WE think of a game as something that provides relaxation, amusement, fun : but in the latest Dr. Who adventure beginning today, the Doctor and his companions come up against a man who considers games in a very different light. To the Celestial Toymaker, a game is a means of dominating people and making them his playthings.
In this new story Steven (Peter Purves) and Dodo (Jackie Lane) are faced with a number of games played in competition with the Toymaker's subjects. Doctor Who himself (William Hartnell) faces the dreaded Toymaker (Michael Gough) in a life-or-death battle of wits : the Trilogic Game.
The Trilogic Game is played on a triangular board with three or more counters of different sizes.
The object of the game is to move the pile of counters from one corner of the triangle so that they end up in the same piled sequence in one of the other corners—for example, from A to C in our diagram. Only one counter can be moved at a time, a larger counter can never be placed on a smaller one, and the game must be completed within a fixed number of moves (see the list on the right).
In the story Dr. Who plays with ten counters.
The Counter Moves
Number Number
of Counters of Moves
3 7
4 15
5 31
6 63
7 127
8 255
9 511
10 1023
Caption: Michael Gough in today's new adventure
Disclaimer: These citations are created on-the-fly using primitive parsing techniques. You should double-check all citations. Send feedback to whovian@cuttingsarchive.org
