After last week’s bizarre, creepy voyage to the end of spacetime (“Into the Wild Blue Yonder”) the third of three Doctor Who 60th anniversary celebration specials brings it home with the return of a classic Doctor Who villain (one not seen since the Hartnell era), a uniquely Doctor Who-style apocalypse, and of course, the introduction of a new Doctor by the episode’s end. 

What makes this Special, er, special is that the various familiar formulae are tweaked juuust enough to make things feel fresh again.  Instead of an invading fleet of Daleks or Cybermen, the true ‘enemy’ of “The Giggle” is ourselves; specifically, the uncompromising insistence that our beliefs automatically equal fact—an attitude that is toxically prevalent in both social media and modern politics (one and the same these days).

Let’s dig in. Allons-y…

“The Giggle” (2023)

This final 60th anniversary special opens in Soho, London of 1925.  Into a mysterious toy shop walks Charles Banerjee (Charlie de Melo) on an errand for John Logie Baird (John Mackay), the Scottish engineer who is working on the first practical television set nearby.  Charles meets the shop’s owner, an intense, German-accented man with a sinister sense of humor (Neil Patrick Harris), and asks him for a Stooky Bill ventriloquist dummy.

The shop owner, aka, “the Toymaker,” tries to talk Charles into buying the whole lot of dummies, but Charles insists on only the one.  When pressed by the Toymaker, Charles mentions the dummy will be used for a prototypical demonstration of a new device called television.  Once purchased, Charles returns to Baird’s lab, and they use hot lamps to flood the subject with light for the crude demonstration.  The dummy catches fire during the test, but the creepy giggle of the Toymaker is heard as the dummy incinerates…

Note: This is the first reappearance of “The Celestial Toymaker” since the omnipotent character encountered the First Doctor (William Hartnell) back in 1966. The Toymaker in that serial was played by Michael Gough (“Batman,” “The Legend of Hell House”).  Writer-producer Russell T Davies has pulled an odd, but deeply compelling choice for a 60th anniversary villain, and it’s refreshing to not see yet another tired Dalek or Cybermen armageddon. 

Returning from last week’s disturbing trip to the edge of spacetime, the Doctor (David Tennant) and Donna Noble (Catherine Tate) return to present-day London, where they met the elderly Wilfred Mott (Bernard Cribbins), Donna’s granddad, who is delighted to see his old friend, the Doctor, once more.  Unfortunately, the circumstances of their reunion are dire, as the city—and world—is in the deadly grip of what seems to be a plague of mass insanity.  The Doctor observes a man standing in the street, insisting that drivers yield to him. Other examples indicate that people are fixated with being in the right, and nothing else. Among the chaos, the Doctor makes eye contact with the Toymaker, dressed as a street performer, and is unnerved by a sense of déjà vu.

Note: This is the final appearance of Bernard Cribbins as Wilfred Mott, the grandfather of Donna Noble.  The actor passed away in July of 2022 at the age of 93. Cribbins also appeared in one of my first exposures to Doctor Who (albeit non-canonical) with the 1966 feature film “Dalek Invasion of Earth, 2150” (1966), which I remember watching on TV as a boy.  To be honest, I hadn’t realized he’d finished any more work for Doctor Who until I saw the final teaser of last week’s special, “Into the Wild Blue Yonder,” from where this scene picks up.  Color me pleasantly surprised.  RIP, Bernard Cribbins.

UNIT arrives on the scene, and its soldiers whisk the Doctor and Donna away in a chopper to their headquarters, located in the middle of London.  Arriving at the building’s helipad, the Doctor is hugged by Kate Stewart (Jemma Redgrave), daughter of Brigadier Alistair Gordon Lethbridge Stewart (the late Nicholas Courtney). After a brief reminiscence about the passing of Sarah Jane Smith (the late Elisabeth Sladen), the Doctor is introduced to a new member of UNIT, his former companion Mel Bush (Bonnie Langford), now a middle-aged woman who’s segued gracefully into her new career.  The Doctor is also reunited with UNIT’s Science Advisor, Shirley Bingham (Ruth Madeley), whom he met in the first special (“The Star Beast”), as well as a new robotic being called Vlinx (Nicholas Briggs, the voice of the Daleks and Cybermen).

Note: A couple of things.  I don’t know if it’s due to a fresh influx of Disney cash, but the revamped UNIT HQ looks more like something out of the Marvel cinematic universe now, and it’s stunning.  As I said in my review of “The Star Beast,” this trilogy of specials look more like Doctor Who feature films.  Secondly, Mel Bush may not have been my favorite companion of the Colin Baker/Sylvester McCoy era, but she’s clearly mellowed over the years, and her presence here was unexpectedly welcome.

With introductions made, they get down to business.  The Doctor notices that most of the UNIT staff are wearing special neural inhibiting armbands called Zeedexes. Despite being fully human, Donna and Mel are conspicuously unaffected by the madness plague, which the Doctor attributes to an immunity granted by longterm travel in the TARDIS (a weak sauce explanation, but it works). To demonstrate the pervasiveness of the madness, Kate orders her Zeedex turned off. After which, Kate’s paranoia is amped up, and she launches into verbal tirades against the Doctor and Bingham.  Her own troops are barely able to put the Zeedex band back on her arm, after she flings it off.  

Note: Jemma Redgrave (“Law & Order UK”) is part of the prestigious Redgrave acting dynasty, which includes Oscar-winner Vanessa Redgrave (“Julia,” “Deep Impact”) and Lynn Redgrave (her aunts), as well as the late Natasha Richardson (Vanessa’s daughter), who’d starred in 1990’s version of “The Handmaid’s Tale” before her untimely 2009 death in a skiing accident.

Analyzing the signal that causes the madness, the Doctor discovers the sound of the Toymaker’s giggle over an image of the burning Stooky Bill doll from 1925.  That embedded recording, he realizes, has been transmitting over every TV, computer and phone screen since its original broadcast in 1925, slowly but steadily driving humans into this current madness.  The Doctor also points out that this wave of madness isn’t foreign to humanity; it’s merely an amplification of our race’s innate (and ugly) paranoia and selfishness. The Doctor uses his sonic screwdriver to show the image, still playing live on the monitor screens at UNIT HQ.  The recording was triggered with the launch of the KOSAT 5 satellite that recently connected the entire planet to the internet. Realizing they need to stop the transmission at the source, the Doctor and Donna take a trip back to 1925…

Note: The episode works in some none-too subtle but very timely commentary about our current age of news and information silos, where we now get only that information that agrees with our viewpoints, opinions and worldview outlooks. The result of which has been a dangerous worldwide careening into fascism, fueled by paranoid conspiracy theories and strategic disinformation; a real-life plague of madness, indeed. Well played, Russell T Davies.

Arriving in 1925 Soho, they find the toy store that sold the original Stooky Bill doll.  Once inside, they meet the Toymaker, whom the Doctor recognizes.  Remembering their original encounter many years ago, the Doctor warns Donna to go back to the TARDIS, but she refuses. The Toymaker has been let back into the universe using magic and superstition. To the Toymaker, even science itself is but a malleable plaything.  The Toymaker challenges the Doctor to one of the oldest games; hide and seek.  The Doctor and Donna chase their impish yet dangerous host through a labyrinthian series of corridors extending into nowhere.  In one room off the corridors, the Doctor encounters Charles Banerjee, who’s been turned into a grotesque living maquette.  In another room, Donna is attacked by Stooky Bill’s ‘family’ of puppets, whom she suitably trashes, after they attack her.

Note: Back when she was first introduced in 2006 (2007 here in the US), Donna Noble (Catherine Tate) took a bit of time for me to warm up to as a character, but now I just love her.  Motherhood also seems to have made her more fiercely protective than ever.  The scene where she beats the marauding puppets into splinters was absolutely hilarious.  Welcome back, Donna.

After reuniting, the Doctor and Donna are seated to witness the Toymaker’s puppet show, where he uses his marionettes to reenact the Doctor’s adventures with new companions after he left Donna. The Toymaker also reveals how those companions met with grisly fates, ending up frozen in time, converted to a cyborg, or forced to live out their lives trapped in the past.  The Doctor defends his actions, reiterating that each of those companions remained alive. As the Toymaker continues to taunt, the Doctor challenges him to a high-stakes game, knowing that the Toymaker will be bound by rules of his own making. Delighted at another challenge, the Toymaker boasts that he’s turned God into a jack-in-the-box, and reduced the Doctor’s old nemesis, The Master, into a golden tooth within his mouth; however, he has yet to defeat “the one who waits” (a story for another time, he suggests).  The two play a card-shuffling game which ends in the Doctor’s defeat, though the Doctor reminds the Toymaker that he lost their original encounter, making this a draw—necessitating a third match.  The Toymaker concedes, and the labyrinthine toy store collapses around them—folding into a small box, which the Doctor carefully takes, as he and Donna return to the present to play the final game…

Note: Kudos to the stylish direction of Chanya Button, who makes the scenes within the labyrinth stylish, creepy and genuinely unsettling, as we see with the wooden maquette body of Charles with his still-living head.  If I were a couple decades younger, this special would qualify as high-octane nightmare fuel.  Also, the Toymaker’s throwaway line about reducing God to a jack-in-the-box would’ve been unthinkable blasphemy back in heavily-censored 1966.

Returning to UNIT Headquarters of the present, the Doctor and Donna emerge from the TARDIS with the compacted Toymaker’s box.  Kate greets them and we learn that UNIT has destroyed the KOSAT 5 satellite using a powerful laser-like turret mounted on UNIT’s helipad. The Doctor hands the Toymaker’s box over to Kate, reminding her of the elemental danger contained within.  At that moment, the Toymaker suddenly appears through a spontaneously-appearing door.  After an elaborate song-and-dance number, UNIT forces attempt to stop him, but their weapons fire rose petals.  Soldiers trying to apprehend the Toymaker through physical contact are reduced to living bouncing balls—humanity’s first game—with the soldiers’ agonized faces contained within.  Spontaneously reappearing back on the UNIT helipad, the Toymaker declines the Doctor’s offer of taking their game to the stars after deciding that Earth is his new favorite playground.

Note: The sequence with the Toymaker has a quality reminiscent of Star Trek’s “Q,” who loved to tease and taunt the Federation in much the same impish way, though of course, the Toymaker preceded Star Trek’s Q Continuum by a good two decades. The Toymaker’s insistence on playing games did remind me a bit of the original Star Trek’s omnipotent being “Trelane” (William Campbell) in the TOS episode “Squire of Gothos” (1967), who was revealed to be a nothing more than a powerful child-entity.  Good luck sending the Toymaker to his room…

Growing frustrated, the Doctor insists the Toymaker finish their game.  Without warning, the Toymaker uses the rooftop-mounted laser weapon to shoot the Doctor!  Piercing the Doctor in the abdomen, the Toymaker explains that his original game was played with the First Doctor, and the Fourteenth Doctor played the second, so for a best-of-three rematch, the rules demand another Doctor—forcing a regeneration.  As the Doctor is surrounded by the familiar glowing energy of regeneration, it briefly stops.  Confused, the Doctor asks for help in pulling each of his arms apart, as something new begins to happen. Instead of taking a new form, the Doctor is now split into two separate beings in a rare, almost mythical event known as a ‘bi-generation.’ The emergent Fifteenth Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa) helps push his new body apart from his predecessor, and the two Doctors now stand to face the Toymaker for their final game. 

Note: A recurring theme of this third 60th anniversary special is the clever mix of the old with the new; a classic series villain not seen since 1966 is revamped using 21st century technology and panache, while the familiar, almost routine act of the Doctor’s regeneration is given a fresh new twist—a bi-generation, which allows the beloved David Tennant’s 10th/14th Doctor to live on. 

The Toymaker cries foul, but the Doctors insist a new Doctor emerged, per the rules.  Grudgingly, the Toymaker agrees to a game of three-way catch between himself and the two Doctors, with the rubber ball being thrown almost impossibly fast.  The two Doctors manage to keep up, but the Toymaker himself slips up and the ball falls off the helipad onto London below.  Bound by his own rules, the Toymaker is then forced to compact himself into the Toybox—crying out that his minions will avenge him—before the Toybox is taken by Kate’s forces to be housed in a subterranean vault, surrounded by salt (invoking the same superstition that allowed the Toymaker’s reappearance).

Note: I sincerely doubt this will be the last we ever see of Neil Patrick Harris’ Toymaker, but if it is, he’s made it one hell of an outing. And speaking of entrances, Ncuti Gatwa’s emergence as the latest Doctor is off to a great start. Charismatic and athletic (he plays a mean game of catch), Gatwa also has great warmth with David Tennant, and the two share a moment as Doctor Fifteen cradles his tired predecessor in his arms after their bi-generation…like a loving adult child supporting a fragile, exhausted, elderly parent.

With the Toymaker crisis ended—for now—the two Doctors discuss their unprecedented situation. The new Doctor believes his creation was only possible because his predecessor had some time to recuperate.  Donna speculates that the Doctor’s transition back into the familiar face & body of the Tenth was willed by his own desire to come “home” for awhile. Now that there are two Doctors, the question of TARDIS custody comes to play, and the Fifteenth Doctor realizes (perhaps a bit too conveniently) that there may be lingering traces of the Toymaker’s domain, and he finds a large wooden mallet nearby (as you do).  He then pounds the TARDIS hard at the side—forcing it to cartoonishly split into two separate TARDISs (TARDISi?). The Fourteenth Doctor keeps the original, while the Fifteenth Doctor gets its newly-created exact duplicate. 

Note: Granted, the notion of lingering ‘traces of the Toymaker’s domain’ is a bit of a stretch, but so are bi-generations and police boxes magically flying throughout all of time and space. In for a penny, in for a pound.  Forget those pesky laws governing conservation of mass and energy. Doctor Who is unbridled fantasy, and I am more than happy to accept it on its own terms.  This is escapism at its purest.

We then cut to something rarely, if ever, seen in Doctor Who; the Doctor just taking in a relaxing outdoor meal with a mix of old and new friends; Donna Noble, her mother Sylvia (Jacqueline King), husband Shaun (Karl Collins), daughter Rose (Yasmin Finney) and their guest, Mel (Bonnie Langford). With the TARDIS comfortably parked in the backyard, the Doctor says that this is the happiest he’s ever been in his life, as he finally enjoys the fruits of his long labors across all of spacetime. This is what he’s fought for, and he’s wise enough to recognize it as it happens (we should all be so wise).

Note: If I have one nitpick with this delightful 60th anniversary special it’s that we never saw enough of Donna’s husband Shaun (Karl Collins). He must’ve be an exceptional man to win the heart of the galaxy’s great hero, Donna Noble.  Sadly, we don’t see much of poor Shaun, beyond his affable nature, and as a loving dad.  Good enough, I suppose.  Here’s hoping he gets a spotlight someday.

The coda sees Doctor Fifteen in his TARDIS; its previous cooler lighting scheme now opting for warmer hues, and with a handy jukebox to break up the spartan decor. This Doctor is headed off for parts unknown…and still without trousers (or ‘pants,’ as we bizarrely call them here in the States).

The End.

Summing It Up

This latest and last of the three 60th anniversary specials wraps things up in a bow, while managing to give fans a fresh assortment of things familiar and new in the same colorful box. “The Giggle” doesn’t wallow in nostalgia, it revels in it. Its unique bi-generation ending also leaves Tennant’s Doctor around for future dual-doctor adventures. To quote the Ninth Doctor, “Everyone lives!”

I also appreciated the unique choice of villainy for “The Giggle.” Actor Neil Patrick Harris is only the second American actor to play a Who villain since Eric Roberts’ The Master in 1996’s “Doctor Who: The TV Movie”, and he’s having an absolute blast—sinking his acting chops into a role he seems born to play.  Harris, in a pitch-perfect performance, comes off like a sci-fi/fantasy version of Master of Ceremonies from “Cabaret.” He nearly makes one forget that the wonderful character actor, Michael Gough (“The Legend of Hell House,” “Batman”) went there first. 

In addition to the return of the Toymaker, other legacy characters from the franchise made welcome appearances, such as the final onscreen appearance of the late Bernard Cribbins (1928-2022) as Wilfred Mott, as well as the unexpected return of companion Melanie Bush (Bonnie Langford); granted, Mel was never a personal favorite of mine, but it’s nice to see that this once-annoying character has mellowed over the years.  Also good to see the return of Jemma Redgrave as Kate Stewart, current UNIT director and daughter of the late Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart (the late Nicholas Courtney) from the Classic Series.  There were enough of these cameos to add to the overall 60th anniversary party feel without losing focus on the central story.  

David Tennant gives his all to the return of his Doctor, and since the Tenth/Fourteenth Doctor’s fate remains open-ended (a first for the series), we may see a few ‘special appearances’ now and then, whenever a second Doctor is needed for a multi-Doctor adventure (there’s also Rose Tyler’s single-hearted ‘human’ Doctor out there, too…). This would be very welcome, given Tennant’s instant chemistry with Ncuti Gatwa. While some purists may balk at the episode’s “bi-generation,” I say, why the hell not?  This could leave an open door for the return of Jo Martin’s Doctor, as well.  Anything that helps to revitalize this 60-year old franchise?  I’m all for it.

The survival of Donna Noble (Catherine Tate) leaves the door open for future appearances from her family, and with Tennant’s and/or Gatwa’s Doctors.  It’s downright refreshing to see an apocalyptic Doctor Who story without the usual tear-soaked goodbyes or tragic deaths of beloved characters. Given the state of the world right now, such optimism is badly needed at the moment, and the previous Chris Chibnall era of Doctor Who was an exercise in depression.  It was certainly time to lighten things up a bit.

With “The Giggle,” writer/producer/showrunner Russell T. Davies got the mix just right, and director Chanya Button’s direction is fluid and inspired, particularly with the eerie, nightmarish sequence in the Toymaker’s domain.  As anniversary gifts go, this one’s a keeper.

Where To Watch

Doctor Who is available on BBC in the UK and Ireland, and is streaming globally on Disney+ and Britbox. The upcoming Doctor Who Christmas Day Special will air/stream on Christmas Day, of course. You can also purchase individual episodes of Doctor Who on iTunes and PrimeVideo. Most of the series is also available on physical media (DVD/BluRay) from BBC Home Video as well.