Who Review: The Giggle

The world is in chaos. Everyone is out for themselves. Violence and terror are everywhere, and a desperate Wilf Mott pleads with the Doctor to help. As the Doctor and Donna try to make sense of what’s going on, a UNIT team swoops in and takes them and the TARDIS to UNIT headquarters. There, Kate Lethbridge-Stewart tells them about a strange phenomenon she and her scientists (a team that now includes Sixth and Seventh Doctor companion Melanie Bush) have discovered to be at the heart of the strange behavior. It seems there’s a wave pattern inside everyone’s head that has been triggered, causing people to speak and act in ways that are grossly selfish, hateful, and intolerant. But as the Doctor and Donna discover, this wave pattern is not just a wave pattern that has always been there. It’s a tune that has been implanted into human brains since the invention of television. This takes the Doctor and Donna on an adventure back to Soho 1925, a toymaker’s shop, and an encounter with an old but formidable foe…

SPOILER ALERT!! My comments may (and likely will) contain spoilers for those who haven’t seen the episode. If you want to stay spoiler-free, please watch the story before you continue reading!

The last of the three 60th anniversary specials pits the Doctor against his old adversary, The Celestial Toymaker, though he is now just referred to as “The Toymaker” due, I understand, to some bad connotations the term “celestial” has picked up since his last appearance in 1966. And also “The Celestial Toymaker” is a bit of a mouthful. The Toymaker sells John Logie Baird the puppet he uses for his first experiment in television, but it is no ordinary puppet. Somehow the Toymaker has given the puppet a “giggle”–a seven note arpeggio–that it sings mockingly during that first broadcast, sending the tune into the airwaves, and from that point on infecting every transmission, even digital transmission. This means every person who has ever sat in front of a screen since 1925 has been infected by this “giggle” which has lain dormant waiting for the moment when the Toymaker would trigger its destructive mental payload. The Doctor is immune to the giggle since he’s not human, and his companions appear to be immune due to their traveling in time and space. Everyone else in UNIT wears a special device that blocks the wave pattern.

Given the seemingly unlimited power of the Toymaker and the fact the only rules he respects are game rules, the only way to defeat him is by playing games. In their first encounter, the Doctor outwitted him with a trilogic puzzle. This time around, they play a simple “cut the deck” game. The Doctor loses this but he reminds the Toymaker that this was, in fact, their second game together. They are now drawn. There will need to be a third game to decide the winner. For this final game, the Toymaker chooses a game of “catch” on the landing dock of UNIT headquarters, where there also happens to be a gun that emits a highly powerful and destructive galvanic beam. The Toymaker has so far played two games with two different Doctors and now wants to play the third game with a new Doctor. He aims the beam at the Doctor and shoots, triggering his regeneration. To his shock, and everyone else’s, the regeneration turns into a bigeneration. Instead of turning into the new Doctor, the new Doctor emerges from the Fourteenth Doctor. There are now two Doctors facing off against the Toymaker. The Toymaker cries foul, but the Doctor says that this is because of him. Bigeneration is a Time Lord myth, and myth becoming reality is the kind of thing that happens around the Toymaker. That and a thing the Doctor did with salt at the edge of time in the last story are explanations as to why this happened. In any case, the two Doctors play catch with the Toymaker, the Toymaker loses and is condemned to non-existence. Before he goes, he warns that his legions are coming.

Some Positive Points

Overall, I think the basic story is solid. In their first encounter, the Doctor, Steven, and Dodo confronted the Toymaker and his minions in the Toymaker’s realm to stop him from destroying reality. Here, the Toymaker has come to Earth with the more specific goal of destroying humanity from within. The idea of using ubiquitous technology as a vehicle for some type of control signal is not new to Who. Cybus Industries used Bluetooth phones in “Rise of the Cybermen” to manipulate behavior, and WOTAN used telephones in “The War Machines.” That the Toymaker would play with humanity and the worst of its traits–or its traits taken to their worst extreme such as competitiveness, anger, and selfishness–fits with his character. This sets up the stakes of the story and gives the Doctor a natural investment in the Toymaker’s defeat.

On the whole, the acting is good. Neil Patrick Harris as the Toymaker was an inspired piece of casting, and he doesn’t disappoint. Even Mel’s portrayal is more grounded and believable than it was back in the 80s. Bonnie Langford was a seasoned actress back then, but perhaps the higher production standards and better material help to bring out the best in her skills. Speaking of the production standards, visually Doctor Who has never looked more “Hollywood” than this, again showing what the infusion of Disney dollars can do. There is a certain “Marvel” look to the show which is both good and bad. On the good side, it means that a lot of kids who are used to a high standard when it comes to visual effects won’t be put off. On the bad side, it takes away from the charm and uniqueness of Doctor Who, turning it into just another Disney franchise. There is also a danger, perhaps realized to some extent, that aesthetics will overshadow substance; good storytelling will take a back seat to visual appeal.

I appreciated the subtle mention at the very beginning that for the Toymaker, the only rules that matter are the rules of the game. We are reminded of this later when the Doctor challenges the Toymaker to a game of “split the deck.” Donna objects that the Toymaker will cheat. The Doctor responds that there’s no fear of that since the Toymaker is always bound by the rules of the game. We shouldn’t be surprised, therefore, when in the end, despite his extreme power, the Toymaker must accept the consequences of defeat. I also appreciate that for much of the story, Russell T. Davies toned down a lot of the “wokey” preaching that destroyed the first of these specials. It goes to show that if you stop overtly pandering to minority groups and let your diversity be organic and natural as the story dictates, you can do some good work.

Speaking of the Toymaker, and moving on to things that I didn’t like, why did RTD think it would be a good idea to make the Toymaker essentially the John Simm Master from 2007? I’m getting a little tired of the maniac supervillain trope, especially when the original vision for the character was quite the opposite. The original Toymaker’s playfulness was expressed through his toys. He didn’t need to do a song and dance, he would have his toy soldiers and dolls do that kind of thing. He was the puppetmaster pulling the strings. I get that this kind of campy villain is perhaps what one might expect from Neil Patrick Harris, and, as I said, he played the part well. However, credit him with having a bit more range than that. A more brooding, menacing presence would have been better. Instead, we got a caricature of the Joker from Batman.

Bigeneration?

A lot of the criticisms of this episode have been directed toward the ending, and rightly so, in my opinion. Some have objected to the way “bigeneration” was introduced as “Time Lord mythology” even though in 60 years this was the first anyone had heard of it. I don’t have as much of a problem with that. We should be used to Time Lord lore being thrown in as a plot device. The idea that Time Lords only regenerate twelve times was a plot device Robert Holmes introduced in 1976 to give the Master motivation for trying to steal the sash, rod, and underwear of Rassilon. Okay, maybe not the underwear. In fact the whole Rassilon lore, the Eye of Harmony–all that stuff was introduced in that story, “The Deadly Assassin.” It didn’t exist before then, and now it’s part of the Doctor Who furniture. This is the kind of power you wield when you are showrunner. I didn’t like the whole “Timeless Child” retcon that Chibnall did, and I still don’t like it. However, as I said at the time, I wasn’t chosen to be the showrunner so like it or not, that’s now part of Doctor Who lore no matter how little sense it makes.

The same applies to “bigeneration.” I don’t object to RTD’s right to create new lore, I just wished it wasn’t as silly as this. For a start you have the legitimate question of what this means for these Doctors? It used to be verboten for Time Lords to co-exist with their own previous incarnations in the same timeline. It took an emergency situation for the Time Lords to suspend that rule in “The Three Doctors.” Granted, this situation with the Toymaker was an unusual circumstance, but would there not be cosmic consequences? Some kind of paradox? It may have made for a more interesting finale to have the fabric of the universe start to unravel after defeating the Toymaker, and the only way to resolve it is for one of the Doctors to cease to exist. What we get instead is this lame justification for the reappearance of David Tennant’s face: the Doctor needs a vacation. He needs to rest, to stop and smell the flowers and enjoy life–take a mental health holiday, if you will. Essentially, this Doctor returned so he could reconnect with Donna, resolve the metacrisis, and then go spend time with her family, leaving the new Doctor to travel the universe.

Unintentional Bad Optics

So we now have two Doctors rattling around the universe in the same timeline, each with their own TARDIS (we’ll get back to that). Sure, it allows for a “Doctor-Donna Adventures” spin-off (as I’m sure will happen), but I’m not sure they thought about how this undermines the new Doctor. Sure, the Fifteenth Doctor is now the Doctor… but so is the Fourteenth. So Fifteen is co-Doctor with Fourteen? When UNIT needs the Doctor, who do they call? The new guy, or the familiar guy? If one Doctor gets into trouble, can he now just telepathically summon the other Doctor for help? I know Fourteen is supposed to be taking a break, but why give him a TARDIS if there is no intention of him traveling?

One of the pitfalls of wokeism is its lack of self-awareness. Those who purport to be champions of the minority and allies of the disenfranchised often do more harm to the cause through virtue signaling. While RTD had the best of intentions casting a young black gay man to play the new Doctor, how does it now look that the first black male Doctor is also the first Doctor to be a Doctor, not the Doctor? There has been criticism that RTD is trying to placate fans who might struggle with the idea of a black Doctor, and if that’s the case, that’s just BS (baloney sausage). Most Who fans have fewer issues with a black Doctor than a female Doctor (I note that Idris Elba has long been a fan favorite for the role). When Fifteen comforts Fourteen and tells him “I’ve got you,” I’m reminded of Capaldi’s first story, where Eleven calls Clara at the end to tell her it’s okay that he looks like an old man now, as if fans would have a hard time accepting that. What it betrays is a low opinion of the fans. I think I speak for many Who fans when I say that we would have been just fine with a straightforward regeneration to Ncuti, just as we were looking forward to what Capaldi would bring to the role.

And what about that second TARDIS? Fifteen gets a large mallet, bashes the side of the TARDIS and another TARDIS pops out. Apparently, the atmosphere is still heavy with the Toymaker’s influence… or something. Whatever. Fourteen needs a TARDIS so here’s a quick solution to that. Not only does the TARDIS now have a jukebox, but… ta daaa! It’s now wheelchair accessible! Fifteen flips down a flap on the step and pulls out a ramp. Two things about this show what an awful piece of virtue-signaling it is:

1. The TARDIS has always been accessible to those whose motion is confined to wheels. How else was K-9 able to get in and out of the TARDIS? Wheelchair accessibility has never been an issue, not because no one cared, but because it was assumed.
2. How is a person in a wheelchair supposed to bend down and pull out the ramp? Someone in a wheelchair would need an able-bodied person to help them get into the TARDIS. Why not make the ramp remote-controlled? Or better, since the TARDIS is sentient, why not point out that the TARDIS can detect when someone on wheels needs to enter and accommodate them appropriately? But that wouldn’t have been as visually striking, or virtue-signally. Aesthetics over substance.

Wilf

One final criticism: Why did they not allow Wilf to die? As you probably know, Bernard Cribbins died not long after he filmed the scene at the end of “Wild Blue Yonder.” He was in his 90s, as was the character he played. Fourteen’s presence with the Noble family to help them grieve and mourn Wilf’s passing would have been appropriate and touching. The outdoor meal scene could have included a picture of Wilf at the table, with conversation that discussed the funeral, the moving speech the Doctor gave, and how much everyone misses him. Not only would that have been a lovely send-off for Wilf, but it would have honored the memory of a much-loved actor. I hope they haven’t kept Wilf alive so they could bring him back in some horrific CGI incarnation (not that Disney would do such a thing *cough* Leia *cough*).

I think that hits the main points for me. I have other concerns, but I’ll let those simmer for now. Let’s see what happens in the Christmas story, Fifteen’s first full adventure. In short, this was a good story with a lot of fundamental problems, mostly to do with the motives and intentions that guided its telling. I have to say, I’m not confident that things will get better for the show. RTD is already filming Ncuti’s second season, so the tone and values behind the show are not going to change for the next couple of years. And RTD has already indicated on social media that he doesn’t care what the critics think–he’s right and the naysayers are just bigots or racists or homophobes. That makes me sad because I had high regard for him as a writer and showrunner. He’s better than this.

Did you watch “The Giggle”? What did you think? Feel free to offer your respectful thoughts in the comments below!