Neil Patrick Harris’ ‘Doctor Who’ Villain Has A Problematic Past
The return of The Toymaker opens a can of worms.
While Star Trek’s progressive bona fides have consistently been a badge of honor for the show, Doctor Who has always been more politically savvy. The Time Lord’s constant battle against merciless governmental bureaucracies is part of the show’s backbone. And, like Star Trek, every once in a while evidence of the times it was made peeks through; like whenever a scantily clad Orion slave girl is getting slobbered on by Captain Kirk or in The Doctor’s 1966 encounter with The Celestial Toymaker.
Rumors of the return of The Toymaker have been rife throughout Doctor Who's history. Seemingly any time an exotically dressed gentleman appears in a preview or a print ad for the show, people assume it’s the return of The Toymaker. He almost even made it back in a Sixth Doctor story called The Nightmare Fair which was cancelled when the show was put on hiatus for a year. The story was later novelized.
This time, though, when Neil Patrick Harris’ villainous gentleman started appearing in teasers for the new series premiering in November, it seemed like they were really going to do it. A character that very few living people have seen for more than about 25 minutes — only one episode of the story still exists in BBC archives — with a dubious pedigree, was returning.
This time it was true: the BBC has confirmed that Harris is, indeed, taking on the role originally played by Michael (Batman Returns) Gough.
But here’s the problem, The Celestial Toymaker is a racist character. While Gough, thankfully, doesn’t play the character in yellowface or as some sort of mock Chinese caricature, the term “celestial” itself is a late-19th and early-20th-century derogatory term for a Chinese immigrant. The costume that the Toymaker wears is unmistakably a fetishistic version of what would’ve been called, at the time, “Oriental robes.” It’s uncomfortable and strangely unnecessary to the narrative of the story: just a prurient form of faux-exoticism.
The issues with the story don’t end there, however. While only one of the four episodes exists visually, we do have sound recordings of the other three and, in them, a character known as “The King of Hearts” does an unfortunate version of “eeny-meeny-mimy-moe” with the N-word in it.
Why, then, with this baggage does showrunner Russell T. Davies want to bring back this character?
I have some theories.
First off, it’s a mostly lost serial with a hint of mystery about it, and Davies, self-admittedly a fan from childhood, probably relished the nostalgic challenge. But I think there’s more.
Davies, a successful inclusive, progressive writer and showrunner, brought Doctor Who back after its cancellation in the 80s. He turned the show back into a hit. His series with Christopher Eccleston as The Ninth Doctor and David Tennant as The Tenth were extraordinarily popular. While fans may quibble about which parts of his work on the show are successful and which aren’t, one plot point is almost uniformly condemned: the mind wipe of Donna Noble.
Donna Noble was a much-beloved companion to the Tenth Doctor (for more on this, see Doctor Who — A Chaotic Primer Part Two) and, to save her life, The Doctor had to erase her memories of all the time she had spent with him. This was explicitly non-consensual. Donna firmly and directly told him not to do it. She understood the ramifications. He did it anyway.
This November Catherine Tate returns as Donna Noble to face, again, David Tennant’s Doctor. It is clear from the previews that the memory wipe is a major plot point and that Neil Patrick Harris’ (inexplicably German-accented) Toymaker is the villain. Is Davies trying to atone? For his own mistake as well as for one of the series’ more egregious historical missteps? Doctor Who has a long history of what its fans call “reclamation projects.” Any show with this much history and, especially in the original series, this scarcity of budget and time is liable to slap-dash some stuff up on the screen from time to time. Through revisiting characters, novelizations, and novels, audio dramas, and comics Doctor Who can sometimes turn weak or problematic plots and characters into gold.
Let’s hope that Davies’ particular kind of alchemy is focused directly at The Toymaker and Donna Noble right now.
Doctor Who premieres on Disney+ in November 2023.
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Kelly McCubbin is a columnist for Boardwalk Times