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?