September 27: "The Giggle"

We've now reached the third and final of the 60th Anniversary specials.  It's a bit odd; for every other Doctor, we've never quite known when their tenure will end (even Eccleston got three days after "Rose" before his departure was announced), but the fourteenth Doctor's time has always been limited to these three specials.  This Doctor has always been on borrowed time, and now that time is up.  And this time, an old enemy is returning -- fitting for a 60th anniversary special.  So we start at the dawn of television, as John Logie Baird's assistant is sent to buy a dummy to use as the test subject, where he enters a toy store run by a man with a (deliberately) cod German accent.  "What a game we are playing," the man says, after he's informed the dummy is to be used for a television experiment.  And so when we see the television transmit the image of the dummy, Stooky Bill, we also hear a strange giggle as the dummy catches on fire, due to the intensity of the lights -- a giggle that's going to have a pretty dramatic impact on humanity 98 years later...

And so after the end of the previous episode, where we saw the entire world gone mad for some reason, UNIT wastes no time picking up the Doctor and Donna and transporting them to UNIT HQ, which now looks vaguely like Avengers Tower from the Marvel movies.  (Guess they had the time and money to build a new skyscraper after the last one went boom in "The Power of the Doctor".)  We get to see Kate Stewart again, along with Shirley Anne Bingham and, gloriously, the Doctor's old companion Mel.  "I travelled the stars with good old Sabalom Glitz," she tells the Doctor.  "He lived till he was 101. ... He had this great big Viking funeral, and then I thought, time to go home.  So I got a lift off a zingo and came back to Earth." (So that explains why she was on Earth to have a cameo in "The Power of the Doctor".)  "But then I had to face up to the one thing I'd been running away from.  I've got nothing.  My family are all gone.  Remember?" she adds, presumably referring to how she first met the Doctor -- something we don't actually know about, as you may recall.  "But then Kate offered me a job, and... here I am."  It's nice to see all these new and old faces together at UNIT, giving the Doctor a base to work from without needing to take time to establish his knowledge and credentials.  UNIT itself is something of a callback, of course, but including Mel is also a good way of referring back to the past, of saying that, here during this anniversary, it's the entirety of the show that's being celebrated, not just series 4.

The Toymaker and the Doctor prepare to play a game. ("The Giggle")
©BBC

Of course, the bigger callback is the villain, played with gusto and delight by Neil Patrick Harris: the Toymaker, last seen on-screen in 1966, has finally returned.  (The Doctor thinks that business with the salt last episode gave the Toymaker the opportunity to enter our reality, but we never quite get that confirmed.)  It's something of a bold move, bringing back a character that only appeared once in a story that's now 75% missing³⁰², but that alternately means Davies has a bit more freedom with the character, because the audience won't have much of a fixed image in their minds, the way they do with, say, the Cybermen.  And so the Toymaker places the laughing Stooky Bill in every screen ever, waiting for the moment the entire world has access to a screen in order to drive them mad, making them believe they're always right, so that they always win.  "I made every opinion supreme.  That's the game of the 21st century.  They shout and they type and they cancel.  So I fixed it.  Now everybody wins."  "And everyone loses," the Doctor points out.  "The never-ending game," the Toymaker replies.  To be honest, Stooky Bill giggling in every screen a really strange threat, with no explanation given as to how that actually works.  It's a bit easier to swallow when you learn it's due to the Toymaker, who doesn't seem to be bound by our universe's rules, but even before that the Doctor states it like it's a plausible explanation, which is a bit more difficult to credit.³⁰³  But in some ways it doesn't matter; this is really about the Doctor versus the Toymaker.  "I came to this universe with such delight," the Toymaker crows.  "And I played them all, Doctor.  I toyed with supernovas, turned galaxies into spinning tops.  I gambled with God and made him a jack-in-the-box.  I made a jigsaw out of your history.  Did you like it?  The Master was dying and begged for his life with one final game, and when he lost, I sealed him for all eternity inside my gold tooth."  The Toymaker seems to delight in playing with the Doctor, taunting him and providing him with a labyrinth of corridors to become lost in.  And so when the Doctor challenges the Toymaker to a game and then loses, the Toymaker seems delighted -- until the Doctor points out that that means the series is tied: "I won the game many years ago, you've won today, which leaves us equal."  (I guess that means the unmade sixth Doctor story The Nightmare Fair, from the original, cancelled season 23, never happened.)  So that means they're having one final confrontation ("Best of three") back in 2023.

In some ways this story is a massive cheat; it feels energetic and fun, but when you stop to think about it you realize not much actually happens.  The Toymaker causes the world to go mad, sure, but when you come right down to it, the Doctor investigates the Toymaker back in 1925, loses a game, and then confronts him again in the present day.  There's not much in the way of complications or twists (well, other than the big one, which I'll get to in a moment).  So it's a credit to the writing, the direction, and the acting that it never really feels like that while you're watching.  It's suitably creepy watching the Doctor discover a human turned into a puppet who then turns into a puppet version of the Doctor himself, and it's tremendously entertaining seeing Donna respond to getting attacked by a bunch of wooden dolls (Stooky Bill's family) by beating the hell out of the mother and terrifying the puppet children into submission.  The scene where the Toymaker points out how traumatic the Doctor's life under Steven Moffat was (notice how every companion of the 11th and 12th Doctors shows up, while only the Flux gets mentioned from Chibnall's time) is a delight, and the moment where he dances around to the Spice Girls, turning bullets into rose petals and soldiers into balloons, is a wonder of direction and editing.  It's a story where the flaws only really show up in hindsight; while you're watching it's easy to get sucked in, which is something Doctor Who has occasionally struggled with the last couple series.

David Tennant bigenerates into Ncuti Gatwa. ("The Giggle") ©BBC

But yes, the twist.  The Toymaker has taken control of a big laser gun (all right, the Galvanic Beam) owned by UNIT and threatens UNIT with it.  And after the Doctor tells the Toymaker that "your fight is with me", the Toymaker shoots the Beam straight through the Doctor.  "I played the first game with one Doctor.  I played the second game with this Doctor.  Therefore, your own rules have decreed I play the third game with the next Doctor!"  And as Donna and Mel rush to his side, we realize that this is it: the fourteenth Doctor is about to regenerate.  His time is up, and as I watched this the first time I found myself wishing he could stay around for a little longer.  But that's the nature of the show.  "Here we go again," the Doctor says.  "Allons-y!"

Except then... he doesn't.  "Erm," the Doctor says, as the regeneration energy fades away, leaving the audience wondering what's going on.  Then we get something completely mad, as the Doctor splits into both his old self and his new self, leaving both of them standing there, both very much alive.  "Bigeneration!" the new Doctor exclaims.  "I have bigenerated!  There's no such thing.  Bigeneration is supposed to be a myth, but... look at me!"  Ncuti Gatwa emerges more or less fully-formed, and he's clearly having a blast as the Doctor, full of life and verve, literally dancing around.  And so here, during the 60th celebration of the show, Davies gets to have his cake and eat it too, by having not just the brand-new Doctor arrive but letting the old one also stick around -- in other words, he gives the fourteenth Doctor a happy ending, one that isn't marked by his death.  Is bigeneration sort of ridiculous?  Sure, but I don't know that it's any more ridiculous than regeneration itself -- we've just had 57 more years to come to terms with that.  This also means we do in fact get a bit of a multi-Doctor story for the 60th, just not in a way anyone really expected.  It's bold and cheeky and I find I don't actually mind one bit.

And so after the Doctors defeat the Toymaker in a game of catch and banish him from the universe ("My legions are coming," he cries as he's flattened, folded up, and put into a box, similarly to how his toy store was folded up -- oh, and this is the part where I feel compelled to mention a hand picking up the gold tooth containing the Master, in a conscious echo of the picking up of the Master's ring from "Last of the Time Lords"), it gives us a chance to breathe, and, perhaps more importantly, for the fourteenth Doctor to be confronted by his new self:

DOCTOR 15: Our whole lifetime.  That Doctor that first met the Toymaker never, ever stopped.  Put on trial, exiled, Key to Time, all the devastation of Logopolis.
DOCTOR 14: Adric.
DOCTOR 15: Adric.  River Song.  All the people we lost.  Sarah Jane has gone.  Can you believe that for a second?
DOCTOR 14: I loved her.
DOCTOR 15: I loved her.  And Rose.  But the Time War, Pandorica, Mavic Chen.  We fought the Gods of Ragnarok!  And we didn't stop for a second, to say, what the hell?
DOCTOR 14: But you're fine.
DOCTOR 15: I'm fine because you fixed yourself.  We're Time Lords.  We're doing rehab out of order.

(from The Doctor Who Transcripts - The Giggle)

So we get a celebration, with the fifteenth Doctor creating a second TARDIS, thanks to the Toymaker ("We won the game.  You get a prize, honey, and here is mine!" he exclaims, giving the TARDIS a big whack with a carnival hammer and creating a duplicate), and letting the fourteenth Doctor get the adventure he has yet to have: stopping and staying in one place and time (but with his own TARDIS to stop him from getting bored), to be part of a family.  To grow roots.  The show will continue with the fifteenth Doctor, but this is a way to give the departing fourteenth Doctor a happy ending, a place to call home after he not only lost Gallifrey but learned he didn't even know where his real home was.  (And to make David Tennant available for cameos in the show's future, should he ever want to.)  It's really sweet, seeing him as part of Donna's family, with other friends like Shirley and "mad Auntie Mel" also happily gathered around.

As I said, "The Giggle" isn't actually the most exciting episode in terms of plot, but it's presented with such zest that you hardly even notice, let alone mind.  There's a sense of supreme confidence at work here, as if everyone involved knows this will be good and are giving it their all.  It's wild, it's manic, and above all it's fun.  "The Giggle" sees the show once again firing on all cylinders.

But then this whole set of specials has been like that.  There's such an obvious joy to things: it's clear that David Tennant and Catherine Tate are thrilled to be back, and Russell T Davies is clearly enjoying giving them more adventures.  These three episodes may not have been as overtly festive as, say, The Five Doctors, but there's still clear links to the past and a celebration of the entire history of the show, from Hartnell to Whittaker and beyond.  (And it's interesting to note how much more comfortable Davies seems here with referencing the past than he did during his first tenure as showrunner, as if he can relax a bit now that the show is once again familiar and generally beloved (with most of it available for the curious on iPlayer).)  Recasting a previous Doctor as the latest version could have gone badly wrong, a sign that the show was trying to play it safe or, worse, desperately trying to recapture its glory days, but they walk the line on this so well that part of you wonders how you could have ever doubted them in the first place.  Plus, by giving Gatwa so much more to do in this episode than incoming Doctors normally get, it gives us a clear sign that the show is in safe hands and that the fifteenth Doctor will be worth watching just as much as the fourteenth.  This may have been an anniversary and a chance to look back, but the future looks as bright as ever.







³⁰² Although since this episode aired they've released a surprisingly decent (given how poor it looks in still frames) animated reconstruction of the original story on Blu-ray and DVD.
³⁰³ The novelisation tries to account for this by saying all screens have either burn-in (for CRTs) or burned out pixels (for newer screens), and that's where Stooky Bill's image is.  Not sure I buy that either, but it's more than the televised version provides.