“The Giggle” shot David Tennant’s Doctor in the chest with a laser, and I’m pretty sure I said “it’s too soon” out loud. I wasn’t ready. It snuck up on us. One minute the Toymaker’s dancing around UNIT, and the next we’re here, he’s regenerating, and I’m sitting there going, what just happened, we’re here already?
Everybody reading this has probably watched the episode by now, so we’re spoiling all of it. I’ve wanted to talk about this one so bad. All new is what you got: a new Doctor, a new villain, a new set. We talked through the whole special on the couch, and I loved it.
The Toymaker Comes From a Lost Episode
The Toymaker comes out of an old story that’s considered one of the lost ones. A lot of those original prints are gone, but there are pieces of it, and there’s about 16 minutes on YouTube that they were able to put back together. He was the Celestial Toymaker, and it was the first Doctor, William Hartnell, who faced him. It has such a stupid ending, and it’s brilliantly, wonderfully innocent 1960s Doctor Who.
I watched it with Boyfriend Know-It-All the day before we sat down with this one, because I wanted some context. I sort of knew who the Celestial Toymaker was supposed to be. David Tennant’s Doctor describes him correctly in this thing: an elemental force beyond the rules of the universe. The Doctor is who the Doctor is, but the Toymaker’s something different, and that’s what had me blown away.
The closest analogy I can come up with is Mr. Mxyzptlk from Superman. For those of you who don’t know, he’s a fifth-dimensional being, and because of how the laws of physics work where he comes from, when he shows up in our universe he can manipulate matter like it’s a toy. That makes for a very scary opponent.
The episode starts back in 1925. Somebody’s inventing television, or some version of it, and a guy shows up at a little shop to buy a dummy, because the lights under that original rig were so hot they’d most likely burn whatever was being filmed. That shop’s the first time you see Neil Patrick Harris, putting on a really bad German accent on purpose.
He Only Obeys the Rules of the Game
The Doctor says, I challenge you to a game. Donna says he’s going to cheat, and they both look at her like she’d cursed them out. How dare you. That’s the one thing he wouldn’t do. And the Doctor tells her the only thing the Toymaker will obey is the rules of the game, whatever the game is.
The games are so minor. They literally cut a deck of cards and high card wins.
When they chase him into the back of the shop for hide and seek, the second oldest game, they let the door close behind them. If you saw that 16 minutes of the old story, you know they’ve just entered the Toymaker’s realm. They don’t call it a dimension and they don’t call it a universe. They call it a realm, which is something different, and it really made me think. The only way out is to beat him at a game. And then the puppet show. Oh my God.
The salt explanation is where I thought the writing got really smart. In the last special, the way the Doctor first stopped the doppelgangers was by fooling them with salt on the floor: you can’t cross until you’ve counted every grain. He didn’t play it as salt protects you from evil. That’s not what he said. He invoked a child’s game, and he did it at the edge of known creation, which was close enough to work almost like a beacon for the Toymaker. You feel the Doctor take responsibility for making this happen. RTD is so brilliant when he comes up with this stuff.
The Toymaker wins the card game, the realm’s closing up, and he’s about to get away. So the Doctor says, I beat you once, you beat me, and every player’s bound by one rule. Best of three. Best of three, baby. And because he’s all about the rules, the Toymaker has to agree, and the last game moves to the present day.
UNIT, Mel, and Donna Naming Her Price
When we catch back up with the Doctor and Donna, everything’s chaos, and UNIT comes to them. They pick up the TARDIS with a helicopter. They don’t do that often, so when they do, you chuckle.
Then you get to see Mel, one of the Doctor’s companions from back in the day, and I love that they’re bringing more and more old companions back. They’ve established that Kate’s been recruiting them into UNIT. Mel wasn’t a normal companion who got left behind on Earth, either. She was off exploring the stars, and she caught a zingo home. What’s a zingo? I’m assuming it’s like a cab. I loved that whole conversation.
Kate offers Donna a job, too, and Donna was awesome. “I can give you 60.” “120 and five weeks’ vacation.” Done.
UNIT’s got a brand new satellite, much like the old Archangel Network, and it cracked me up that RTD name-drops the Archangel Network, because that was on his watch. He created it back in the day. The whole world’s connected now, and the Doctor reveals that this little laughing face they found is in every screen and has been since the beginning of television. So they hop in the TARDIS and head back to 1925.
The shop scene they released the week before is such a great scene. All episode the Doctor’s been going, I know this face, it’s coming back to me. Then he’s standing in front of him and tells Donna to go back to the TARDIS, and she says, you never tell me to do that. I was super proud of the way they put the whole thing together.
Horrible and Great at the Same Time
The Toymaker’s show at UNIT was horrible and great all at once. Great because it’s the Spice Girls. They are in London, after all. Horrible because people got turned into balls. The guns shoot balloons and rose petals. Two guys try to grab him and he turns them into a pile of little balls, and one of the UNIT people picks one up and the dude’s face is in it.
That’s the scene that made me think of Mxyzptlk. Somebody asks how he’s doing this, and the Doctor says, if I told you he plays with atoms the way children play with building blocks, would you believe me? Well, that doesn’t make any sense. That’s right. Are they dead? Yes, they’re dead, I’m sorry. And he keeps moving, because he has to.
Then they’re outside, and the laser they were going to use on the satellite is in the Toymaker’s hands. He turns around and shoots the Doctor.
There’s No Such Thing as Bi-Generation
Donna and Mel both go stand next to him, to be with him at the end of this face’s life. He starts to regenerate, something’s off, and he says it’s weird. Then he asks both of them to pull, really hard, and he begins to split. Ncuti Gatwa comes out the other side, and there are two Doctors standing there.
They split the outfit, too. Tennant keeps the slacks and he’s barefoot. Gatwa’s got the shoes, one of the shirts, and the pants, meaning pants in the British sense. He’s in his underwear.
It’s a bi-generation. There’s no such thing. Bi-generation’s supposed to be a myth, but look at me. They created a new piece of mythology and I’m okay with that. Anybody who’s got a complaint about it, you’re complaining about a show where a guy changes his face every couple of years to justify why the actor’s different. You can make up anything you want. It’s Doctor Who.
And immediately the two of them say it together: I challenge you to a game. My thought in that moment was, this is going to be fun. I really dug Gatwa’s personality, and after the preview for the Christmas special, I can’t wait to see what his era’s going to do.
The Toymaker Goes in a Box
The last game is catch. The three of them throw a ball around until the Toymaker drops it.
We love Neil Patrick Harris’s character and we hope we get to see him again one day. The problem on this couch was that it ended so fast. He was such a dangerous threat, he was doing wonderfully, amazingly well, and then it was just done. We wanted more.
They fold him up and put him in a box, and two things happen on the way out.
Somebody with red nail polish picks up the gold tooth, the one with the Master in it. Red nail polish says female villain to me. I don’t know who it is. And did you catch the mythology that comes with it? Apparently the Toymaker found the Master, the Master lost a game, and the Toymaker made Missy evil again. That’s why we got the psychotic version who wiped out Gallifrey in Thirteen’s run with Jodie Whittaker. If RTD wants to go around cleaning up other people’s messes, because the guy before him couldn’t write a good story to save his life, I’m down. It makes all of it make sense. Before this it was the Master being evil for evil’s sake, and now there’s a reason, and he’s trapped inside the Toymaker’s tooth.
The other one is the box. When it gets handed off, the order is to bind it in salt. It might mean nothing. But the salt’s back, and he’s a child who likes games, counting grains. I have a feeling we’re going to see him again.
There was an article the week before where Russell said Gatwa’s era will be more steeped in fantasy, with more fantastic elements that aren’t so grounded in science fiction. I’m down for it. Let’s see some different things.
Rehab Out of Order
What I love is the explanation for why there are two of them. Time Lords do rehab backwards. Gatwa’s Doctor is the healed version, in much the same way Matt Smith was the healed version of David Tennant’s Doctor, and now Tennant has to make the trip to get there.
Fifteen starts rattling it off. We haven’t stopped. Put on trial, exiled, the Key to Time, River Song, Sarah Jane, the Time War. He names all these things the Doctors have gone through from the old days to now, and I loved that continuity callback. It really made me happy to see them say, hey, legitimately all of this happened.
And where better to get well? He gets to stay and have a family. He’ll be part of Donna Noble’s family, generation after generation. Donna says it like you would about somebody in recovery: she doesn’t want him going off being crazy until he feels better. He’s recovering from the trauma of everything.
This isn’t the first time the Doctor’s home has been Earth, either. The Third Doctor joined UNIT and was real big into staying put. The whole family’s sitting there at the table together, and the implication is he’s still having adventures, with Rose. Good for you, man. He gets to live with his best friend and have the life he’s never had before.
Then there’s the second TARDIS. One of us thought it was a little cheesy and corny that he just gets his own. The other one said, oh come on, that was so fun. It works because he won his prize. It’s like Tennant’s first day on the job, when he gets his hand cut off and it just so happens that in the first so many hours he can grow it back. Same kind of MacGuffin. You won the game, you get a prize. Tennant’s Doctor used his prize to banish the Toymaker. Gatwa’s used his to make another TARDIS. His has a jukebox in it, because reasons and why not, and he turned the lights orange. Okay, bro. It worked.
What We Got Wrong, and What’s Still on the Table
None of our predictions came true. Not one. I totally loved guessing anyway.
We were a little disappointed the toys didn’t come back into play. When we first met Donna in these specials, she strangled the one little doll, looked at the baby dolls like, you got something to say, and they packed it up. Could you imagine the ones Rose was making coming to life? That would’ve been terrifying.
I’m really okay with where it leaves things. David Tennant could throw his face in every once in a while if they asked him to. I’m not sure he would, but it keeps the door open, and we could see Donna again.
And what are our chances of a UNIT TV show? They’ve really set it up. Bring back multiple old companions and have them contributing. The Doctor leaves you behind? Don’t sweat it, you’ve got a job here. A little companion unit thing would be great.
The Verdict
Doctor Who’s “The Giggle” is a 10 out of 10 on the Know-It-All Index.
We didn’t discuss it ahead of time. We never do. I went first and gave it the 10. The handoff was beautiful. There were tears on this couch the second that laser hit, because nobody here was ready to lose David Tennant, then stunned silence while they did what they did, and then the ending we got brought the tears back.
This episode did a lot to get me excited for what’s coming next. I feel like we’re about to get a new, fun-loving Doctor, and I can’t wait to do Doctor Who on the regular.
What did you think of the bi-generation, and who’s holding that tooth? We’ve got another conversation coming on all three specials together and what the 60th anniversary’s been like, and I’d absolutely love to hear your thoughts on that too. The conversation lives in the comments on the video above.
