The Giggle: Ranking - N/A (but somewhere around #90)

  The Giggle

(60th Anniversary Special, Dr 14 with Donna, showrunner: Russell T Davies, writer: Russell T Davies, director: Chanya Button)

Rank: n/a (but somewhere around #90) 

'I know a Toymaster whose shop is at the end of our street, his shop is full of toys and its really such a treat, He really is quite a sight from the top of his head to his silly feet, he’s a bit odd for a puppetmaster though, he’s always being cruel, and every time you go to buy something, he makes you out to be a fool, a never laughing comedian, he’s more serious than the worst teachers at school, Wahahahahahahahahaha! Hahahahahahahahahaha! Woohoohooohooohoohoohoo!’ 

Every generation’s been told that television would rot their brain. Now it turns out they were right! Some television is so good that it’s worth risking The Toymaker’s curse though and what better television can there be than Dr Who circa 2008 when Russell T Davies was in charge the first time, David Tennant was the Doctor and Catherine Tate was Donna? ‘The Giggle’ is like a greatest hits of the first Russell T Davies era. The main plot is ‘The Idiot’s Lantern’ done properly, with a foe that’s been hiding out in our television screens since Logi Baird recorded the first ever image of a dummy. Via an evil sound that’s the catalysts for humanity’s worst aspects, just like The Master in ‘The Sound Of Drums’. There’s a modern Britain that’s been brought to a standstill just like in so many 9^th and 10^th Doctor stories. There’s a modern pop song soundtrack just for the hell of it. There’s even a get-out clause at the end with a ring that gets picked up by a lady with red fingernail polish, to be potentially brought back to life at a later date, just like The Master in ‘The End Of Time’. Repeats these days eh? They’re everywhere, each one infused with an extra dose of that maniacal Toymaker laugh. But, unlike this week’s starting point, Russell T Davies is no dummy. He absolutely knows what he’s doing and comes up with a story that’s the perfect bridge between the old eras and the new era that will please everyone – everyone the Giggle hasn’t infected anyway. This is a story that ties up a long arc that’s been running since at least ‘Midnight’ and ties it up into a big old bow with a happy ending that’s so right for these characters we know and love in 2023 (in a way that would have been dramatically unsatisfying in 2008-2010), before allowing Dr Who to run off into the sunset with a new face and a new attitude, ready for a new life on the Disney streaming service. And it’s glorious…mostly.

Wait, what’s that sound in my head?... Wait I feel an opinion forming… Oi listen to me, I’m right you know, I tell you my opinion matters! It’s flawed I tell you, flawed…Anyway, *cough* sorry about that, don’t know what came over me. The plot is caused by the Toymaker, nee Celestial, last seen all the way back in 1966, returning for a grudge match against the only person who ever defeated him (the Doctor having destroyed his world into the bargain). This time The Toymaker’s in our world, rather than the Tardis arriving in his, and he has a present for mankind: the gift of laughter. Only it’s a laughter that drives everyone mad, that’s been in every screen laughing away all the time and has been since 1925 when television was invented. As with ‘The Star Beast’ Russell’s been keeping a close eye on the inventions and changes in society since the last time he was showrunner and another of the big differences between then and now is the amount of screens that people carry around with them nowadays: phones, i-pads, i-pods, laptops, so many people carry mini-TVs around with them all the time that things have finally reached breaking point and mankind, always so easily led at the best of times, has finally been dosed so much that they’ve degenerated into an angry mob that’s always at each other’s throats.

It’s not hard to see what this sub-plot is about. Television has been dividing opinions since it was invented (and wasn’t as good as the ‘moving pictures’ at the cinema). People have always had an opinion. And why wouldn’t they? TV is a medium that’s personal in a way few others are – you basically invite people to sit in the corner of your living room and tell you stories and if you don’t like one you can channel hop to something better. Dr Who, though, is a series that has been creating divisive opinions and caused one of the most volatile followings around since the beginning. We get very proprietorial you see. This programme feels special, personal in a way few others ever do. We get caught up in it, look to it for messages, for a glimpse into our futures and a way to explain and understand our present, to absolve us of grief from the past. We lost it once, we’re not going to lose it again. Fandom is scared. It makes us do funny things sometimes (what other show would have a legion of fanzines slagging off the producer and trying to get him sacked, as happened with John Nathan-Turner in the 1980s?) That wasn’t really there so much the last time round in 2008. And now most of us have access to social media we can carry around in our pockets, close to our hearts, we can fire off an opinion quicker than ever before, however ignorant or uninformed or confused it may be. Back in 2005 there was a grumbling of discontent that it wasn’t like it was in the old days, but mostly fandom was right behind Russell because  following the wilderness years we were just grateful to have the show back at all. Russell was the BBC’s golden boy who could do no wrong, who’d revived the series because they’d given him basically free reign to do anything he wanted and he loved this series so much he re-built it from scratch even when the executives were convinced it was dead and could never be regenerated again.  We accepted it all, mostly, without question: Abzorbaloffs, burping wheely bins, Kylie Minogue and all. But then something shifted.

When Steven Moffat ended up in charge we got to compare, not just between the old days and the new, but between showrunners. With so many fans diving into past Who stories in the half-year of the 2009 specials there was suddenly so much Dr Who around that we could afford to be choosy. There began to be a slight backlash against the Russell T era from some of the plotlines (which could be solved a bit easily, with a ‘Russell et machina’ concept that came out of nowhere in a story’s final few minutes a common theme), the work practices that Christopher Eccleston has highlighted since leaving, John Barrowman and Noel Clarke’s questionable extra-curricular on-set antics to the representation or lack of it (because, even though it seems like yesterday, 2005 is a long way from 2023 in terms of an ever evolving society and how its reflected in programmes). Watching all that criticism unfold and not having a chance to respond to it directly must have driven an opinionated writer like Russell mad. This story then is Russell’s way of getting back at ‘us’, by showing that ever since the dawn of television there’s been an alien entity inside us all making us go ‘huh wasn’t as good as last week’. It’s not just mean though, like I feared from the titbits we’d been presented with. Let’s face it, Russell too is enough of a Whovian to understand this impulse too, to have done exactly the same, sitting round his bedroom moaning that the pink snake let down the Mara and the Myrka was just a pantomime horse and this show wasn’t like it used to be. How much worse must it have been for him though, watching his friends take over his favourite show that he’d brought back and had to give up, when he knew exactly how the show worked and how he’d have done things differently to avoid the pitfalls they fell into. It’s tempting to think of Russell in his bathrobe shouting and throwing things at the telly going ‘Ha, fish vampires, I’d never do something like that!’ or ‘That makeup in ‘Orphan 55 looks a bit suspect!’ The Giggle, then is inside all of us, even him. Not me though. Of course I don’t understand this need to inflict my opinion on everyone at all myself *cough* I wouldn’t do that at all ever no not me *cough* I don’t have an opinion about anything which is why I have three blogs *Cough cough*. Not me, no. Wait did you hear laughter just then? No? Me neither.

One of the things Russell assumed would be ‘controversial’ is the (mahoosive spoilers) bi-regeneration ending ,where the Doctor gets a split personality in the physical as well as mental sense. But honestly I’m not sure it’s as controversial as he fears, certainly less so than other ideas he’s had (I still haven’t got over Captain Jack ending up as the face of Boe yet!) It’s a welcome idea that serves the plot, gives the Tennant Doctor the perfect happy ending without being schmaltzy, gives Ncuti a big heroic debut and is the perfect timing for a show on the cusp of rebooting itself all over again. It also  tidies away lots of Who folklore, unlike the ‘Timeless Child’ arc that just destroyed half of it. In one go this move explains who the Curator of ‘Day Of The Doctor’ might have been, allows aging actors to play the same parts without having to worry that they don’t look the same (it explains ‘The Two Doctors’ ‘The Three Doctors’ ‘The Five Doctors’ ‘Timecrash’ and how we can have multiple ‘Shadas’) as well as giving us a hit of who ‘The watcher’ might have been (because Tom Baker got met by Peter Davison’s alternate self?) all in one go. Yes its stirred up a few rightwingers who think the show is too gay as it is, but really despite the name its just giving birth to twins and anyway hey they got representation too (as the gammon-coloured man shouting at a car in the opening scene!)
Better than that, it gives the Doctor – and its showrunner – closure. I’m convinced that the ending of this story is also about Russell and his relationship with this show, which inspired him to become a writer in the first place and which he was so desperately sad to leave in 2008. I’m convinced, writing in a run of earlier reviews of Russell’s 10^th Doctor-Donna stories – and I’ve begun to notice a few other people say this online since (hello my new friends!) – that this is the end of an arc that’s been around since 2008, when Russell’s husband Andrew Smith grew ill with a brain tumour. Russell was then at the peak of his powers and the height of his fame, having taken Dr Who from a broken programme into a worldwide institution. If he wanted to he could have run this series forever and nobody would have wanted or tried to stop him. His partner’s illness, though, came out of nowhere and took him off guard. He was in two minds about whether to slow down and look after his then-fiance or keep doing the job he loved. So for a while he did both, slowing down (with a year of just specials not a full series) writing out his angst in stories like ‘Midnight’ (where his words are used against him by fate as it mocks him and Dr 10 for thinking he was untouchable) ‘Turn Left’ (which imagines a life without the Doctor in it), ‘Stolen Earth-Journey’s End’ (one last celebration of an era before the Doctor is left alone at the end and Donna has her memories of her glorious run wiped as if it had never happened because that knowledge was too much for a human to bear, having to pick up everyday life all over again), ‘Waters Of Mars’ (where the Doctor is actively punished for trying to defy his fate and cling on to the show when he knows he has to let it go) and ‘The End Of Time’ (with David Tennant’s sad last words ‘I don’t want to go!’) He switches between writing himself as the 10^th Doctor and Donna (both mouthy, opinionated, full of life) depending what the story needs, but basically that’s his long unwanted tearful goodbye to the series that comes so naturally to him.

This trilogy, though, gives him a new chance to finish that story and update us with what happened following ‘The End Of Time’. After the scary walk into the unknown that was ‘Wild Blue Yonder’, where life felt distorted and ‘wrong’, ‘The Giggle’ gives us the happy end we all want. The Doctor literally splits himself in two with his ‘biregeneration'. He gets to both rest at home, to semi-retire and process and heal the way Russell got to for those years (sadly his husband died in 2018), while Ncuti gets to ride off into the future and start all over again, just as Russell is now. And it’s the perfect ending: the Doctor gets the family life he’s always dreamed of and his own Tardis for the odd jaunt into adventures when he wants to, but a stable base to come home to at last – the one thing he’s never had. He gets the time to heal, grieve, reflect, to lay down the burden and weight of all those adventures and all those damaged lives and souls lost along the way. But this time he doesn’t have to give up the best job in the universe because he gets to do that too, out there, somewhere. It’s the perfect end for a Doctor whose frazzled and running on fumes after a busy few centuries. The idea that the doctor subconsciously chose this face because he knew he could go ‘home’ to Donna is clever too, picking up on a Steven Moffat idea of how Peter Capaldi’s Doctor happened to share a face with the Roman Caecillus, saved from the ‘Fires Of Pompeii’ in, well, ‘The Fires Of Pompeii’, as a reminder that (at Donna’s prompting) he can ‘save’ people from disaster along the way without collapsing time, that his interventions do matter on a personal scale. Moffat even phoned his old pal Russell to chat it over and check that it was ‘canon’, to which Russell only too happily agreed; it’s sweet that this is Russell repaying the compliment (though goodness only knows why the 6^th Doctor chose the face of Commander Maxil who once tried to kill him – to remind the Doctor that some people find him irritating enough to shoot sometimes maybe?) We all thought it was going to be the Toymaker’s doing, but no - this particular doctor chose an old face because he needed a rest and a home and roots. This is the doctor who once said ‘I don’t want to go’, who would have done anything to stay, and now he doesn’t have to. Sublime.

 It’s not just the Doctor who gets a happy ending either. Just look at Donna – despite all the teasing about killing her across two stories now (in an era that nearly broke its author) she gets a far happier coda, coming out of it smiling with her memories of her glory days intact. In this story we see her with the husband who adores her, the child she loves and is so like her in all the best ways, her mum is kinder and has more respect for her, her Grandad is still kicking about somewhere, she gets her best friend back and a job at UNIT on a proper salary. Not bad for a lovable loser temp from Chiswick who was once manipulated by a giant spider. And she can nip out for a bit of space travel if she wants (I love the hint that the doctor’s been doing this behind her back with her family members but told them not to tell her – I so want a big finish spin off of him travelling with Sylvia!)
It’s an even happier ending for Russell, though. In ‘Stolen Earth’, his ‘moving on’ story, he left his surrogate with her precious memories wiped, all those glorious moments taken away, because to carry them around in his head now he wasn’t making this show was just too painful. But now, after a period of mourning, he’s back to full health and happy as much as she is. Coming back to this show at all must have caused more than a few sleepless nights about whether it was worth doing again. All that stress, all that worry, all that respoknsibility. And the ‘Giggle’ that gives everyone an opinion on what he does and a past to live up to makes it all the harder second time round. There’s a line early on in this story about how the Doctor admits to Donna ‘this time it might kill you’ and she replies ‘yes but what an adventure’ – that’s Russell going back to the show with his eyes wide open this time, despite knowing all the heartaches and stress and damage, because to not come back would hurt more. Because the lure of this series, which has been drumming away in Russell’s head all this life, is just too strong to break.
Along the way Russell gives the gift of retirement to all the Doctors – and maybe all the showrunners, script editors and producers of this series too. I love the idea, as hinted in Russell's commentary for this episode, that in this moment of biregeneration all the doctors became ‘twins’. I adore the idea that Hartnell’s doctor is lying on a beach sunbathing with his feet up somewhere getting his strength back after the events at the North Pole in ‘The Tenth Planet’, perhaps with Peter Capaldi’s Doctor there too or travelling with John and Gillian like in the comics, that Troughton’s Doctor is playing the recorder in an intergalactic peace orchestra somewhere while his other self runs around saving the universe, that a version of Pertwee’s doctor stayed behind to look after the Brigadier into old age, that the fourth doctor didn’t become absorbed by the watcher but is still out there being eccentric, that the Davison doctor and the Colin Baker and McCoy and McGann and Eccleston doctors all got to live longer, happier lives than we got to see (Russell, whose clearly thought this through, laughs at the idea of two doctors waking up on a morgue slab in ‘The TV Movie’). I’m not sure I’ll ever get over the idea of the Doctors sharing clothesthough – now it’s put the idea of two William Hartnells looking bewildered in their underpants in my head I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to forget that image now, which is permanently seared in my head, in a ‘Giggle’ type way.

Ah yes, slight digression there, but it’s hard to see past the end of this story it wraps up so much but there are lots of other things to enjoy. I love idea of the giggle making people so belligerent and nasty. Honestly, it explains a lot. The world is a much stranger, sadder, angrier place than it was when Russell left his job on New Year’s Day 2010. In many ways it’s nastier than ever, full of trolls with an opinion on everything and people whipped up into a frenzy of hate speech (I’m willing to bet there’s a double dose of ‘The Giggle’ on GB News). This is demonstrated quite brilliantly in the scene where Kate Stewart, the biggest authority figure we have in Doctor Who and known to be a decent un-corruptible sort of a character, turns off the machine she’s used to keep her mind protected to reveal what people are like with the Giggle in their head. Shee lets fly a crescendo of anger at the Doctor’s innocuous questions, spits ‘it’s a conspiracy!’ at Donna and Mel for being two redheads and yells at Shirley ‘Get out that wheelchair, I’ve seen you walking!’ It’s a very brave thing to do in a teatime show sort-of for children still and really brings the going home by having the Brigadier’s daughter, of all people, say it. Because people do say those things to strangers and even friends in a way they never used to, as a semi-disabled person who gets around by hobbling slowly I’ve been on the receiving end of it myself. You would never have got this in a Russell story the first time round because the world wasn’t like this in 2010. Mostly. Even the prime minister is in on the act: the original script has the stage directions ‘make the p.m. as much like Boris as possible’ (we know Russell’s not a fan, ever since his lockdown story where he turned Johnson into an Auton) and while he isn’t really that similar on screen, it’s a brilliant thirty second long bit of character assassination. I’m convinced there’s a covid dig in there too (the pandemic’s still ongoing, folks!): I’m super impressed at how many staff on the production team are still wearing masks on ‘Unleashed’, even granted that these specials were filmed a while ago now when people were more careful, everyone but writer and stars in fact. The line about how, even if they rushed a life-saving cure for the giggle out to people ’not enough would take it up’ really hit home as someone with a chronic illness forced to stay indoors because it’s just not safe out there with a pandemic still raging. Sigh…Anyway, the world turned ‘right’, just as Russell foresaw in, umm, ‘Turn Left’. I love the very Russell contrast too though that the people who do still care now care a lot more openly. Dr 10 was unable to tell anyone he was close to that he loved  them: Rose, Martha, Donna the first time round, that was a character fault that was his undoing in so many ways andf a guilt he carried around with him. Look at him now though, hugging himself (how utterly brilliant that the first thing this new Doctor foes is comfort the old one!), swapping tales of loved ones won and lost, the sadness as Drs 14 and 15 reflect on the loss of Sarah Jane and Adric (I still can’t believe they mentioned Mavic Chen though, that was my favourite line!) Much as I love the inter-doctor bickering in other anniversary stories I hope we get more of this lovefest in modern Who. One odd part though: how comes the Doctor gets all ranty and shouty about humanity at one point, about how the Giggle is exploiting our worst features? While I won’t deny its true, that the Toymaker is only exploiting what’s already there not inventing it, having the Doctor shout then and only then is an odd plot point: I thought he was about to be overtaken by the Giggle too, but no – all traces of it are gone by the next scene. Is this just Russell T letting off steam about how nasty our world has become? (There are a lot of past Who stories where Russell shows how unimpressed he is with humanity as a conglomerate whole, tempered by how much he loves individual humans).

I loved the Toymaster’s puppet show, which plucked the heartstrings while plucking the puppet strings in all the right ways. There we were, the fanbase, all poised for a multi-doctor regeneration story given that this is an anniversary and everything and what do we get? A puppet show version! The puppets are brilliant (please tell me we can buy them at a future date!) right down to the detail that they were all wearing the clothes the Doctor last saw them in. I’m not sure what happened to Martha (her ambiguous ending maybe doesn’t have the emotional whallop of Rose’s, Amy’s and Bills’ from a Toymaker point of view) while Nardole, Yaz and all sorts of companions from the past aren’t exactly untouched by their life with the Doctor either, but I love that the others were all there…sort of. I wish they’d gone further actually but honestly we’d be there all day (‘Katarina and an air lock – poomf! Sara Kingdom in the time destructor? Old. Adric? Kerbloom! Peri – bald!’) There’s a great episode in ‘Avatar: The Last Airbender’(a series very much in Russell’s character-driven message-learning style) that spends a whole half hour with our heroes watching a bastardised, misunderstood replica of all their adventures in a low-fi way in a puppet show on stage and struggling to stay quiet about the awful way their characters are treated, a pithy comment on biographical dramas. I hoped for a moment that Russell was going there too. It wasn’t to be but I loved it all the same.
I adore the fact that the Toymaker marches into UNIT to the sound of the Spice Girls. You may have noticed a few jokes on this site about the fearsome fivesome (there are even more in my music blog and 39 books and counting!) and I’m beginning to feel a bit spooked now they’re a part of canon now too…For me they’re the moment civilisation started going downhill, when culture and music drifted from the left to the right, in a sea of mass-produced commercial fodder that was all based on a lie, that caused my entire generation to think they’d ‘invented’ feminism when I was already deep into my Janis Joplin and Grace Slick records (and even they got their inspiration from earlier musical figures), reducing important issues to a cheeky soundbite that just kills off the whole conversation. So much for girl power: the band’s songs were all written by their middle aged male manager, at least at first, while I’ll never forgive a band who had that much influence over the young laughing in the face of a tramp in one of their music videos and aiming an Ingrid Pitt-Myrka style kung-fu kick at one. For me The Spice Girls are a sign of everything that’s wrong with the universe, how far we’ve come out of whack with our sensibilities and moralities, the four horsemen of the apocalypse (plus a spare)…In short, they’re my nemesis, the antithesis of everything I hold dear. So to have them as the soundtrack of a celestial being intent on driving humanity crazy by making humanity righteous, belligerent and nasty makes the Toymaker’s dance scene in UNIT my new favourite Dr Who scene of all time. Even if it’s just like the one the Master did dancing to ‘Rasputin’ which I hated (its not quite as hypocritical as that sounds: The Spice Girls make more sense as the music of choice for the Toymaker than a disco song about a man who was actually kind and everything The Master is not). I’d hoped that Russell was on my wavelength here too, that he’d seen through the façade of everything awful The Spice Girls represent…but then in the ‘Unleashed’ documentary for this episode he commented that he picked it because it was just ‘a really belting pop song’. Hmm. I see The Giggle has been at work with him too, they’ve even brainwashed Russell!

One thing I loved which I wish there’s been a bit more about was the creation of television, because that’s such a clever idea. The idea that the first ever thing to be put on TV got hurt, burnt up by the studio lights, is a great metaphor for what TV does to the people who make it, something Russell’s been looking at on and off since series 4 too. As much as this story ran in parallel to the one in ‘Idiot’s Lantern’ (and Moffat’s ‘Day Of The Moon’ arc with The Silence adding images to the moon landing footage) it’s such a great idea that there’s enough room for a sequel (or two) and we really should have seen more of Logi Baird and his hapless assistant.  The Stookey dummy was the script’s starting point: Russell was researching a drama about the history of television that never came to anything (possibly for last year’s BBC centenary, in which case that’s because he became busy with Dr Who instead), saw a picture of the scary original puppet (which looked much how it does in this story) and went ‘woah: there’s a Dr Who monster right there’. The Toymaker, who always seemed an odd choice for a baddy to bring back (only a quarter of his episodes exist and only half of his panned stories were ever made after all and he’s quite a controversial character within fandom) was then picked purely because he’s the most obvious ‘puppet master’ in Who (and not, sadly, because the rest of the story had been returned to the archives as I’d hoped; after all its surely no coincidence Moffat brought back The Great Intelligence the same year ‘Web Of Fear’ arrived back at the BBC).

It’s not all fun and games, though. (well, it is in a way I suppose…) This is a very comvoluted sort of a story, one that doesn’t flow that well, lurching from scene to scene without Russell’s usual grace and precision to paper over the cracks. There are some odd and surprisingly clumsy moments that are surprisingly tone deaf for a story that’s all about being kind. Donna’s gag ‘Do you come in all colours?’ when the Doctor biregenerates is well out of character and deeply unnecessary, the sort of thing the viewers of 2066 will be looking back on with horror the way we do now at 1966. The scene of heavy innuendo, where the Toymaker chucks balls at the Doctor who just stands there catching, beats anything Chris Chibnall actually did in my list of ‘worst scenes of all time’. I cringed during the entire opening scene – even though I know I’m meant to, nevertheless it was hard to sit through in 2023. 

Ah yes. One thing that didn’t work for me was the toymaker himself, which is a shame because he was rather integral to this episode after all. Russell says in the behind the scenes that he didn’t want to shy away from the Toymaker’s racism, saying that a mass murderer would be more than happy to upset people this way and yes I can see that. This regeneration just happens to be a cod-German, the way the ‘old’ one was (controversially) cod-Chinese, with a fun gag about ‘truly becoming celestial’ in a cosmos sense along the way, but here’s the thing. This story opens with five minutes of the Toymaster being racist and bullying Logi Baird’s assistant for the colour of his skin. Perfectly in keeping with what the Toymaster stands for (even though the racism of the original is a bit overstated; Michael Gough didn’t attempt a Chinese accent or make racial slurs, he just wore Chinese fancy dress). Even more in keeping with this story. But for interested new fans who don’t know the lore (and why would they? A good proportion of the fanbase or general viewers who haven’t yet looked out an obscure story from 1966 where only one episode exists) and don’t stay to see the rest of the story just get to take away five minutes of some of the most squirming TV in years. They could have at least moved it down the episode a bit. Honestly, too, that accent is more uncomfortable in 2023 than it needs to be. Dr Who is always picking on Germans (when its not picking on the French). Surely a much better, kinder, idea would have been to have the Toymaker picking on everyone and changing his accent from scene to scene, taking in Scottish, Irish, Welsh, Scouse, Cockney, Brummy brogues, everything, so that  we could see the Toymaker is racist against every race, not just the ‘easy’ targets. It feels wrong, ina way I’m willing to bet Michael Gough’s Toymaker didn’t in 1966.  

It’s more than that though. I love Neal Patrick Harris to pieces but he’s not right for this role. As a character he’s just John Simm’s mad Master all over again, with no difference except the casual racism. The actor looks uncomfortable at times having to act so outrageously and OTT, while at others he looks as if he’s having a bit too much fun unleashing his inner bigot. He’s basically a larger than life Avengers type villain, right down to the playing cards, and Dr Who is a series that’s closer to real life than it’s rotten one-time ITV competitor. That accent undercuts every line he says, so The Toymaker never gets to have a ‘big’ epic speech the way other Who villains do. The other trouble is after casting (producer Phil Collinson’s suggestion)it was re-shaped even more for Neal Patrick Harris, not the character we saw in 1966. The Master can regenerate. The Cybermen can update. There’s no reason why the Toymaker should be any different to how he was last time we see him, cool, calm, unruffled and far more threatening: he is, after all, a being who can live forever and who has an ego the size of a planet: he doesn’t think he needs to change at all. Honestly, too, we’re told about his powers but never really get to see him. Yes he makes the world angry at each other, but it was heading that way already believe you me (covid infections don’t help –genuinely, its minor brain damage, the virus inflames and damages the brain pathways that regulate danger and stop you sending that angry text that makes people upset. Apparently Russell has been reading the same medical journals I have). Otherwise the most the Toymaker does is set a bunch of dolls on Donna (a genuinely creepy moment, but one Steven Moffat did hundreds of times before, usually better – horror is not Russell’s forte as you could see in last week’s largely forgettable episode), hide behind a bunch of doors and be challenged to a game of…catch . ‘The Celestial Toymaker’ story was never my favourite, a great idea quickly descending into a bunch of cheap parlour games, but at least the Toymaker himself was a credible threat, pushing the Hartnell Doctor to his limits and challenging him with his mind (even the Doctor finds ‘The Trilogic Game’ a challenge, as well he might – it’s probably the hardest ‘game’ there is). A game of catch is not the same at all. The toymaker’s domain too was properly scary and threatening , full of televisions inside robots, clowns, ballerinas and the sense of something not quite right. All we get here is two minutes of David Tennant and Ncuti Gatwa throwing balls at a man dressed up like a half-clown, half-magician. All those years on and they still don’t realise what makes for good television is more than just seeing people play games. With all that Disney money they could have used this big showdown is hugely disappointing: I was hoping for a game of ‘battleships’ with real battleships or ‘hangman’ with an actual noose or ‘Hungry Hungry Hippos’. With actual hippos! As for the resolution, well, it’s pitiable in all of Russell’s worst ways: this greatest threat in the universe, who is such a sore loser last time the Doctor beat him he destroyed his whole kingdom in an attempt to take the Doctor down with him, simply gives up and literally folds under the pressure, ending up a tidy little box. There’s a great Toymaker story to be made one day and one I’ve waited a long time to see, but this still isn’t it. The closest, by the way, is still ‘The Nightmare Fair’, the story written for Colin Baker’s unmade season 23, written by one-time 4^th Doctor producer Graham Williams, which had a showdown over some computer games in Blackpool (it’s a most excellent novel and Big Finish audio).  

This is, however, a great story. Even if it’s not a great ‘Toymaker’ story.  It’s a more than worthy end to the David Tenant arc, giving that whole era of the show a sense of closure that feels natural and doesn’t just come out of nowhere. It really sets up the next era of the show nicely (Ncuti absolutely owns the screen from the second he arrives in his underwear: not many actors could carry that off, especially acting up against Tennant, but watching this you can see why they knew from the opening seconds of his audition that the was right for this part). While the special effects of the Doctor being pulled in two are a tad suspect (they had a few goes at it in post-production apparently but still don’t quite get it right) the scene of a Tardis being divided in two is fab. There are some great lines sprinkled throughout as is Russell’s want, just the right balance of drama, comedy and action sequences. Some fans are bitterly disappointed this isn’t more of an ‘anniversary’ special with no cameos from anyone (so for once those actors weren’t lying when they said they hadn’t done anything…) and yes I am a little bit too.  But heck, we got the 14^th Doctor turning into the 15^th Doctor alongside the companions of the 7^th and 10^th Doctors, fighting an enemy of the 1^st Doctor with the UNIT setting of the 3^rd Doctor and a continuation of the 3^rd Doctor tale about the planet of the aliens who only talked by using their eyebrows started in 1970 (a sweet return to ‘Spearhead From Space’, the story whose plot was lifted for the tale where it all began for Russell, ‘Rose’, back in 2005 – we still don’t know if he’s joking or serious). That’s a lot of heartwarming stuff to be getting along with, especially alongside the short but sweet ‘Tales From The Tardis’ introductions on i-player (which I really did think might get linked to this trilogy more, but never mind). This is a story that packs a lot into its sixty minutes (one for each year of Who!) – a bit too much at times, as we zip through scenes we could have done with more of (Stookey Bill, the Toymaker’s threat, the opening chaos, the final showdown which is over in the time it takes to chuck a few balls in the air). By contrast  I could have done without the ten minutes of tedium as the doctor and donna chase the toymaker round a set of doors, chased by Goblin puppets that would have looked cheap in the original 1960s story. I still think that ‘Star Beast’ was a more rounded, celebratory, proper Dr Who anniversary like the old days but with updates style episode and I wish the other two had followed on a bit more from that. I wish the whole Toymaker thing had been handled better. I wish Martha hadn’t been forgotten again (it’s not fair Rose and Donna both get a Doctor and she doesn’t, with Mickey no substitute at all!) I wish there were more plotholes wrapped up: we still don’t know who The Meep’s boss is and it seems odd that we spent a whole story getting to know new Rose and her own job as a Toymaker without that being in this plot somewhere. I wish Flinx had been more than just a token comedy robot for a few scenes. I wish we’d seen Wilf one more time (though its great he’s still alive in the Dr Who universe and the Doctor gets one last gag giving his moles a force-field, even if shooting anything seems very out of character for an old soldier who understands the value of life). I wish the three specials had tied in together better. I wish…I wish...I wish…But that’s probably just The Giggle in my head talking, never satisfied and always wanting more. I loved it really. Heck, its Dr Who, I love it all, even the bits that don’t work (like last weeks’ episode). This story is a great reminder of that, how even when its bad there’s no other show on television that can do what this one does and how we have a man in charge who knows that too, with every fibre of his body. Greatest of all ‘The Giggle’ clears the decks of nostalgia for what comes next, while leaving the door open to come back again for a future anniversary or maybe a spin-off series. It’s the best of all possible endings, giving hope to the fans who want to see the show move forward without resting on its laurels and those who just want to stay in yesterday. Most of all, though, this is a brilliant ending to an arc that’s been running fifteen years now, a moving warm hug from showrunner to fans and Doctor. Flawed as it may be (and the toymaker is a really big flaw) this story has all the heart of Russell at his best. Unlike 2010, when cruel was the right way to go for emotional impact, giving everyone a happy ending is just right for 2023. We need a show like Dr Who to give us hope again and make us kind, in a world that keeps trying to make us tough and harsh. And ‘The Giggle’ does that ever so well.      

POSITIVES + I love the UNIT helipad. After being wiped from existence in a throwaway line by Chris Chibnall the Earth’s greatest military extraterrestrial outfit is now back front and centre the way they should always have been, the extra money from Disney really coming in handy for the effects. Funnily enough the plot doesn’t need to be on a helipad at all but, hey, Russell can splash some cash and as fans of this era of the show were feeling most unloved of all the past few years it’s great to have that money spent on them.

NEGATIVES – Why was Mel there exactly? Nice as it is to see Bonnie Langford get a story where she actually gets to be a computer programmer (something she talked a lot about in the 1980s but a skill she was never actually seen to use) the plot had no reason for her to be there, except Ingrid Oliver (Osgood) is busy getting married to TV presenter turned crime writer Richard Osman (Oliver, not Osgood, although that is a lovely image!) and there was a vacancy. Mel gets almost nothing to do, except point out that the Doctor likes redheads (you wait till Donna finds out about Amy!) Sadly the script originally gave her more to do – its such a shame they cut the bit where she gables during the regeneration about how it happened before in ‘Time and the Rani’ with both Doctors glaring angrily at her for stealing their ‘moment’ (cut in editing for being too obscure we’ve for Whovians, but a neat character bit!)  Many fans have been asking why Mel at all? Well, she’s another part of the Russell T Davies story. Back in his first job, when he was still a TV presenter rather than a writer, he was working on strangely serious and old-fashioned retro children’s TV series ‘Playschool’ in 1987 (the series that made a star out of Brian Cant despite the world seeing him wearing massive shoulder pads in ‘The Dominators’) when they happened to share a rehearsal room with the Dr Who team making what turned out to be the TV story ‘Paradise Towers’. Russell looked over from his staid serious work colleagues at the amount of fun the Dr Who team were having, especially Bonnie’s mad laughter (you see, we’re back to giggling again), and thought ‘I’m with the wrong people – those are my people’. Back in his original run there wasn’t too much nostalgia as Dr Who rebuilt itself (Sarah Jane aside – and that was a spinoff show so it was the future too) so Russell never got a chance to have Bonnie return the first time round, but now he can. I just wished he’d used her more (hopefully the shots of Bonnie sharing a moped with Ncuti in Dr who magazine suggest there’s more to come).

BEST QUOTE: Donna ‘I’m already running!’