60th Anniversary Specials #3:
--- "The Giggle" by Russell T. Davies

Look, I know change is good but I thought we established that f**king with the established lore and the Doctor's character was a no-go. I went into this knowing the leaks with this false sense that whatever happens happens and it couldn't possibly be more dumb than before, that I could just sit back and enjoy it. Whilst, no, this certainly isn't as idiotic or as damaging as the Timeless Child, Doctor Who as it was is gone now and that's kind of sad. The show might as well have been cancelled after Series 10 and renewed completely because ever since Jodie Whitaker fell out of the TARDIS, the show fell off the rails.

Returning to an Earth maddened by a mysterious puppet's giggle, the Doctor and Donna team up with UNIT and an old friend to defend against a foe that the Doctor thought he had once defeated, a foe in love with games. The Toymaker is back, and nothing can stop him...

(CONTAINS SPOLERS)

... (expect a game of catch).

It was going so good until the final confrontation. The Toymaker was an, if melodramatic, fine antagonist played pretty well by Neil Patrick Harris, though the fake accent was pretty grating. All the bits in the toyshop, the Doctor's sheer fear after seeing the Toymaker, the eeriness of the puppet's giggle were all great setup for a decent story, but then it began to lose me. I'll get onto that later but for other positives I liked tat UNIT felt interesting again and Mel was a friendly face; though she's a companion I'm personally not particularly fond of, it's always nice to see old companions done right. And though all the world ending was the background to one room in UNIT, it felt somewhat high stakes at times and the Toymaker felt relatively threatening. The Toymaker has a big, taunting dance number pretty similar to that god awful Rasputin bit from Power of the Doctor but why I think it works more here is that it's used by the Toymaker to mess with everyone in the room, setting him up to be a pretty formidable foe, whereas the Master's thing was just Chibnall going "wow, look how quirky and insane my character is!".

However, the ending happened, and it tanked the entire episode in my opinion. I knew what was going to happen, I knew about the bigeneration and still I found it so, very, very dumb. How is something that new and massive and weird just shrugged off like "Oh yeah, that can happen". I guess in the miracle world of RTD, an entirely new aspect of a very well known species can just appear when the plot calls for it. Why not turn that into a mystery for the next season? Ask, why did that happen? Was someone behind it? They're setting up some sort of new villain so why not tie it in, create a question to answer for, not just a disinterested shrug. Make it sort of like the Doctor getting 10's face back. Oh, and that's another thing, he got his old face back because he wanted to, what, settle down? That might be the worst explanation I have heard for anything in this show. I know characters change but this just feels like it's forgetting the Doctor's 60 years of characterisation. Imagine 12 doing this, or 9, or 4, or 2, or 7, or literally any pre-Whitaker incarnation. It does not compute and it makes no sense. And they didn't even explain why his f**king clothes regenerated! I know that doesn't matter but it really confuses me. And the day is saved by a god damned game of catch. No outwitting, no clever trickery, just a classic RTD Deus ex Machina and a ball. It could've been done well but it just ends up being a poorly directed sequence of throws with no flow between them; I am never convinced these shots weren't all taken minutes apart. The Toymaker, who had been so well set up to be this omnipotent, undefeatable and terrifying foe, is turned into a joke so the episode may wrap up.

Wild Blue Yonder gave me some false hope and this episode went and tore it down again. I'd give it a lower score if it didn't start out so well, it's really just the last 20 minutes that horrendously dropped the ball (heh). What we need is a reset and definitely not one like what they're doing. We need to go back to the classic Doctor Who formula, with the classic character and the classic tone the show had always had. It may sound like I'm living in the past but if it ain't broke, you absolutely should not need to fix it.

5/10

Pros:
+ First two thirds were good, solid TV
+ The Toymaker was a pretty good and threatening villain, if a little over the top
+ UNIT felt like a useful, real organisation
+ Mel's return was nice and her character was written pretty well
+ Ruth Madeley is an actual part in the story, not just a dumping ground for exposition
+ The Toymaker's little, taunting dance number actually felt like a pretty cool moment
+ The episode making fun of transphobes and Tories complaining about Doctor Who on twitter was actually pretty funny
+ Donna punting a ventriloquist dummy was really f**king funny

Cons:
- An ending so bad it ruined the rest of the episode for me
- Bigeneration is just shrugged off as a thing that can happen, despite the fact it makes no sense logically and was incredibly convenient
- The final confrontation with the Toymaker turns him into a joke
- Constantly making up rules to service the plot
- Ending completely goes against the Doctor's literal decades of characterisation
- The CGI can go from kind of uncanny to downright god awful between scenes
- Not one single character seems to have any questions about the insanity that just happened and it really annoys me when the characters don't, you know, act like human beings and react to things appropriately
- I don't even know what to put for my Wilf bit