The Giggle

I'm a little all over the place on The Giggle. On the one hand, there is an awful lot to like.

The cast is pretty wonderful here. Mel and Kate were great as returning talent, while Neil Patrick Harris was pretty excellent as the Toymaker. Very Count Olaf from his Lemony Snickett days, which largely worked for me. There are a lot of fun ideas and set pieces throughout the episode. A particular highlight for me was the Spice Girls bit. Sure it was a bit tacky and even some of the acting around it was a little stiff, but overall I just loved how the Toymaker was clearly having a blast being silly while also murdering guards and turning bullets into rose petals. It felt very appropriate for a villain we've only really ever gotten brief tastes of over the years across the franchise. In a lot of ways, The Giggle is a pure representation of the power often alluded to, but rarely seen in past appearances of the Toymaker.

On the other hand, as well as he is built up and used in scenes like the Spice Girls bit, his actual games with the Doctor feel really weak. I've seen some reviews liked the game of catch, but it seemed so awkward to me. Not once do we ever see Gatwa, Tennant, or Harris actually throwing a ball to each other, it is entirely done through these obvious cuts and shots where clearly a producer is just throwing a ball at each of the actors individually. It was not very impressive or engaging, and if the whole thing with the Toymaker is that he is playing games with the Doctor, well, these games were awfully anti-climactic and underwhelming.

The bi-regeneration is certainly something people will complain about for all time, but it makes a lot of sense to me. Having back-to-back years where two consecutive incarnations of the Doctor are blasted by a space laser and forced to regenerate at the hands of a quirky but musical madman would have been unnecessary and repetitive. Especially from an emotional standpoint, I think it was very good of RTD to aim for a different, more celebratory ending, otherwise it would have felt just like the Power of the Doctor. Let Ten heal a bit and have some unburdening of all his baggage - it certainly felt like good payoff to some of the trauma we saw in Wild Blue Yonder. Leave some space for Big Finish. Why not? The franchise has done a lot worse, and as others have pointed out, it leaves interesting room for other bits of continuity in the future or as RTD has stated, room for the other incarnations to have further adventures free of continuity sticklers.

Gatwa was pretty great as the new doctor here and that is only firmed up more in The Church on Ruby Road. Overall, it sure feels to me like Doctor Who is in good hands, even if the Giggle was far from perfect.

Doctor Who: The 60th Anniversary Specials n.3 

So, here we are, the final Special. And it was amazing. I found rather dull the Toymaker's debut serial when I watched it last summer (but the fact it was a lost one may have influenced my judgement), but here he's incredible! So manic, hilarious and creepy, his reveal scene with Michael Gough's Toymaker and Hartnell glitching along with the children's choir was awesome. Of course, the Toymaker's attack at UNIT Tower was hilarious. Villains dancing on pop music, my favourite running gag.

Despite the controversy, I actually like the bigeneration twist. I was feeling so sad, since it was the first regeneration I saw on broadcast and then...Poof, the Fifteenth Doctor is here and so is Fourteen.

In the end, it was a nice conclusion, at the last the Doctor can catch a break.

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