Reviewed by Tim Robins
WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD
A sinister toyshop. The Earth erupting in violence. Shockwaves travelling through history…
Laughs were few and far between in “The Giggle”, the last of three Doctor Who anniversary specials, which saw The Doctor (David Tennant) and Donna Noble (Catherine Tate) pitted against The Toymaker, a 1960s villain first played by Michael Gough and now by Neil Patrick Harris of Doogie Howser MD (1989-1993), How I Met Your Mother (2005-2014) and Starship Troopers (1997).
“The Giggle” loosely carried on from “Wild Blue Yonder”, in which The Doctor evoked a superstition at the edge of the Universe and so set free The Toymaker, an amoral cosmic force dedicated only to play and constrained only by “the rules”, whatever they might be. But the real aim of the story seemed to be setting up forthcoming Doctor Who productions, including this year’s Christmas Special with Ncuti Gatwa as the Fifteenth Doctor, a possible UNIT series along the lines of Torchwood, and the separate adventures of the Fourteenth Doctor and Donna Noble.
In the same story, showrunner Russell T Davies pointed towards what the Doctor Who universe will become. So, for example, UNIT are now ensconced in Marvel’s The Avengers tower rather than the sedate country house of Jon Pertwee’s time as The Doctor in the 1970s – can a MCU/Doctor Who crossover be far behind? (It happened in comics during the Marvel UK era, after all).
We also learned that the Doctor’s enemies will be super-powerful god-like characters, beloved by the showrunner. Apparently, The Toymaker had legions of them, now all descending on The Doctor. I guess Sutekh, The Eternals, The Master and Rassilon and Omega are all up for grabs. It will be interesting to see what a scenario of The Doctor(s) vs super villains will do for the tone of the series.
As a story, “The Giggle” playfully toyed with a lot of themes and tones, none of which really went anywhere. We first meet The Toymaker back in 1925 with a show-stoppingly outrageous, fake German accent. I really wasn’t sure what this was about, but a doll The Toymaker has on sale has a wisp of black hair, suggesting the hair style of Adolf Hitler. When we are informed the doll’s hair is human, it felt, at least for me, to be a creepy reference to the “products’ made from human body parts in the Nazi concentration camps. The Toymaker also got a chance to make an unsubtle racist remark to the assistant to John Logie Baird, who has come to buy a toy.
I don’t know whether or not The Toymaker was intended as a stand-in for the online alt right or whether RTD was playing around with Toymaker, already identified as a racist caricature. Back in the 1960s, the character was called “The Celestial Toymaker”, then represented as a Chinese Mandarin-type, a popular trope for music hall magicians, now interpreted as a form of racist orientalism.
There really was a lot going on in “The Giggle”, including the idea that a signal buried in TV and other screens was responsible for all the online hate, reduced to not tolerating other views and not conforming to the rules of polite conversation, or any rules at all. I’m not convinced. Not at all.
“The Giggle” also came with a roller-coaster ride of different atmospheres. A horror set-up involving Donna being attacked by dolls (Think The Birds meets It Lives!) was effective, but clashed with the rest of the story’s atmosphere, which was mostly manic action. The scenes of the Toymaker dancing around UNIT HQ to the vocal stylings of The Spice Girls were alarming and entertaining, in equal measure.
Special mention must go to Bonnie Langford returning as Mel, the Sixth Doctor’s companion. Langford brought her own energy to the show, notoriously screaming at the same pitch as the end theme for the first episode of “The Terror of the Vervoids”.
And then there was Ncuti Gatwa, literally pulling himself free from his predecessor to live an independent life of his own. A truly bizarre turn of events, but I was happy that we didn’t just end with the now all too familiar burst of Time Lord energy.
Gatwa’s performance was exuberant, playful and fun. But if one thing made me smile, it was the introduction of the new ramp to make The TARDIS wheelchair accessible. If only the production team had thought of it back in the days of K9. Instead it took a wheelchair user, a YouTuber called ‘Tharries’ to actually suggest this to the production team. Perversely, the ramp wasn’t taken advantage of by UNIT’s wheelchair using Scientific Advisor Shirley Bingham (Ruth Madeley, returning from “The Star Beast”).
I am however delighted that the suggestion was taken on board. It may also explain the show’s production team’s fretting around Davros, as a representation of an evil wheelchair user, outlined by showrunner Russell T Davies in a nehind the scen3es interview about Doctor Who minisode aired during this year’s Children in Need night. I don’t agree with his decision to make Davros “able bodied” (sic), as I will always now have to think of the Daleks as an evil race of creatures with disabilities. Which, come to think of it, always used to be a joke directed at them, because once-upon-a-time they couldn’t go upstairs. Better yet, perhaps RTD and all will stop thinking of fans as “mingmongs” (sic). As Tharries shows, fandom can be a place of activism, and a focal point of change for the better.
It looks as if Doctor Who may well be a very different show from here on in. Integrating the show into a gigantic “Whoniverse” makes sense in terms of marketing, but no amount of info dumping lore and reusing past characters will make me purchase The Celestial Toymaker on DVD and other formats when it’s relased at the end of this month.
Again, I possess my memories of Doctor Who in my head, and sometimes that’s enough and sometimes a whole lot better.
Tim Robins
• The Giggle is available now on BBC iPlayer in the UK and on Disney+ worldwide
Web Links
• Doctor Who – The Giggle
Target Novelisation by James Goss (AmazonUK Affiliate Link)
Out: 11th January 2024
Based on a script by Russell T Davies, this thrilling third adventure for Doctor Who’s 60th anniversary features David Tennant as the Fourteenth Doctor and Catherine Tate as Donna Noble.
• Doctor Who – The Giggle
Audio CD – read by Dan Starkey (AmazonUK Affiliate Link)
Out: 1st February 2024
Based on a script by Russell T Davies, this thrilling third adventure for Doctor Who’s 60th anniversary features David Tennant as the Fourteenth Doctor and Catherine Tate as Donna Noble.
• The Celestial Toymaker will be released on Blu-Ray and DVD on 31st December 2023
Originally broadcast in April 1966, this story sees the Doctor and companions separated when they come up against The Toymaker. While the Doctor plays the Trilogic Game, Steven and Dodo are forced to play seemingly childish but ultimately dangerous games with the aim of being reunited and getting back to the Tardis.
This brand new animated version has been created using the original audio recordings.
All episodes have been animated in both colour and black and white and include original film elements which have been fully restored.
Special features include:
Disc One
- Episodes 1-4 – Animation – Black and White
- Episodes 1-3 – Reconstruction
- Episode 4 – Original 1966 Episode newly restored
- New Audio Commentaries
Disc Two
- Episodes 1-4 – Animation – Colour
- Making The Animation
- Doctor Who Escape Room – Team First Doctor
- Sylvester McCoy Introduction for episode 4 as per the original VHS release
- Photo Gallery
- PDF Material including camera scripts
Web Links
• Multiversity Comics – Fifteen Thoughts on Doctor Who’s “The Giggle”
Kate Kosturski
• John Logie Baird official website (the Baird family)
All images © BBC/ Bad Wolf/ Disney
A freelance journalist and Doctor Who fanzine editor since 1978, Tim Robins has written on comics, films, books and TV programmes for a wide range of publications including Starburst, Interzone, Primetime and TV Guide.
His brief flirtation with comics includes ghost inking a 2000AD strip and co-writing a Doctor Who strip with Mike Collins. Since 1990 he worked at the University of Glamorgan where he was a Senior Lecturer in Cultural and Media Studies and the social sciences. Academically, he has published on the animation industry in Wales and approaches to social memory. He claims to be a card carrying member of the Politically Correct, a secret cadre bent on ruling the entire world and all human thought.
Categories: Doctor Who, Features, Other Worlds, Reviews, Science Fiction, Television
Target Tales: Russell Cook reflects on recent Doctor Who adaptations 
In Review: Doctor Who Christmas Special – The Church on Ruby Road 
In Review: Timeslides: The Doctor Who Artwork of Colin Howard 
In Review: Doctor Who – Wild Blue Yonder