In the early days of Doctor Who action figures, many took to posting their own videos starring these action figures. However, these were mostly incredibly bizarre shorts with fairly iffy voice acting and no real attempts to fit into canon.
Then, on the 21st of September 2007, a self-proclaimed "handsome Italian" by the name of Matthew Toffolo (username Batmanmarch) released an action figure adventure which was actually well-received. He proceeded to make more videos, especially once the toyline expanded to classic action figures.
In 2015, Matt retired from making Figure Adventures to focus more on his life, ending his productions with "Dawn of the Doctor". However, a few months later, he produced a brief, two-minute video as an entry to the BBC's Mission Dalek
competition. He ended up being one of the winners.
Doctor Who: Action Figure Adventures can be found on Toffolo's channel here
.
Doctor Who: Action Figure Adventures contains examples of:
- Aborted Arc: Two stories featuring the Seventh Doctor post Season 26, Golgotha and Curse of the Fendahl, were cancelled when Matt decided to make The Eighth Doctor Season 3 his last production.
- Similarly, a second season of his Batman Figure Adventures was also put on hold. Especially egregious, given that this one had some setup in the first season as an adaptation of Batman: Hush.
- All for Nothing: Matt thinks this of Romana’s final fate ( An ambiguous scene where she fades away, setting up a possibility for her to return.) ended up being this in light of the below mentioned Alternate Continuity retcon, so he might as well have Dropped A Bridge On Her.
- Alternate Continuity: The Eighth Doctor Adventures were declared as this following the reveal of the War Doctor in the show. This in turn, makes them one to the Big Finish Doctor Who stories.
- One also exists internally, with there being two alternate endings to “The Last Day”: One as shown ( With the Doctor timelocking Gallifrey regenerating into Eccleston and one via retcon in “Dawn of the Doctor” ( Where the Doctor chickens out of it and creates the timeline of the War Doctor.
- Artistic License – Geology: Matt freely admitted in the comments for "Apocalypse" that he made a goof regarding volcanoes forming.
- Bad Habits: The eponymous creature in “The Beast of Stockbridge” disguises itself as a reverend.
- “Masquerade” from the Batman series has a phoney faith healer as the crux of the plot. He turns out to be Clayface in disguise.
- Batman Cold Open: Fittingly enough, two of the Batman Figure Adventures feature this.
- “Cold Vengeance” has a flashback with Batman and Robin thwarting the Riddler’s attempt to steal a rare stamp (with everyone being depicted in their Golden Age looks).
- “The Days Beyond” has a scene where the new Batman thwarts a mugging in progress, scaring the living daylights out of the crooks in the process.
- Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Pastor William Thomas from "Batman: Masquerade". He presents himself as a faith healer, but is in actuality a con man who doesn’t care if his clientele die or go insane as a result of his treatments. Clayface decides to exploit his scam by impersonating him, going full on Sinister Minister in the process by raping a lesbian and suffocating her when she resists.
- Call-Back: “Friends Reunited” features the village of Stockbridge, last seen in “The Beast of Stockbridge”. Upon learning where they are, the Doctor thinks of enquiring after Brian Harris, the companion from that story.
- Call-Forward: "In the midst of all the Reality Warper weirdness in "Miller and I", Lucie meets the John Hurt incarnation of her Doctor, who reacts with sadness to seeing her again.
- Cassandra Truth: Whenever Davros is involved, the Doctor has to convince people that the man is a murderer, with little success. He succeeds without any loss of life in “Salvage Mission”, not so much in “The Oncoming Storm”.
- Clark Kenting: Bruce Wayne does this in “Masquerade”. For bonus points, the figure used for the disguise is a Clark Kent figure with a moustache added.
- Comic-Book Time: In “The Manxome Foe” from the Batman Figure Adventures, Jarvis Tetch was locked away in 1986. However, he has past history with Batman, who appears to be in his 30s judging by the Bruce Wayne figure’s appearance.
- The Corpse Stops Here: After being seen at the scene of two deaths by the Beast in “The Beast of Stockbridge”, the Doctor is Easily Condemned as the killer by local crackpot George. It doesn’t help that K-9’s lasers are believed to be “fire breath” by the rest of the villagers.
- Darker and Edgier: The 8th Doctor Series delves into this in Season 3, especially once the Time War becomes the main focus.
- Defied Trope: "Apocalypse" sees the Doctor shut down the human displaying barely concealed Fantastic Racism towards the Silurians and Sea Devils before they can ruin things. Unfortunately, both factions are full on Evil All Along this time around.
- Disc-One Final Boss: The Collective is the primary threat in its eponymous story. But it gets destroyed in the 4th part of 5 and the Master takes over for the rest of the story.
- Early-Installment Weirdness: The first couple of videos are made in Windows Movie Maker, have the sound effects made by the actors, represent any effects required by
blurring the screen and all of the voices are men, even the women. Around 2009, Matt switched to Sony Vegas, brought on more voice actors and installed an FX program on his computer, resulting in some improved quality. - Evil Is Not a Toy: “The Power of Steel” focuses on the Cybermen digging for a power source for their time gate. Said power source turns out to be a trio of sealed Weeping Angels, who planned to hijack the Cybermen’s time travel experiments to free their lost brothers.
- Fictionalized Death Account: In real life, Edgar Evans’ demise was put down to frostbite by Scott’s diary. In "Terra Nova", it seems that he’s going to die from a cellular disintegration bought about by terraforming gas. He instead goes out in a Heroic Sacrifice stopping the Ice Warriors’ plans.
- Final Season Casting: The last season of The Eighth Doctor Adventures adds Thomas Chapman and Jonathon Carley (DoctorTripod) as semi-regulars.
- Foreshadowing: The Eighth Doctor Adventures has a lot of stories where the TARDIS ends up at the wrong location, eventually acting up. It turns out that the Master has been subtly influencing it since he was sucked into the Eye of Harmony.
- In “The Cult of Kaldor”, the Doctor sarcastically asks newcomer Emily when she became an expert on TARDISes. As it turns out, she’s a Time Lord, the ultimate expert on such things.
- Gone Horribly Right: “Time Sensitive” has the Doctor realise that the Cybermen are the perfect counter to the Weeping Angels because they can’t blink. But that just means that if an Angel gets inside their heads and records itself using the camera eyes, the Cyberman becomes an unwitting incubator for a new Angel.
- Hate Sink: The Castellan from the Eighth Doctor Adventures isn’t meant to be likeable, given he constantly sells out to enemies, blatantly undermines Romana and replaces her with Rassilon.
- Historical Domain Character:
- "The Kingdom of Blood" has Count Dracula as the Dragon-in-Chief to the Great Vampire.
- "Terra Nova" focuses on the eponymous expedition encountering the 2nd Doctor and his companions and assisting in a fight with the Ice Warriors.
- Historical Villain Upgrade: The Castellan insists that Rassilon’s reputation as a cruel tyrant is “lies put about by Sheboogans.” The Doctor and Emily however, come to decide that reputation isn’t too far off.
- Landmarking the Hidden Base: The Autons in "Symbiosis" buy the Telecom Tower to use as a base for their phone based scheme.
- Large Ham: A lot of the villains
- Mad Scientist:
- The asylum doctor in "Screams in the Darkness", using his patients as fodder for the Cybermen's experiments.
- Stevens in "The Krynoid Experiment", performing the titular experiment to turn Krynoids in a marketable Super-Soldier.
- Man of a Thousand Voices: Matt himself is this, voicing every version of the Doctor, most of the male companions (Ian and Adric being the major exceptions), a lot of the villains and
Peri.- Guest stars Peter Ravenscroft, Sam Merrell and Porle Miller are also this.
- As is Matt’s girlfriend Kat.
- Mythology Gag:
- "Salvage Mission" is an interquel between "Revelation" and "Remembrance which sees Davros evade his trial by the Daleks, receive a mechanical claw replacing his destroyed hand and converting a Dalek who can’t resist into his new Imperial faction, exactly like the Doctor Who Magazine story "Emperor of the Daleks''.
- The Batman Cold Open to "Batman: The Days Beyond" lifts much of its dialogue from Batman (1989) and its introduction to the title character.
- The later seasons of the 8th Doctor Adventures take a lot of cues from Big Finish Doctor Who, such as using music and theme arrangements, the Master being Geoffrey Beevers’ “decayed” incarnation, Romana as President of Gallifrey and the Cybermen portrayed based on their Invasion/Revenge designs.
- Only Six Faces: Justified, as Matt only has so many action figures.
- Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping: Aside from Kat, the cast’s attempts at American accents are spotty at best, most notably with Charlotte as Peri (which is at least true to the TV series) and Johnathan as Gotham PD Officer Gray, whose accent still sounds pretty British.
- Overly Long Name: Emilianamorios, better known as Emily Moore.Doctor: What is it with Time Lord names?
- Parental Neglect: Rose Cunningham’s parents don’t seem to notice the blatant issues their daughter suffers from, and seemingly don’t know about her kidnapping her classmates and playing at Back-Alley Doctor.
- Punny Name: The Autons leader in "Symbiosis" is named Paul Mir, a play on polymer.
- A Rare Sentence: "Miller And I" has a scene where Frobisher attempts to flirt with Lucie Miller, much to her bemusement.Lucie: Is this bird trying to make a pass at me?
- Reality Warper: The Master becomes this after returning following the end of the TV Movie.
- Sequel Episode: “Resurrection of the Cybermen turns out to be one for “The Metal of Power”, focusing on the Cybermen returning to Corridium to revive their army. And then the end sets up one for the TV Movie, with the Master’s return.
- Shout-Out:
- "Destroyer of Worlds" has Ace refer to the Nazi villain as "Herr Flick"
- “The Treasure of Mars” has the Doctor derisively refer to a deceased Martian king as “Radaghast”.
- A third season episode of the Eighth Doctor Series is entitled "Miller and I", and features an onscreen appearance by the Shalka Doctor.
- Take That!: “The Sirens of Axos” features the Doctor discovering a copy of Twilight in his library and disgustedly throwing it away, insisting that the Master put it there with his Reality Warper powers.The Doctor: His evil truly knows no bounds.
- Wham Episode: “The Oncoming Storm”: Davros has reconciled with the Renegade Daleks and they are planning a retaliatory strike against the Time Lords for the destruction of Skaro.
- “Resurrection of the Cybermen”: The Master has returned to life and absorbed the power of the Eye of Harmony. And Emily turns out to be a Time Lord.
- “War Drums”: The Daleks formally declare war on Gallifrey and are revealed to be collecting the Key to Time, having wiped out five planets in their quest to do so.
- “The Gates of Elysium”: Davros gets (seemingly) killed, the Supreme Dalek goes Dragon Ascendent and becomes Emperor and the Castellan finally reaches his wits end with Romana’s leadership, ordering that the Master’s remains be retrieved.
- Whole-Plot Reference: “Hell on Earth” was inspired by “The Woman in Black”, with the Master in the role of Arthur and the Mara as the creature haunting the house.
