The Trilogic Game was a game played by the First Doctor and the Toymaker, (TV: The Celestial Toymaker [+]Brian Hayles, Doctor Who season 3 (BBC1, 1966).) in the first of three games they played against one another under the best of three mandate. (TV: The Giggle [+]Russell T Davies, Doctor Who 2023 specials (BBC One and Disney+, 2023).) It was a variation of Tower of Hanoi. (PROSE: "Dimensions in Time" [+]Part of Whotopia: The Ultimate Guide to the Whoniverse, Simon Guerrier, Una McCormack and Jonathan Morris, BBC Books (2023).)
The rules of the Trilogic game were that there was a tower made up of 10 counters, each one smaller than the one it was on top of, forming a pyramid-like shape, and three spaces, A, B, and C, where the pieces could be moved. The goal was to move the entire stack from A to C. However, only one piece could be moved at a time, and a larger piece could not be placed on top of a smaller one. (TV: The Celestial Toymaker [+]Brian Hayles, Doctor Who season 3 (BBC1, 1966).)
History[]
The First Doctor finishes the game. (TV: The Celestial Toymaker [+]Brian Hayles, Doctor Who season 3 (BBC1, 1966).)
The Toymaker gave the Doctor only one-thousand-and-twenty-three moves to finish the Trilogic game, or he would be trapped in the Celestial Toyroom forever. The Doctor used voice control to place the last piece, and the Toymaker's realm was destroyed. (TV: The Celestial Toymaker [+]Brian Hayles, Doctor Who season 3 (BBC1, 1966).) The Fourteenth Doctor later used his first incarnation's victory as leverage to enact a best of three rule when the Toymaker bested him in their second game. (TV: The Giggle [+]Russell T Davies, Doctor Who 2023 specials (BBC One and Disney+, 2023).)
The Toymaker later tempted another victim to try his Trilogic Game while he toyed with the Tenth Doctor, some Daleks, a Cybusman, and an Adipose. (POEM: The Toymaker [+]James Goss, Now We Are Six Hundred (Harper Design, 2017). Page 33.)
Behind the scenes[]
- The Trilogic game is a variant of the Tower of Hanoi puzzle. 1023 = 210 - 1 moves is the minimal number of moves necessary to solve the puzzle for 10 pieces.
- Once filming on The Celestial Toymaker [+]Brian Hayles, Doctor Who season 3 (BBC1, 1966). was completed, the Trilogic game prop was given to Steven Taylor actor Peter Purves. However, unable to get further acting work after eighteen months, Purves came to see the prop as the source of bad luck, and threw it away. The very next day, he was offered a role in the police procedural series Z-Cars, and then received the offer to present the children's magazine programme Blue Peter shortly afterwards.[1]
