "entirely in his own vision" called the Celestial Toyroom, where he would "manipulate people and turn them into his playthings". The Toymaker and his games became "notorious throughout the universe" as he spread his influence to attract people into his world and try to make them part of it. (PROSE: The Celestial Toymaker)

Out of boredom, (COMIC: ) the Toymaker began spending centuries of his time wandering the Earth and sampling its various games, (PROSE: The Nightmare Fair) frequently challenging humans from across history. He lured people from a variety of cultures to the Toyroom, turning them into toys when they lost his games. On one such occasion, he lured Gaylord Lefevre — a professional gambler from the Old West — from his steamboat in the Mississippi, challenging him to a game of cards; when Gaylord's luck began to sour he attempted to mark the cards to "even the score", but, aware of Gaylord's deception, the Toymaker proclaimed that the game was forfeit and transformed him into one of his many toys after playing along briefly. He later challenged a Roman soldier, leading him past the toy version of Gaylord. (COMIC: ) In the 18th century, Hsen Ling told stories of his own abduction by the trickster-god No Cha, who he beat in an unearthly game of cards. (PROSE: Christmas on a Rational Planet)

First encounter with the Doctor
The Time Lords' data banks on the Toymaker on Gallifrey during the Doctor's early life described him only as a vague legend, with some reports implying that there existed several Toymakers rather than just one. When the First Doctor investigated the legend with his friends Rallon and Millennia in a stolen TARDIS, they arrived in the Toyroom and found the Toymaker in a dormant, disembodied state. However, he managed to possess Rallon and make Millennia one of his living toys, with the Doctor able to best him with the help of the Dymova. Knowing that he would become an even more worthy opponent given time to mature, the Toymaker allowed the Doctor to leave the Toyroom. (PROSE: Divided Loyalties)

Rematch with the Doctor
After compiling a list of games to play, (PROSE: ) the Toymaker drew the TARDIS back to his realm and made the Doctor and his companions, Steven Taylor and Dodo Chaplet, play his games again, but arranged things so that the Toyroom would vanish completely at their moment of victory, leaving him the only survivor and the Doctor and his companions his subjects forever. (TV: The Celestial Toymaker) However, Rallon was able to keep the Toymaker's powers in check and ensured that he abided by the rules of his games to help the Doctor to escape. (PROSE: Divided Loyalties) The Doctor soon outwitted the Toymaker again and escaped, leaving his realm in chaos, and the Doctor believing that the Toyroom no longer existed, (TV: The Celestial Toymaker) but the Toymaker later stated that he had actually been banished to the ether for millennia after his defeat. (COMIC: )

Further activities
Having been banished to the ether in his defeat, the Toymaker spent millennia searching for a way to best the Doctor, eventually finding that the Imagineum would be able to create a version of the Doctor under his bidding that was more powerful than the original. As the Imagineum had been in a spacecraft that crashed on Earth and looted by the Knights Templar, the Toymaker played and won a game of canasta with a descendant of the Knights Templar living in the 1990s named Marwood, placing him under his bidding and the Imagineum in his possession. However, Marwood's adjutant, Felix, stole a component of the Imagineum called the Focus, and entrusted it with Maxwell Edison and Izzy Sinclair, before he was killed by Marwood in a decoy of Stockbridge the Toymaker made, while keeping the real village in a Macro-Dimensional Linkage Device that resembled a snowglobe.

When the Eighth Doctor arrived in the fake Stockbridge, the Toymaker confronted him when he, Max and Izzy tried to retreat to his TARDIS. While the Doctor and Izzy were able to escape from his clutches, Max was captured, and taken to the Macro-Dimensional Linkage Device that the Toymaker had sealed the real Stockbridge in. When the Doctor and Izzy mounted a rescue from the Toyroom, the Toymaker had Marwood and his dolls capture them, and forced them to play games of snakes and ladders and hangman before the Toymaker unveiled his possession of the Imagineum. The Toymaker placed Izzy and Max in a game of mousetrap and created his duplicate of the Doctor, placing them in a game of gladiatorial chess.

Despite his duplicate being physically superior to him, the Doctor was able to convince his duplicate not to fight by explaining that he was merely just another one of the Toymaker's playthings. After seeing the Toymaker murder Marwood after growing bored of him, the duplicate of the Doctor was left with no doubt that he too would eventually befall the same fate, so he turned on the Toymaker, going to kill him, but the Doctor instead used the Imaginuem to create a duplicate of the Toymaker, sending him and his duplicate to compete in a perpetual stalemate in the Dark Places where the Toymaker originated. As the Toyroom began to dissipate, the Doctor, Izzy, and Max fled, while the Doctor's duplicate remained so he could destroy the Imagineum, and the Doctor restored Stockbridge after Max took the "snowglobe" with him from the Toyroom. (COMIC: )

When the Toyroom began to break down due its ancient age, the Toymaker feared that he would be "loose in a wild, unforgiving universe", thus luring the Twelfth Doctor and Clara Oswald on the pretence of a party hosted by Susan, wanting to steal the Doctor's TARDIS to keep the Toyroom contained. After the toy replicas of some of the Doctor's previous companions failed to capture him, the Toymaker flew a toy biplane towards him and Clara; as the Toymaker's power over the Toyroom was waning, the Doctor was able to take some control, causing the biplane to crash by hitting it with a giant bauble.

The Doctor and the Toymaker then battled with toy armies until he realised they were equally matched, deciding to propose a game of Truth or Dare; it was in this game the Toymaker revealed his fears about the Toyroom's collapse and, thinking he was outsmarting the Doctor, dared him to give the TARDIS to him. As the TARDIS materialised around the Toyroom, the Doctor and Clara travelled to the control room, rebuilding the Toyroom with the Zero Room and ejecting it into space. The Doctor had felt compassion for the Toymaker, for they weren't so dissimilar: "a lonely god, drifting through time and space in his magical toy box." (COMIC: )

The Toymaker attempted to persuade a victim to play the Trilogic Game, while speaking about his toys and their sadness, as he toyed with the Tenth Doctor, the TARDIS, a Cybusman, an Adipose, and some Daleks. (POEM: )

Becoming the Mandarin
When the Toymaker discovered that Rallon's body was dying after centuries of existence, he set out to ensnare the Doctor again and hatched a complex plot to turn his companions against him and absorb the Fifth Doctor as a new host, but was thwarted when Rallon forced himself to undergo multiple regenerations consecutively, with the trauma expelling the Toymaker from his body. A projection of Rallon's potential future self then merged with the Toymaker to ensure that his full powers continued to be kept under control. While waiting for his Toyroom to repair itself, the Toymaker decided to take his servant Stefan to Earth to seek amusement, deciding to go to Blackpool from an idea he had seen in Tegan Jovanka's mind.

By this account, although the Toymaker had meaningfully regenerated, in a way which altered his personality, he kept the same face as before; (PROSE: Divided Loyalties) this tallied with one account of the Doctor's subsequent encounter with the Toymaker in Blackpool, (PROSE: The Nightmare Fair) while another, otherwise-similar account of this event showed that the new Toymaker had adopted a different physical appearance and voice altogether, (AUDIO: The Nightmare Fair) which he would retain during an encounter with the Eighth Doctor. (AUDIO: Solitaire)

At any rate, now calling himself "the Mandarin", the Toymaker began operating in late 20th-century Blackpool, indulging in the same impulse that had led to his wanderings. Using the Space Mountain thrill-ride as his base-of-operations, he instructed Stefan, as well as Yatsumoto and others, to begin the development of arcade cabinets with video games that killed the players that failed with an electronic monster projected from the video screen. The Toymaker goaded the Sixth Doctor and Peri Brown into a series of traps and games while they were on holiday in Blackpool. However, when the Doctor recognised the Toymaker's infinite loneliness, the Toymaker was agitated enough to cheat the Doctor of his game and use the video game's murderous monster to kill him, but he was thwarted by the combined intervention of Peri and his other surviving prisoners. To ensure his video games could never be released to harm the people of Earth, the Doctor imprisoned the Toymaker in an impenetrable force-field sustained by his own mental energy, which he considered inescapable. (PROSE: The Nightmare Fair)

The Toymaker sought out Fenric, (PROSE: Games) who had been imprisoned by the Doctor in Arabia, (PROSE: The Curse of Fenric) to challenge him to four-dimensional chess. He was in danger of losing and instead consolidated his pieces on the board. The end result was a stalemate, which was a new concept to the Toymaker, and so he departed Fenric's prison with the realisation that "perhaps winning [wasn't] everything after all." (PROSE: Games)

The Toymaker later captured the Doctor's TARDIS and took it to his Toyshop, where he transformed the Eighth Doctor into a puppet and the Doctor's companion, Charley Pollard, was forced to take part in his riddle, but was tricked by the Toyshop, which shrunk to 0% of its original size and the body the Toymaker was using was destroyed within it. The Toymaker swore that when his new body had formed, he would take his revenge upon the Doctor and Charley, who had escaped before the Toyshop's destruction. (AUDIO: Solitaire)

The Seventh Doctor's trap
"Stirred up" by Fenric as part of a game among the Elder Gods, (AUDIO: Gods and Monsters) the Toymaker somehow regained full control of his powers and lured several people into his domain, including the Seventh Doctor and his companions Ace and Hex. Working under the Doctor's leadership, the group of victims were apparently successful in defeating the Toymaker and imprisoning his essence in a doll. Each of them ate a piece of the doll, dividing the Toymaker so that he would no longer be capable of using his powers. The Doctor concocted an elaborate plan to keep control over the fragments of the Toymaker in the minds of each member of the group until the Toymaker withered away forever. As this plan involved the Doctor forgetting having made the plan in the first place, he wound up short-circuiting it. In the end, it was revealed that the Toymaker had been in control all along, allowing himself to be absorbed into humanity so that he could "feel what it was like to lose". Finally, one of the people involved, the chess master Swapnil Khan, managed to trap the Toymaker in a perpetual stalemate in his own dimension, but not before the Toymaker had reduced everyone except the Doctor, Ace, Hex, and Khan's daughter, Queenie Glasscock, to wooden dolls. (AUDIO: The Magic Mousetrap)

Return
The Toymaker, now taking on a new appearance, was the subject of the Fourteenth Doctor's request of a human to figure out the differences between two versions of reality following a rupture in time by examining two pictures. (GAME: )

Undated events

 * Romana II once recalled an incident in which the Celestial Toymaker took over the BBC's Light Entertainment Department, greatly harming humanity but boosting sales figures. In order for her and the Fourth Doctor to defeat the Toymaker, Romana had to work at the BBC and produce a radio drama about cow owners. (PROSE: Doctor Who and the Krikkitmen)
 * For an indefinitely prolonged period, the Fourth Doctor and Romana II were trapped in a hazy and simplistic reality in which they went on endless frivolous adventures, only occasionally having flashes of their true personalities. The Doctor once realised that he and Romana were dolls being played with until they fell apart, in the process seeing an "exquisitely carved Chinese mandarin doll" which he sensed was important. (PROSE: Playing with Toys)

Legacy
The Elders, recording the First Doctor's voyages using their instruments and charts, included how the Celestial Toymaker showed the Doctor how gods were most dangerous when they were bored. (PROSE: )

On Siralos, the Tremas Master used "what was once the Celestial Toymaker's favourite toy" to trap the Graak. (GAME: Destiny of the Doctors)

When the Trylonians attempted to use their Brain Drain machine on the Eleventh Doctor to gain intel on their many enemies, the Celestial Toymaker was one of the individuals in the resulting mental projection who asked the Doctor for his help. (COMIC: )

While trapping the Thirteenth Doctor aboard his space platform, Zellin told the Doctor that her dimension was like a board game for him of which "the Toymaker would approve". (TV: Can You Hear Me?)

Other realities
In Earth-33⅓, the Celestial Toymaker was a Doctor Who villain. Early in his career, he received an influential birthday present — a Paul Daniel's Magic Set — which he liked to an extent. (COMIC: )

In one of the infinite parallel universes of "possible space", (COMIC: ) the Doctor once encountered "the Toymaker", described as an "evil force dominating a fantasy world", in 2525. Barusa later discovered that the Toymaker was actually under the control of the Master. (PROSE: )

Appearance
While possessing Rallon's body, as one account posited, (PROSE: Divided Loyalties) the Toymaker was a tall and imposing man with deep set, glittering eyes. He dressed as a Chinese mandarin, wearing a round black hat with gold thread and a silver, red and blue collar over a dragon-patterned black robe encrusted with rubies, emeralds, diamonds and pearls. (PROSE: The Celestial Toymaker)

In the form encountered by the Fourteenth Doctor, the Toymaker appeared as a blonde man who wore a tuxedo and a top hat. (GAME: )

Psychological profile
The Celestial Toymaker was wily (COMIC: ) and was insane, according to some people: the Twelfth Doctor expressed that they were probably correct. The Toymaker also only wanted the Doctor's help if he could best him in a game, seeingly to proud to ask him directly. According to this account, the Toymaker was deathly afraid of the universe and could barely conceive the idea of being forced to leave the Toyroom. (COMIC: ) However, other accounts indicated he visited the outside universe without such fear. (COMIC:, PROSE: Games, etc.)

The Toymaker also seemed to play his games because he was bored. (COMIC:, PROSE: )

Powers and abilities
Within the Celestial Toyroom, the Toymaker commanded immense powers, but they were limited by the rules he set for any particular game, although he could bend these rules or "forget" to mention them to his opponents if he so chose. He himself was immortal and invulnerable, and appeared capable of space and time travel at will.

During the course of a game, one of the players might die outright or they might lose, in which case, the Toymaker would have total control over their life and personality, perpetually. (TV: ) Apart from these children's games, the Toymaker sometimes played in person against his "guests", playing games such as cards. The Toymaker would be aware of if his opponent cheated and would reverse their actions before declaring the game forfeit and would have to pay a hefty price: becoming another one of his many toys within the Toyroom. (COMIC: )

As a Time Lord
According to Donald Tosh, the commissioning script editor and (uncredited) co-author of The Celestial Toymaker, the intention was that the Toymaker was, like the Monk who had predated him, a member of the Doctor's own race. (BBC DVD: The Time Meddler)

In the novelisation of The Celestial Toymaker, which was based in part on concepts for the original TV story which had to be abandoned due to a rushed production, the Doctor describes the Celestial Toymaker as native to the universe and several thousands of years old. Additionally, the Toymaker wields a sapphire ring reminiscent of the Doctor's signet ring, which he uses when altering elements of his realm, such as shrinking toys to human size or making a wall vanish.

However, this fact has not explicitly been followed upon in any narratives featuring the Toymaker to this day, with other accounts instead positing the Toymaker was something quite different from a human or Time Lord, as the 1960s era was generally unclear about what exactly the Doctor's species was. Notably, however, the audio story Faustian described the Time Lords as "a celestial race".

As a Guardian of Time
Divided Loyalties, a novel by Gary Russell, retconned the Toymaker into being a Great Old One and Guardian of Time, a notion originating in Craig Hinton's extensive cosmology of the Doctor Who universe. However, it followed Hinton's notion that the Guardians, like the other Great Old Ones, were survivors of an "earlier race of Time Lords", having been the "upper echelons" of the Time Lords who ruled the previous universe.

Notes explaining Hinton's view of the matter were written as part of the preparatory work for The Quantum Archangel, and later printed in the charity anthology Shelf Life. Therein, Hinton explained that in his theory: "The High Council of the Old Time Lords were all linked to the Matrix when the universe ended. They became the Guardians – sentient life forms that acted as the vessels or conduits through which the fundamental essence of the Universe could act."

- Craig Hinton

The Crystal Guardian, dubbed "the Guardian of Thought in Time, the Guardian of Dreams, He Who Walks in Dreams", was therein stated to have been the Keeper of the Matrix in his former life.