Next we have the official 60th Anniversary Special, The Giggle, one of the biggest and most anticipated Doctor Who episodes to date; the Fourteenth Doctor’s final story as he bows out to make way for the Fifteenth played by Ncuti Gatwa, but much bigger than that though, after over 50 years, the Doctor has a rematch with one of his most powerful foes.

The world has collapsed into chaos with everyone, barring the Doctor, Donna and UNIT, gone completely mad. The source of which emanates from a sinister giggle from one of television’s earliest recordings, a puppet named Stooky Bill. When the Doctor tracks the recording of the giggle back to 1925, he finds himself in a bizarre toyshop run by one of his oldest and most powerful enemies, a cosmic entity he has not seen since his first incarnation, a lover of toys and games and one who delights in turning his victims into his own playthings, the Toymaker.

There is so much to unpack with this story, both the good and the bad, there’s a lot to love and a lot to hate about this one. One of those being the Toymaker himself, on the one hand he is the most entertaining part of the story with a great performance from Neil Patrick Harris. The Toymaker as a concept does benefit from Modern Who’s emphasis on visuals as we get some very creative and bizarre moments and imagery, also the highlight of the story being the puppet show he puts on going over each companion from the Moffat era and their horrible fates while mocking the Doctor’s excuses for them. Somewhere out there is a 7 hour cut of this scene that I’ll pay an arm and a leg for! Just the Toymaker going over every terrible thing that has happened to someone close to the Doctor would be a joy to sit through! But on the other hand, he does suffer from being a villain remade by Russell T. Davies in that he is very over the top and even gets a dance number to Spice Up Your Life by the Spice Girls, kinda similar to the issues I had with John Simm as the Master. The Toymaker portrayals I prefer are the more reserved kind with occasional moments of childish insanity when things don’t go his way. At the end of the day, Solitaire is still the best Toymaker story. I will say though, a lot of people were let down by the climax being the Doctor(s) challenging the Toymaker to a game of catch and while the sequence is overplayed, I gotta disagree, I think it’s very in line with Doctor Who to have the Doctor stake all of reality against a cosmic god in a game as childishly simple as catch.

Speaking of the climax, that brings me to the most controversial part of the story, the Fourteenth Doctor is killed a lot sooner than expected as the Toymaker decrees his third and final game to be against the next Doctor. But as the Doctor starts to regenerate, the energy suddenly dissipates, feeling something very different this time round, the Doctor tells Donna and Mel (oh yeah, Mel’s in this too) to pull his arms, which results in the next Doctor being pulled out of him like an amoeba! So now you have two Doctors existing simultaneously in an event termed “bi-generation”. So quite a few points to go through, firstly I get it, it’s the 60 year anniversary, you want to do something different with the Doctor’s regeneration this time round, the whole story up until this point has been completely batsh*t crazy anyway so why not. As for the whole bi-generation being impossible, you can sort of explain it away by the Toymaker’s prolonged presence in our reality having lasting effects on it that would allow unusual and impossible phenomenon to occur (of course Russell as usual went with a dafter explanation in The Reality War he clearly didn't put much thought into). Also the ending thematically does tie in well with the Fourteenth Doctor’s character arc with having all the weight of recent events weighing heavier on him than before and there’s some good themes of self-healing. Particularly the idea of the Fourteenth Doctor retiring and the new Doctor being completely separate from him physically carrying on their adventures completely fresh and free of all the emotional baggage. That said though, I do understand why people hate this idea, as with anything that breaks with tradition people are just instinctively going to have a negative reaction, it plays itself safe with the Fourteenth Doctor to have him go on living, it leaves a lot of questions unanswered such as can Fourteen regenerate again, is he mortal now, is he gonna grow old and die, why give him his own TARDIS if the whole point is that he’s retired from his adventures??? Also what Russell said in an interview about the idea of the bi-generation event bringing all the past Doctors back to life, yeah f**k off with that idea Russell! But if I’m being honest, the biggest issue I had with this regeneration was, the Toymaker is a cosmically powerful being who can manipulate reality and use toys and games as his weapons, and of all things, he kills the Fourteenth Doctor with a f**king laser?!?!

Another thing I absolutely hated about this episode was the payoff to the big mystery around the Fourteenth Doctor’s face. I’m sure this wasn’t intentional but on top of these specials mostly celebrating the Russell era instead of 60 years of Doctor Who, the big reveal as to why the Fourteenth Doctor looks like the Tenth Doctor felt like a massive f**k you to every other Doctor and companion! That explanation being that the Doctor subconsciously wanted to be like his Tenth incarnation again and also subconsciously wanted to find Donna again! Because of all the Doctors and companions in the show’s 60-year history, the two that matter the most deep in the Doctor’s hearts and soul are the two main ones from Russell’s most popular series, f**k off RTD!!! And I’m sure that explains why the Doctor’s clothes regenerated with him!!! And the fact that they don’t even resemble the Tenth Doctor’s outfit!!!

If I’m being honest here, I still can’t decide if I liked this special or not; The Giggle is very well made and performed with some great and striking imagery whilst living up to being this massive epic special with creative, imaginative and even daring ideas. But at the same time, it is Russell T. Davies at his most egotistical, it’s somehow more self-indulgent than The End of Time and to do this for what’s supposed to be Doctor Who’s 60th birthday, whether intentional or not, just rubs me to wrong way. I think The Giggle is just one of those rare episode that is best left for time to decide where this story stands when looking back on Doctor Who’s best or worst.