Story 303: The Giggle

In which the Doctor and Donna learn of the chaos which has enveloped the globe since they left London...

It transpires that everyone is behaving as though they are absolutely positive that they know everything and will fight to defend their opinions or force them on others. Only they know the truth, and they are determined that everyone else knows it. The Doctor observes a strange figure, dressed in top hat and tails, dancing through the carnage going on around them. 

UNIT troops under the command of Colonel Ibrahim arrive and take them to their HQ building by helicopter after Wilf has been taken to a place of safety.

Here the Doctor is reunited with his old companion Mel, who has been recruited to the organisation, whilst Donna is reunited with her daughter. Kate Stewart updates the Doctor on recent events. 

In the London of 1925, a man named Banerjee - assistant to John Logie Baird - visits a novelty shop to purchase a ventriloquist dummy for use in one of his employer's television experiments. The shopkeeper appears to be German but his accent slips as he makes a racist remark. 

Banerjee selects a dummy named "Stooky Bill". In the experiment the dummy is tested to destruction, emitting a strange giggle before bursting into flames.

In 2023, Kate shows how everyone at UNIT is wearing an armband known as a zeedex which makes them immune to the bizarre behaviour which everyone is exhibiting. Ordering that her own be turned off, the Doctor and Donna see Kate suddenly begin to act in a paranoid and aggressive manner until it is reactivated.

They identify a hidden waveform which is being broadcast globally. Once isolated, they hear the same giggle which Stooky Bill had made back in 1925, and see its image on their screens. This waveform began broadcasting just as the world's satellites began to synchronise a few days ago - just as the chaos erupted.

Realising that the answer lies in the past, the Doctor and Donna travel in the TARDIS back to 1925 and visit the novelty shop, which sells jokes and games.

The Doctor identifies the shopkeeper as the Toymaker, who he last encountered in his first incarnation whilst travelling with Steven and Dodo.

He initiates a game of hide and seek in the labyrinth of his shop. 

Donna becomes separated from the Doctor and finds herself trapped in an attic room, where she is attacked by a number of ventriloquist dolls - the wife and children of Stooky Bill. The Doctor finds Banerjee, transformed into a dummy.

They are reunited in an auditorium where the Toymaker puts on a puppet show - which includes representations of some of his more recent companions. The Toymaker attempts to blame him for the deaths of Amy, Clara and Bill Potts, though he counters by pointing out that they all had a life after they left him. The Doctor is also blamed for the destruction wrought by the Flux, which he failed to prevent.

Amongst the things the Toymaker claims since entering this universe is that he played a game with the Master which he lost - trapping him in his gold tooth. He also makes reference to "One Who Waits", whom he hasn't challenged.

The Doctor then challenges the Toymaker to play a game with him - a straightforward cutting of a pack of cards, highest wins.

The Toymaker wins, but the Doctor points out that he won the last time they met - so they are now even. They must play one further game - best of three. The Toymaker agrees and the shop begins to collapse in on itself. The Doctor and Donna escape just in time, realising that the final game will be played back in the present day.

Back at UNIT HQ the Doctor tells Kate and the others what they are up against. The satellite link is broken so that the whole world is no longer affected by the wave form. The Toymaker suddenly makes a bizarre appearance in the control centre accompanied by music and showers of rose petals.

The Doctor and Toymaker convene for their final game on the UNIT helipad high above London. He has taken control over a powerful galvanic beam weapon. An offer to play away from Earth is declined. The Toymaker decides that as their first game was with an earlier incarnation, the next should be with a future one - and fires the weapon at the Doctor to trigger a regeneration. However, instead of simply transforming into a his incarnation, the new version emerges from out of him - his body splitting into two seemingly independent individuals. He has heard of bi-generation, but always thought it a Time Lord myth. The Toymaker now finds himself playing against two Doctors. They play a simple game of "catch", and the Doctors win. The Toymaker is imprisoned in a box will which be sealed up forever by UNIT.

It transpires that there are now two of TARDISes as well - one of which has come from his future thanks to some residual influence of the Toymaker. The new, Fifteenth, Doctor will travel on alone - whilst the original, Fourteenth, is talked into taking a well deserved break and contemplates retirement. He will spend some time with Donna and her family, whilst the new Doctor sets of on new adventures...

The Giggle was written by Russell T Davies, and was first broadcast on Saturday 9th December, 2023.

It is the third and final of the 60th Anniversary Specials, and marks the introduction of Ncuti Gatwa as the full-time Fifteenth Doctor, David Tennant only having come back to the show for these special episodes. With Disney+ now involved as co-producers, RTD2 intended this to be a drawing of a line under the series which had begun on 23rd November 1963, with the Doctor as we had always known them effectively going into retirement after their millennia of adventuring. 

It was planned that the next full series would be deemed "Season 1" - so we would basically be getting Doctor Who II from 2024 onwards.

The episode also sees the return of a villain not seen since 1966 - the Toymaker. Seen only once in The Celestial Toymaker, when played by Michael Gough, it had been planned to bring the character back in 1986 with Gough reprising the role, in a story written by ex-Producer Graham Williams. However, the series was placed on hiatus, and all the planned stories for Season 23 were replaced with new ones comprising Trial of a Time Lord.

There was no great mystery about the character's return, as set dressing on location featured visual clues as to the villain's identity - such as the toy shop, having a sign that included a stylised image of the clown Joey from the Hartnell story.

To play this key role, RTD2 looked to a big US name and Neil Patrick Harris was cast. First coming to fame in the juvenile medical comedy series Doogie Howser MD, he had gone on to have a successful career on TV and on Broadway, starring in musicals, presenting award shows and featuring in series like How I Met Your Mother, Glee and - more recently - RTD2's own AIDS-era drama It's A Sin. 

The part called for an all-rounder such as him. As well as his acting and musical talents he is also a magician, which tied in with the character.

RTD2 had decided that the next two seasons, already commissioned by the BBC and Disney, would dispense with the usual type of monster / villain, and concentrate instead on a pantheon of malevolent or amoral deities, and the god-like Toymaker fitted the bill in this regard, as well as bringing an old foe back for the diamond anniversary.

Another returnee from the Classic Era of the show is companion Mel, played by Bonnie Langford. Last seen in a cameo as part of the Companions Support Group in The Power of the Doctor, she is now working with UNIT. It is never explained quite how she got back to contemporary Earth after heading into space with Sabalom Glitz (who is reported to be dead now).

Also representing UNIT we naturally have Jemma Redgrave as Kate Stewart and Ruth Madeley as Shirley Bingham. Joining them is a new senior military figure - Colonel Ibrahim - played by Alexander Devrient, who will go on to become a UNIT regular.

There's a totally pointless appearance by the robotic Vlinx, played by regular monster performer Aiden Cook.

Of the guest cast, John Logie Baird is played by John MacKay and Banerjee by Charlie De Melo. MacKay had previously played the TV pioneer in another RTD series - Nolly, a biographical drama about Noele Gordon of Crossroads fame. (A young Gordon had been a model for Baird's early experiments with colour television). De Melo spent five years as a regular on Coronation Street.

Lachele Carl makes a reappearance as news anchor Trinity Wells.

Donna's family - Shaun (Karl Collins), Rose (Yasmin Finney) and Sylvia (Jacqueline King) are all present for the final garden party sequence. We get a piece of audio of Bernard Cribbins as Wilf, from The Poison Sky, as well. He was to have featured in the episode but his failing health prevented it.

Gough appears as the Toymaker in a brief colourised flashback clip, and Hartnell is also seen. This had previously been seen at the end of the colourised The Daleks.

When the Toymaker speaks of having imprisoned the Master in his gold tooth, we hear snatches of archive dialogue from previous actors who have played the part.

Overall, it's how you regard the whole bi-generation thing which will determine how much you like it. Personally, as much as I enjoyed the story, such tampering with the series structure I prefer to do without - especially as it is never properly explained what the implications are.

Neil Patrick Harris gives a great performance as the Toymaker, though there are so few similarities to the original character that you wonder why they didn't just create a new villain (we'll see this as a recurring problem for RTD2, in a very big way). We could also have done without the "you know I'm a baddie because I have a silly Allo' Allo' Germanic accent" etc. Don't treat the viewers as if they're idiots - you might find they stop watching...

Things you might like to know:

• The Doctor seems to think that it was the business with the salt and the Not-Things in the last episode which allowed the Toymaker into this universe.
• Donna believes that the Doctor having an old face again was a subconscious decision by him that he needed to settle down with her and her family.
• The Master made an entrance to a musical number in The Last of the Time Lords, in which the Doctor also had an offer to fight his foe across the stars rejected. Then there's the whole "waveform broadcast via satellite network affecting the entire planet" business. RTD2 is continuing to raid old scripts for ideas...
• And let's not forget that the Toymaker's gold tooth, containing the Master's spirit, is picked up by a female hand, wearing red nail varnish...
• Regeneration quotes referenced include the Fourteenth Doctor's "Feels different this time...", as previously said by the Fifth, and he also says "Here we go again...", as the Brigadier said when witnessing the end of the Third.
• Glitz's demise is said to have occurred when he was 101 years old, tripping over a whiskey bottle. He had a Viking funeral.
• As well as defeating the Master, the Toymaker claims to have turned the Guardians of Time into voodoo dolls.
• He also claims to have "made a jigsaw" of the Doctor's life - presumably intended to explain away any inconsistencies in canon, past or future. Technically, the Doctor can be the Timeless Child if you want, but can also be a runaway Time Lord who first looked like William Hartnell if you prefer.
• Having done research on Baird for the Noele Gordon drama, RTD2 decided that the creepy Stooky Bill puppet might make for a good Doctor Who character, but not enough to carry a story by itself.
• Having previously been said to have passed away only in one of the short Lockdown pieces, the parent series acknowledges that Sarah Jane Smith is now dead.
• Considering NPH's considerable musical theatre talents, a double was used for some of the Toymaker's dancing - Luke Featherston.
• Mel was to have spoken to Donna about having witnessed a regeneration before, mentioning plot elements from the first episode of Time and the Rani, but this was cut. 
• Kate mentions having encountered the Yeti. The only time this has ever happened was in the unofficial spin-off video "Downtime".
• Planned initially was for the story to have referred to Wilf's death, presumably in the garden party epilogue. Phil Collinson decided against it, so he is simply absent from the lunch.
• The barber shop next to the toy shop is named "Grade's". A reference to Michael Grade having once tried to give the series, now celebrating its 60th birthday, the chop?

Story 302: Wild Blue Yonder

In which the Doctor and Donna briefly meet Isaac Newton, before the TARDIS materialises on board a vast spacecraft...

Arriving up a tree in an orchard in the year 1666, the Doctor and Donna accidentally cause Newton to name the force he has just defined as "Mavity".

The TARDIS then arrives in a spaceship and the Doctor and Donna are forced to evacuate it, due to the damage resulting from her having spilled coffee into the console. For some reason, the TARDIS has blasted out some of the old wartime tune Wild Blue Yonder. The Doctor inserts his sonic screwdriver into the ship's lock, in order to trigger its automatic repair systems. They are just setting off to explore when it suddenly dematerialises, the Doctor having forgotten to override the Hostile Action Displacement System.

They are now stranded on this mysterious spacecraft until it comes back for them, and they need to discover what is so dangerous about it that the HADS was activated.

They find themselves in a long corridor. Random, alien, words are broadcast from a loudspeaker system, and each time they hear these parts of the architectural configuration of the corridor alter.

They come across a small robot, which at first appears stationery but is in actual fact merely moving very, very slowly.

They find a computer centre and the Doctor decides to carry out some adjustments. The pair split up to work in different rooms.

Donna notices a drop in temperature, and tells the Doctor of her worries about her family should they not be able to get back home. The Doctor's only response is to comment that his arms are too long, and she is shocked to see that his hands have grown huge and are dragging on the ground.

This is not the Doctor. He, meanwhile, has discovered that he has not been talking to the real Donna, as her limbs are also out of proportion.

The real travellers are reunited and run out into the corridor where clamber into a buggy. The doppelgangers - creatures who identify as the "Not-Things" who originate in the region outside the spaceship - give chase but cannot control their bodies. They grow to enormous size and get jammed in the corridor.

The Doctor and Donna reach the bridge and discover only a void outside. They are at the very edge of the universe, and the Doctor realises that the Not-Things must come from another dimension that lies beyond this one. They hear a strange knocking sound. The random words continue to be announced.

Opening a screen, they see the corpse of the ship's pilot hanging in the void, attached to a cable which causes it to knock against the hull as it orbits the vessel. 

The Not-Things attempt to get in, their bodies attempting to normalise - as though acclimatising themselves. The Doctor knows that they wish to copy then replace them both.

He finally works out what is going on here. The ship's captain killed themselves to prevent itself from being duplicated and replaced, but first set the craft to self destruct. It did this in slow-motion so that the Not-Things would not realise what was going on. The random words are really a countdown, and the robot is slowly moving towards the trigger mechanism.

The Not-Things now have the memories and intelligence of the Doctor and Donna, and so now also know what is about to happen.

The TARDIS returns, and the Doctor and Donna must race to towards it before the alien creatures can reach it first. The Not-Doctor is destroyed as the spaceship begins to blow apart. The Doctor gets into the TARDIS but is confronted by two Donna Nobles, whom he cannot tell apart.

He initially rescues the Not-Donna but then realises his mistake and swaps the real one for the duplicate, which is left to perish on the disintegrating spacecraft.

The TARDIS materialises back in London, and on exiting they are met by Wilf. He warns them that something terrible has been happening since they left, and they see people fighting in the street as an aircraft crashes into the city...

Wild Blue Yonder was written by Russell T Davies, and was first broadcast on Saturday 2nd December 2023. It is the second of the three 60th Anniversary Specials.

Apart from the rather pointless opening sequence with Newton, it is a two-hander for the most part, with David Tennant and Catherine Tate playing both the Doctor and Donna and their Not-Thing doppelgangers. We then get a brief appearance from Bernard Cribbins as Wilf at the conclusion, setting up the events for the final Special. Sadly this was to be his last screen role, and it is his only appearance in the trio of episodes. Filming took place at Camden Market in London, at the same time that the scenes for The Star Beast were recorded.

The episode was dedicated to him.

As with a lot of RTD2's material since taking back the series, the roots are showing. In parts this resembles Midnight, and one is strongly reminded of the film Event Horizon - described at the time as a haunted house movie in space - and John Carpenter's The Thing (alien creature attempting to mimic but getting it wrong). The robot closely resembles the cinema version of Marvin the Paranoid Android.

When it came to advance publicity for the Specials, this concentrated only on the first and last of them. We knew that the first was a screen adaptation of the classic Doctor Who Weekly comic strip, and that the third would see the return of the Toymaker. The lack of any information about this middle episode resulted in all manner of speculation from fans - mainly revolving around a guest appearance by one or more previous incarnations of the Doctor, or the return of a popular monster.

The fact that it failed to deliver either, and proved to be a self-contained bottle-episode, did not go down well at all and it is regarded as the weakest of the three. As I said at the time in my review, it is unfair to blame an episode for not being something which it never once claimed to be.

However, there wasn't any reason for RTD2 to have withheld information about the episode. Scenes of the robot and the spacecraft could have been shown as part of the trailers without spoiling the reveal that that Doctor and Donna at one point are speaking to copies of each other.

Regarding that Isaac Newton sequence... The series long ago gave up on even trying to be educational. 

RTD2 clearly thought that getting the nation's schoolkids to start saying "Mavity" instead of "Gravity" would be a "hoot ", but the problem is that the schoolkids had long since given up on the series.

They've tried to prolong the "joke" but it quickly became an irritation.

The colour-blind casting of Nathaniel Curtis as the great scientist did not go down very well with many - partly through a general anti-wokeness viewpoint but also from those who simply think that real historical figures shouldn't be shown to be something which they were not. I tend towards the latter, on the grounds that it gives a skewed picture of history to children and glosses over the problems of the past. It's not as if we don't know what Newton looked like.

This sequence also features the first appearance in the series of Susan Twist, playing Newton's housekeeper, Mrs Merrydew. Naturally, this became part of the whole story arc for Series 14, as Twist appeared as different people across space and time.

Overall, it's actually a great little episode, held together by the two stars who get to play against each other - and themselves - without the distraction of lots of other characters. Dark and creepy for the most part, that unfunny Newton segment feels tacked on and totally out of place. It's a pity that they couldn't have found a better way for the Doctor to know who the real Donna was. On screen, it's something stupid like the length of a bone, but it would have been far more satisfying had it been something to do with her as an individual which provided the clue.

Things you might like to know:

• RTD2 did originally intend for an old Doctor appearance - the First. However, as time went by he elected to simplify the story so that it concentrated solely on the two stars.
• Not only does the Newton sequence spoil the continuity of the TARDIS initially blowing up with the coffee spill, and the reason for their hurried evacuation of it on the spaceship, but it also contradicts the Fourth Doctor's description of his meeting with him.
• RTD2 had written a lot more material for Wilf, including scenes for The Giggle, but it quickly became apparent that his involvement with the shoot would have to be kept to a minimum. He does feature briefly in the following episode, but it is a body double and some old dialogue of his that is heard.
• In an interview, RTD2 spoke of this episode as a sort of homage to the Season 15 story Underworld, in that much of it was filmed against today's version of CSO, green screen.
• DWM 597 played along with the secrecy for this episode by redacting three of the guest artists. Of these, only Wilf's appearance might have been any kind of spoiler. The other names were those of Curtis and Twist.
• Wild Blue Yonder is another name for a song properly titled The U.S. Air Force - adopted as their anthem by that service in the late 1940's.
• One of those fan rumours was that this episode would be set within the damaged TARDIS, where the Doctor and Donna would be threatened by evil versions of the Eleventh and Twelfth Doctors - this despite Capaldi bluntly stating that he had no desire to return to the series.
• The HADS was first introduced in The Krotons.
• The robot, nicknamed "Jimbo" was operated as a puppet, and not as a man in a costume.
• The spaceship decor contains some hoof-shaped motifs, tying in with the equine nature of the dead captain.
• The Doctor invokes the old superstition that vampires and other supernatural entities can't pass a line of salt (see the TV series Supernatural for a lot of this). This invocation of a superstition is apparently the trigger for him to be plagued by the Toymaker and various other deities over the course of the next two series.

Story 301: The Star Beast

In which the newly regenerated Fourteenth incarnation of the Doctor arrives at Camden Market, where he runs into an old friend...

It is the winter of 2023 and the market is getting ready to close up when he meets a young woman named Rose. She turns out to be the daughter of Donna Noble, who is also here. Nearby is husband Shaun, who is a cab driver.

Following the shock of his return to an earlier incarnation, the Doctor is intrigued by the coincidence of meeting Donna again - especially after the events of their last meeting. They suddenly see an object pass overhead, which crashes somewhere in the London suburbs. The Doctor recognises it as an alien spaceship. He sets out to find it. 

It has come down on a steelworks, which has already been locked down by UNIT. He is able to break in, but encounters their new scientific adviser, Shirley Bingham. She declines to give his presence away to the UNIT troops, who report that an escape pod was seen to detach before the crash and they are still looking for it. The Doctor departs to try to find it first.

Wheelchair bound, Shirley is unable to ascend to the entry port of the spaceship, which is relatively undamaged. AS the hatch opens, a strange light emerges which affects the soldiers.

A friend of Rose named Fudge tells her that he has seen the pod in a field nearby - a small spherical craft - and soldiers have now arrived at the scene.

When she goes into her shed, she discovers a white furry creature hiding inside. When Donna comes out to speak to her, she also sees the creature.

The Doctor arrives, shocking Donna's mother Sylvia who knows that her daughter will die if she recalls her time with him. 

UNIT troops arrive on the street, just as it comes under attack by huge green-skinned insectoid creatures - Wrarth Warriors.

The Doctor meets the creature from the pod - the Meep - and he and Donna's family are forced to flee with it as the Warriors appear to be hunting for it. They battle the UNIT soldiers.

Everyone escapes in Shaun's taxi, and they take refuge in an underground car park.

Here the Doctor announces that he knows that things aren't what they seem. He summons two of the Warriors, who reveal that they have come to arrest the Meep. It is a notorious criminal, its entire race turned homicidal after exposure to a psychedelic sun. They were once a meek, gentle race. It is light from this sun which has affected the UNIT soldiers who accessed the spaceship.

Its secret exposed, the Meep shows its true colours by killing the Warriors and taking everyone hostage.

They are taken to the steelworks where affected soldiers are preparing the ship.

The Meep reveals that its engines employ a Dagger Drive, which will destroy London when activated. Shirley helps free them.

The Doctor and Donna escape into the ship, where he is forced to make her remember their travels together, even though it will kill her. He is surprised when this does not happen.

It transpires that the meta-crisis was shared with Rose, which has diluted its effects.

The Meep activates the ship's engines, which cause fiery cracks to spread out across the city. Donna is able to recall when she was part Time Lord and can use the ship's technology to disable its drive, whilst Rose is able nullify the effects of the psychedelic sun on the UNIT soldiers - having inherited the Time Lord knowledge through her mother.

The Wrarth Warriors turn up and arrest the Meep. It will be sentenced to thousands of years imprisonment. Before departing, it warns the Doctor that someone known as "the Boss" will hear of these events.

Rose and Donna eject the meta-crisis energy. Donna is invited to see the newly regenerated TARDIS, which now has a vast multi-level outlay.

Unfortunately she spills coffee into the console and the TARDIS dematerialises, out of control...

The Star Beast was written by Russell T Davies and first broadcast on Saturday 25th November 2023. It is the first of a trilogy of episodes which make up Doctor Who's 60th Anniversary.

To say "written" isn't entirely accurate, as he actually adapted an old Doctor Who Weekly comic strip written by Pat Mills and John Wagner, with art by Dave Gibbons. This ran in the magazine from issue 19 to 26 in early 1980.

On his return to the show-runner role, RTD (who will henceforth be called RTD2, since this was his second time in charge) elected to do something different with the anniversary. Most fans had been expecting another multi-Doctor story, as with the 10th, 20th and 50th celebrations. RTD2 opted for a trio of linked episodes which would see the return to the show of fan favourites David Tennant and Catherine Tate.

The origins for this lay in the COVID pandemic. A series of Twitter watch-along's were held, one of which was a Tennant-Tate story. She enjoyed the experience so much that she suggested a return, and RTD2 ran with the idea. Tennant was happy to reprise the Doctor, if only for a short time.

RTD2 would be preparing for his next full series, which would see a brand new Doctor in the TARDIS, to be introduced at the conclusion of the anniversary trilogy.

Tennant agreed to play a new incarnation of the Doctor who just happened to look and behave like the Tenth, but was actually the standalone Fourteenth.

With the return of Donna, we would also be seeing her mother Sylvia (played by Jacqueline King) and husband Shaun Temple (Karl Collins). He had been introduced in The End of Time. 

An addition to the family would be Rose - their trans daughter. She is played by Yasmin Finney who came to fame through the Netflix series Heartstopper. Obviously Rose got her name through the Doctor's memories of Rose Tyler, bleeding through the meta-crisis mental barrier. She makes crochet toys, which on closer inspection appear to be versions of Doctor Who aliens.

It would be revealed that Donna and Shaun had given away all the money they had won on the Lottery (the Doctor having giving them a winning ticket as a wedding present, paid for by her late father Geoff).

Again this is due to the meta-crisis leakage, as this was doing something that the Doctor would have done.

Joining the cast are Ruth Madeley, who plays UNIT's latest scientific adviser Shirley Bingham. She had featured in Davies' Years and Years.

The lead UNIT soldier is Colonel Chan, played by Jamie Cho. He has Batman connections, having featured in Batman Begins in 2005 and The Dark Knight in 2008.

Fudge is played by Dara Lall.

The Meep is realised partly as a CGI creation, and partly as an actor in a costume - Cecily Fay. It is voiced by Miriam Morgolyes. She previously voiced a Blathereen in The Sarah Jane Adventures, but her link to Doctor Who goes back to the late 1970's when Tom Baker stated that she would make a great new companion.

Overall - hardly original since it's an adaptation, and RTD2 doesn't make any major structural changes. We all liked the comic, so pretty much like this. Tennant and Tate slip effortlessly into their old roles, as though they'd never been away. 

• The episode aired 13 months after The Power of the Doctor - the longest ever gap between episodes since the relaunch.
• This is the first episode to fall under the new co-production deal with Disney+.
• The steelworks is named "Millson Wagner", after the writers of the comic strip. Mills and Dave Gibbons visited the set during production.
• Mills and Wagner came close to writing for the series in the 1980's, with a story known as "The Song of the Space Whale", which involved a group of people who lived inside the titular creature. It would have introduced the character who became Turlough.
• The comic ran for 8 issues, so had a lot more room to develop characters and sub-plots. The spaceship lands in a northern town named Blackcastle, and the Meep is discovered by a schoolgirl named Sharon and her friend Fudge. The latter has more of a part to play than in the TV adaptation. The main plot beats are there, but the comic finds time to visit the Wrarth Warrior spaceship and the creatures at one point plant a bomb inside the Doctor to kill the Meep. Sharon would become the first Marvel comic strip companion - the Doctor's first black companion in any media (though the Pertwee Doctor had a young black man helping him, but just for a single story).

• The Wrarth Warriors are really underused compared to the comic strip, and the costumes have a rather plasticky appearance. 
• Foreign dubs of the episode call him the 10th Doctor rather than the 14th.
• The Doctor produces a barrister's wig from his pocket - just as the Fourth had done in The Stones of Blood.
• The Doctor and Donna being separated by a glass screen is designed to mirror the Tenth Doctor and Wilf at the climax to The End of Time.

The Giggle - a review

 

If you've yet to see The Giggle, I wouldn't venture past this sentence...

This evening Doctor Who underwent its biggest shakeup in six decades - even bigger than Regeneration, Time Lords or Timeless Children.

For a lot of people, especially of the older generation, a line has been drawn under the series which began in November 1963. The Doctor decided to retire for a while at the conclusion of the third and final Anniversary Special, and we will no longer be following his adventures.

Instead, we are going forward with the "divergent" Doctor - the one being played by Ncuti Gatwa.

Because this evening the Doctor was fatally wounded by the Toymaker but instead of simply regenerating as normal, his next incarnation emerged as a separate entity - a process which we're calling "Bi-Generation". Thus we now have two of them, concurrently.

Gatwa's Doctor retains all of the memories and life experiences up to this point - and the script is chock full of references.

Which begs the question - Why? If the new Doctor is simply going to go forward precisely like the previous Doctor, then what was the point of doing this? If it was to permanently retire the 1963 - 2023 Doctor then I'm afraid it was obvious from the final garden scene that this is only ever going to be a pause in his travels. RTD2 even refers to him only being "parked" on Unleashed...

You could argue that Davies has actually started Gatwa off at a disadvantage, and is showing a lack of faith in him - he's not the real Doctor. The real one can be wheeled out again if Gatwa fails.

Despite this having been rumoured for a few weeks, even prompting an article in The Independent, the internet is sure to be breaking right now. I hope most will be accepting, but some will declare that they are calling it quits.

Begun, the clone wars have...

On to the actual story itself...

One of my biggest worries going into this episode derived from the trailers, in which the Toymaker came across as a manic, cartoonish character. The concern was that he was going to be played as a generic insane omnipotent villain, coming across not unlike some of the recent Master incarnations. 

The great Michael Gough played the Toymaker totally straight. He was quietly sinister, with just a hint of malicious humour ("Make your last move, Doctor. Make your last move...") but the evil was beautifully underplayed. 

My concerns were unfounded, I'm happy to report. The Toymaker could certainly be manic and cartoonish at times, but on the whole the performance was nicely balanced.

I very much admire NPH as a performer. He's certainly a multi-talented individual, being able to turn his hand to drama, comedy, song & dance and even magic. He was clearly indulged here as he gets to demonstrate quite a few of his skills as the Toymaker. We actually have a big musical number, as he invades UNIT HQ. It could have been embarrassing, but it's a magnificent scene, perfectly in tune with the character.

RTD2 is on record as saying he was concerned about the audience accepting fantasy in the series. Considering that a number of stories had already touched on this going right back to the 1960's, I'm surprised he worried. 

We had some wonderfully surreal and creepy imagery here - people turned to puppets with the Toymaker quite literally pulling the strings, or the aforementioned musical number. 

Particularly creepy was the scene with Donna attacked by the puppets of Mrs Stookie and her 'bawbies'.

I fail to understand why the BBC did not trumpet Mel's return in this episode, when she could be seen in the background of a number of clips and publicity photographs from the HQ set. They announced her involvement in the next series, yet not here.

As mentioned above, the script was full of references to old stories. As well as the puppets of more recent companions and mention of the Flux, we heard tell of Logopolis, Adric, the Kay to Time, Mavic Chen... Mel naturally spoke of Sabalom Glitz.

The Toymaker is said to have defeated the Master and imprisoned him in his gold tooth (which was picked up by an unknown female hand at the end - shades of the Saxon Master's ring). He also claimed to have turned the Guardians of Time into mannequins.

A lovely touch was the inclusion of some colourised footage from The Final Test, the only remaining episode from The Celestial Toymaker. (The BBC obviously have a new colouring-in machine, and they're determined to get their money's worth).

A couple of minor gripes from me were the (non)involvement of Wilf, and the climactic battle on the helipad. Obviously when they filmed the street riot in Bristol last year they weren't to know that Bernard would pass away soon after. He would have been too frail to travel to the destination, so a double was used. It's a shame they couldn't have found a way to remove him from these scenes altogether, leaving us with last week's closing sequence as our final memory of the character. 

As for the ending on the helipad, then I'm afraid I found the scenes of people throwing a ball about simply failed excite, no matter how hard they tried to make it humorous and visually interesting.

I daresay the point was to show how the two Doctors join forces to defeat the Toymaker, but I would have preferred something a little more exciting. It wasn't just the Toymaker who dropped the ball - it was the writer. Perhaps showing him as an expert juggler just half an hour beforehand was a bit of a mistake, if you're going to make the dropping of a ball by him a crucial moment.

                             

Setting the wider implications of his presence aside for a moment, Gatwa made a remarkable entrance. He charms from the start, helping save humanity in his boxers. 

I think he'll make a superb Doctor, though we really need to see how he tackles the serious stuff. 

What does all this mean for me - as a representative of the older generation of fans? 

Well, in this blog I cover the series and its spin-offs as made and broadcast by the BBC (irrespective of any co-production partners). That's what I've been a fan of since 1971.

The "Bi-Generation" is obviously a seismic change which will take a day or two to get our heads around, but I see no reason not to continue to follow the series when it returns at Christmas and beyond.

If Star Trek, Star Wars, Marvel and DC fans can accept prequels, sequels, Multiverses, Infinity-verses, Kelvin Universes and sundry other spin-offs then so can I, with just this single divergence in Doctor Who. It's simply a branching off, which may even prove to be temporary if a future showrunner elects to revisit the "original" Doctor.

For better or for worse, I'm sticking with the series as it moves forward.

Personally, I think we won't see anything different from what has already gone before (which does take me back to that question of why do this in the first place...?).

Wild Blue Yonder - a review

This is the one we knew nothing about.

We found out early on that there were to be three special episodes for the anniversary, thanks to clapper boards seen on location. We knew that the third of these starred Neil Patrick Harris, and a tweet from RTD2 quickly led to the guess that he was playing the Toymaker. We also saw actors dressed as Wrarth Warriors and the Meep on location - with the clapper boards indicating that the old DWW comic strip The Star Beast was being adapted as the first special.

But the second episode remained a mystery. All we had to go on were some cryptic teasers and then the fuller trailers, which only depicted Tennant and Tate in some futuristic environment. 

The poster-style artwork then added an odd, crooked robot, and determined fans found one other actor involved thanks to their agent's website.

A very brief synopsis, and the final trailer, indicated that the TARDIS disappears - leaving the Doctor and Donna trapped somewhere referred to as Hostile Action (as in HADS, the ship's HA Displacement System, which shifts it away from danger). 

And that was it.

In the week running up to Wild Blue Yonder, Radio Times informed us that there was no preview, and we didn't get the usual batch of publicity images until a few Doctor / Donna shots dropped out.

Like Nature, fandom abhors a vacuum, so the lack of information got people speculating like crazy. Perhaps this level of expectation might prove impossible to satisfy...

Well, now we know...

Last week's episode ended with the TARDIS going out of control thanks to Donna spilling coffee onto the shiny new console, and Wild Blue Yonder follows on directly from this. (RTD2 had said that although each special would be standalone, they would have a cliffhanger into the next).

Before arriving on the spaceship, we have a brief encounter with Isaac Newton. The Fourth Doctor had already claimed to have inspired his work on gravity - but this could always have been taken as a joke.

No doubt some will object to the colour-blind casting of the great scientist. I'm okay with it, but can see how making some children think he was of their ethnicity when he really wasn't might be an issue for some. (The programme gave up teaching people about science a very long time ago, but educating about history at least managed to last a little longer). 

Newton misremembers the word "gravity" and we then see Donna use the new term - "mavity"... This was something discussed between Vicki and Steven in The Time Meddler - how a change in history will instantly feed through all future history to the present.

This is picked up in the Unleashed episode as Tennant tries to explain the concept to Tate.

When we do get to the spaceship, we're immediately reminded of Event Horizon. 

(I certainly was. Not only is it designed like one long corridor, and it's apparently abandoned, but turns out there's a nightmare on board - something which very much messes with your mind. It hails from another dimension, and can take on the appearance of someone you know. Sound familiar?).

There's a lengthy build up to the introduction of the threat. We have to make do with the mystery of a seemingly deserted ship lying on the edge of the universe. Except we've been party to the fact that someone or something has been watching the TARDIS pair.

It's a two-hander for the first half hour, as the Doctor and Donna struggle to work out what's going on. But then we suddenly see that there are two Doctors, and then - after a short while - two Donnas... 

The way this is handled is very well done. The Doctor and Donna have split up to carry out some task. The second Doctor turns up first, and we instinctively know there is something just a little off with the way he acts. But then he mentions something only the Doctor would know, and so we relax...

However, we then cut to where the real Doctor is, and suddenly realise that that was a false Doctor with Donna after all. Then, just as we're thinking there's a shapeshifting creature on the ship, the second Donna turns up.

The way in which the duplicates initially struggle to get to grips with their unfamiliar humanoid forms was nothing new. We've seen bodysnatcher scenarios (especially John Carpenter's The Thing) within the series before. As well as Flatline, it was also impossible to view this episode without thinking of Midnight. 

It was that episode, with bells and whistles. 

That's not to say that this was completely unoriginal. It may have borrowed from other works, but the packaging certainly felt fresh. Great design and VFX. The four-way dynamic was interesting. We had two mysteries to solve throughout the episode: who were the duplicates, and what was going on with the robot and those occasional random words. The resolution to the latter was pretty clever, though who the beings were, how they functioned, and why they did what they did was the bit we'd seen before. 

If there's one issue I have with this episode, it's the way it hinges on these two mysteries. Once you know what's happening, how often do you think you might watch this again? 

Having nothing going on elsewhere, and with no other characters to relate to, this may not be the sort of episode you revisit very often. 

I'm sure a more psychological horror isn't going to go down well with everyone - especially those who were hoping to see an old monster / companion / Doctor. 

(Chamber pieces don't go down well with everyone. In the DWM poll recently, Heaven Sent came out top story of the last 60 years. Setting aside the stupid voting system they imposed this time, designed so that it didn't upset Colin Baker or the entire previous production team, I had no problem with this, having given the episode top marks myself. It has a remarkable performance by Peter Capaldi, and script by Steven Moffat. Even though they liked it, some fans just couldn't cope with a newer story being top dog, and wanted to see a Bob Holmes story instead). I think some people will criticise Wild Blue Yonder not for the episode on it's own merits, but for how much it deviates from their expectations. 

You can't fault a story for failing to be something it was never meant to be. Just because it didn't match your expectations... that's your problem, not the episode's. 

Not every actor pairing could have pulled this off (I'm visualising another Doctor and companion pairing right now, and OMG it's dreadful...). Tennant and Tate can, and do. 

The episode ends with a glorious but bittersweet reunion, for there in Camden waiting for the TARDIS is Wilf Mott. Unleashed featured a short, but heartfelt, tribute to St Bernard. It also gave us a pretty pointless clip from The Giggle. We did get a trailer this week following the episode itself, though in the gap between programmes rather than as part of the closing credits. (Still not heard the closing theme properly). This showed the start of the regeneration, which takes place in the TARDIS, then a shot of Ncuti's Doctor.

The Star Beast - a review

Spoilers ahead...

As with Dalek or Human Nature - which were also based on pre-existing Doctor Who media - those of us lucky enough to have read the original Doctor Who Weekly comic strip which inspired The Star Beast already had a head start as regards the basic plot. RTD2 could have taken liberties with this, but he has elected to remain faithful and respectful to the source material.

It's condensed, of course - the comic strip ran over 8 issues. Certain subplots, mainly involving the Wrarth Warriors, are set aside as we cut to the heart of the story.

Cute alien crashes to Earth, hunted by nasty looking insectoid aliens. The Doctor and friends naturally assume cute is good and insecty is bad - only to find they've been fooled. Cute is a psychotic despot, and the insectoid bunch are out to arrest it. 

It's a "don't judge by appearances" tale, so hardly original. Doctor Who has been using this scenario since the Hartnell era.

As an example of the story type, however, it's a very good one thanks to character and design - and now performance. Into this mix we have the first story for a new, complex Doctor. Complex in that, for the first time, he's assumed a face he's worn before, and doesn't know why. 

In lieu of a scary or action-packed pre-credit sequence, we have the Doctor and Donna, separately, recapping for the benefit of those who missed, or can't recall, the events of 2008/9.

As performed, this isn't simply him looking like the Tenth Doctor. This is the Tenth Doctor, back again.

The first thing he does is bump into Donna Noble. Back in 2008/9, the coincidences  revolving around her and her granddad Wilf were cosmically significant. 

What's going on here, we don't yet know. Interestingly, in the accompanying Unleashed show, RTD2 claimed that in the third special they are going to do something never seen before in 60 years if the series...

We get a cryptic comment this week from the Meep about its "boss". Presumably this will be the Toymaker.

The Meep was wonderfully realised (details of how it was brought to life shown in the BBC 3 show). I worried about the voice in advance, but needn't have. 

I loved the new UNIT scientific adviser, Shirley Anne, and hope to see her again in the third special, and into the fifteenth series.

It was obvious from her first casting that Yasmin Finney's Rose would have some significance. Davies wouldn't be casting her just to use her as a background character.

Her true role turns out to be key - the reason why Donna regaining her memories doesn't kill her. The Metacrisis has been passed on and shared by mother and daughter.

A preview talked of this episode being preachy, but I didn't feel this. Yes, it has something to say about gender fluidity, but this is germaine to what's going on with the character in the context of the story. There's no lecturing going on, of the type we suffered under the previous regime. 

I'm sure most of us were looking forward to seeing Bernard Cribbins, but it looks like that bittersweet pleasure will have to wait until The Giggle.

Donna and the Doctor separated by a glass wall at the crisis point reminded us of Wilf and the Doctor in The End of Time II, and the Doctor producing a barrister's wig from his pocket looked like a nod to The Stones of Blood, which fell on the 15th anniversary.

The new TARDIS is magnificent. In general plan it has elements of the 2005 incarnation, but with different levels joined by sweeping ramps. What makes it special for me is the fact that its lighting can be changed to suit the scene or the mood. The plain grey look is impressive, but could be a bit cold and clinical if left unchanged over long periods - especially a space of this massive size.

(I recall wishing they'd bring back the original design, only to regret when they did it in Heaven Sent. It just lacked atmosphere). 

The new opening titles were wonderful - visually very exciting. I wasn't sure about the closing theme, which sounded overly cluttered with effects - not that we got to hear much if it thanks to those pointless continuity announcements. 

No preview of next week's episode - unless you switched to BBC 3.

Unleashed contained a brief clip from Wild Blue Yonder, and it was followed by a trailer. 

If I had one issue with the episode, it was to do with the contraction of the plot.

The true nature of the Meep is found out really rather quickly. It might have been nice to have prolonged the mystery a little longer, but the Doctor guesses what's going on after five minutes. 

A superb start to the new era, I think it could have benefited from an extra 30 minutes.