Written by Randy Allain
‘The Giggle,’ Doctor Who’s third installment in the 60th anniversary celebration, allows The Doctor to pass the torch with even more pomp and circumstance than he brought to his literal torch-bearing in his 2006 hype-machine visit to the 2012 Olympic Games. If that sounds too saccharine for your taste, don’t worry; Russell T Davies manages to balance things out with some horror as well. Most importantly, he leaves plenty of time for David Tennant’s Doctor and Catherine Tate’s Donna Noble to work through their emotional baggage and hit us with a few more laughs. In any case, we can’t sort out how these ingredients come together without spoilers, so be sure to check out “The Giggle” before reading ahead.
This episode hinges on the introduction of a new bit of Doctor Who lore: the concept of bigeneration. In order to understand the full magic trick Russell T. Davies pulls off in this special, we need to start with the bi-generation itself. As the doctor takes a blast from a galvanic beam to save his friends, he begins to realize that this regeneration feels different. With a little help from his friends, he actually SPLITS into his next regeneration, the instantly lovable Ncuti Gatwa as the Fifteenth Doctor!
Gatwa bubbles with joy and confidence. He embraces Tennant’s Doctor, but he might as well be wrapping his arms around every single Whovian as The Doctor finally gets a hug from the only being who could ever understand what he has been through: himself. The two Doctors save the day together with a silly game of catch, but then Fifteen uses the remainder of the episode to help himself heal. He is The Doctor’s Doctor.
Before Davies hits us with this joyous revelation, he uses The Toymaker (portrayed by a fully unleashed Neil Patrick Harris) to generate a sense of timeless high stakes and make sure that even the most passive Doctor Who fan understands that our beloved Time Lord has been through too much to keep moving on the same way he has in the past.
We open the episode on The Toymaker; his dark motives are as obvious as his schticky German accent. He sells the world’s creepiest ventriloquist dummy to John Baird’s assistant for a groundbreaking experiment in television technology. We don’t know the pseudo-scientific explanation just yet, but we know something terrible has happened.
We jump to the present, and in short order, UNIT rolls in with big trucks and bigger exposition – exposition so big it requires some sort of out-of-the-blue robot/alien(?) intelligence named The Vlinx to center us in a world where everyone has gone mad with a sense of absolute personal entitlement… except for the folks in UNIT (how convenient). Despite the not-so-graceful plotting, the sequence does establish some valuable emotional beats. We get a surprise appearance from Classic Who companion Melanie Bush (Bonnie Langford), another charming/confident appearance from Shirley Bingham (Ruth Madeley), and perhaps the most compelling performance to date from Jemma Redgrave as Kate Lethbridge-Stewart when she demonstrates the effects of The Toymaker’s maddening giggle. These faces are essential to fill out a believable found family (alongside Donna) for The Doctor to defend later in the episode.
We learn that The Toymaker’s haunted doll has been lurking in the ether of our electronic transmissions for nearly one-hundred years, just waiting for the entire world to gain internet connectivity (roll with it).
The Doctor and Donna head to the source of the transmission and quickly find themselves trapped in The Toymaker’s realm. The set design of endless hallways is effective and evocative of the haunted hotel from Barton Fink (1991); whether or not this is an intentional nod, it is an effective allusion to a story about a man trapped and twisted by his own inner turmoil and self-imposed expectations – and also harassed/punished by a vaguely supernatural elemental force of evil.
The Doctor and Donna fight some creepy puppets to establish The Toymaker as a threat (I’m terrified of ventriloquist dummies, but I’d be down for some more nuanced time with Stooky Sue and the Stooky Babies), and then Neil Patrick Harris gets to vamp to his heart’s content in a haunting puppet show about all of the companions The Doctor has lost, as well as his role in destroying much of the galaxy with The Flux. While the vibes and nostalgia are fun, this replay feels a bit empty and reductive. After teasing the Jodie Whittaker hive with subtle shout-outs in the first two specials, it feels like a shot across the bow to fully skip over her companions in this sequence. Sure, Thirteen was the only Doctor to leave her companions in a relatively healthy emotional state, but in an episode where the core mission was to generate good vibes, this was an avoidable misstep.
Finally, The Doctor challenges his rival to a game, loses, and evens the score from their previous meeting way back in The Doctor’s first iteration. This buys enough time to fast forward the conflict to 2023 with The Doctor’s trauma fresh in our minds. We pause for a fun Spice Girls number that further establishes the godlike power of The Toymaker. We could pause to ask a lot of questions about the intricacies of the plot and whether or not the show has effectively explained how The Toymaker establishes “rules” for his games (it hasn’t), but honestly, those things don’t matter very much. The Toymaker is really just a device to help us believe that, right now, anything is possible – even the Time Lord myth of bi-generation.
Ultimately, any emptiness in the plot is overshadowed by the emotional payoff we get from Gatwa’s masterful debut in the role. On its face, the idea to keep David Tennant in the mix seems like a vote of no confidence in Gatwa, but it works. Russell T. Davies puts the godlike Toymaker to shame by pulling off this magic trick.
It starts with Fifteen’s first words: “No. I’m me. I think I’m really, really me. Oh, I am completely me! Don’t just stand there! Push!” Never has a Doctor regenerated with so much confidence. Generally, we get a lot of questions and uncertainty. We can feel the trauma of the last Doctor hanging on for dear life and trying to reckon with the new circumstances. This time, The Doctor feels fresh and new. He feels…healthy. Happy.
But that’s not the entire trick. Fifteen is instantly in loving command and control (even without pants). As former companion Melanie puts it, he’s “beautiful.” Tennant’s performance from this point forward is intentionally deferential to the power and charisma of Gatwa’s Doctor. It’s a silent blessing for the audience to move on. When Fifteen embraces Fourteen and says, “I’ve got you,” he is speaking to us just as much as he is speaking to every iteration of The Doctor we have known and loved. Later, he nurtures and cares for Fourteen, reminding him to practice self care: “You’re thin as a pin, love.” He is hitting us with the same wisdom Donna Noble hit us with earlier in the episode: “Maybe that’s why your old face came back. You’re wearing yourself out.”
This begs the question, how did Fifteen achieve such inner peace? As he puts it: “I’m fine, because you fix yourself. We’re Time Lords. We’re doing rehab out of order.” Again, Donna assists by putting this idea in simpler language: “He’s saying you need to stop.”
This is the last flourish of Davies’ magic trick. Not only do we get a happy ending where The Doctor can sit back, relax, and enjoy a family (and where Donna gets a hefty salary with five weeks of vacation time), but this pursuit is a noble one. He must rest. He must brunch with Donna, Wilf, and his niece (and hopefully the many other companions we miss). This is the only way Fifteen can become the well-adjusted Doctor he is now. This is a beautiful and healing notion. We’ll be thanking Davies for this ending for years to come.
This episode is truly a celebration of Doctor Who, and it was designed to let fans bask in joy and remembrance, while branching forward into a future that feels distinct. We are getting a Doctor who is refreshed, healed, and at peace with the burdens of his past lives.
That’s not to say we don’t still have questions. Russell T. Davies instantly started pitching the bi-generation as the birth of a sprawling multiverse in the post-episode materials. Fans are bursting with questions, confusion, hope, and worry over all of that. We also got not-so-subtle hints about the return of The Master and all sorts of undefinable “legions” to come. Yes, we all have a lot of good and thoughtful questions, but they are questions for another day. For now, it’s OK to focus on the emotional payoffs of the story we got and get hyped to see Ncuti Gatwa back in action this Christmas.
