DOCTOR WHO 60TH ANNIVERSARY SPECIAL # 3 - THE GIGGLE (2023)

 

WARNING  - Even though this review is over a week late it still contains MAJOR SPOILERS....

DIRECTED by Chanya Button

SCREENPLAY by Russel T. Davies 

STARRING  - David Tennant as The Doctor,  Catherine Tate as Donna Noble,  Neil Patrick Harris as The Toymaker,  John Mackay as John Logie Baird,  Charlie de Melo as Charles Banerjee,  Alexander Devrient as Colonel Ibrahim, Bonnie Langford as Melanie Bush, Ruth Madeley as Shirley Anne Bingham,  Jemma Redgrave as Kate Lethbridge-Stewart,  Aiden Cook as The Vlinx (Nicholas Briggs as the Voice of the Vlinx),  Lachele Carl as Trinity Wells, Leigh Lothian as the Voice of Stooky Sue,  Karl Collins as Shaun Temple,  Jacqueline King as Sylvia Noble, Yasmin Finney as Rose Temple-Noble,  Michael Gough as The Celestial Toymaker (flashback), William Hartnell as The Doctor (flashback)...

And Introducing Ncuti Gatwa as The Doctor.

PLOT - 1925 - John Logie Baird is making history by transmitting the very first television image - a moving picture of a ventriloquist's dummy named "Stooky Bill". Little does Baird know though that his assistant acquired the dummy from a sinister and mysterious Toymaker and that his new invention will one day change the world in terrifying ways that even he couldn't begin to imagine...

2023 - The population of planet Earth has been driven insane. A strange giggle transmitted through every screen on the planet has made every human being believe that they are infallibly right about everything (no matter how ridiculous) - entire towns and cities are rioting. Death, destruction and anarchy reigns everywhere.

Only the forces of U.N.I.T. have found a way to fight back but they need help - enter the Doctor and Donna Noble.

Soon, the Doctor finds out that the Toymaker is behind this attack on mankind - the Toymaker is an insane trickster elemental, a force of pure evil that the Doctor once fought and defeated and banished from the universe. However, the Doctor's recent actions at the edge of the universe have unwittingly released the Toymaker and now he's back, looking for revenge on the Doctor and using the human race as his plaything. Has the Doctor finally met his match ?...

DIALOUGE  - The Doctor  - "I'm all "Sonic" and "TARDIS" and "Time Lord". Take that away. Take away the toys. What am I ? What am I now ?"

PERFORMANCES  - David Tennant returns for the final time as the fourteenth Doctor in this his "regeneration" story. Regeneration stories often have a grimmer feel to them than normal Doctor Who stories - unsurprisingly as by thier very nature a regeneration episode marks the end of a Doctor's tenure. That grim "end of an era" atmosphere pervades this story as we prepare to say goodbye to this fascinating old/new incarnation of our favourite time lord.

When I say fascinating I'm not exaggerating either. Tennant's return as an older, wiser and more wearied version of his original Tenth Doctor incarnation has been compelling to watch. A lot of the fun has been in noticing the ways in which the fourteenth Doctor is different to the tenth - for every likeness theres a subtle difference, for every familiar catchphrase and quirk there's a brand new nuance. Never is this more apparent than in this final episode. Here we see the Doctor at his most desparate, his back to the wall, facing an unbeatable foe with the power of a god, the human race that he loves so much being destroyed by its own worst instincts. The Doctor is a broken figure here, filled with self doubt and consumed by guilt, utterly helpless as everything around him falls into chaos. Eventually on the heli-pad of U.N.I.T. H.Q. the Doctor faces down the Toymaker and gets blasted in the chest by a giant laser. The fourteenth Doctor is now a dead man walking and as that familiar glow starts to suffuse his features we just know whats coming next...

...or do we ? More on that later...

Another character making her apparent final appearance is Catherine Tate as Donna. She's just as good as we've come to expect and here we get to see just how important she is to the Doctor. Donna has become the Doctor's emotional support, She's not someone to just explain the plot to or for the Doctor to show off how brilliant he is to. She's much more than that. Donna is his rock, his support mechanism. She's the person that inspires him to keep on going, to carry on fighting even when the odds are looking hopeless...oh and she gets a great scene where she has a fight with a creepy animated dummy. Donna kicks arse.

Onto the villian of the piece- and what a villian he is...Neil Patrick Harris as the Toymaker is an inspired piece of casting. The character is a force of nature. A bored immortal from another universe where the laws of physics went mad. A being that can bend reality itself. A mad god. A creature that thinks nothing of using mortal beings as playthings for his twisted amusement.

From the second Harris appears onscreen he nails this character perfectly. He's sinister, acerbic and literally has a wicked sense of humour. Think Q from Star Trek crossed with the Joker and you'll get the idea. This is a character that simply revels in the anarchy and destruction that he's causing - he's an agent of chaos having the time of his life. You can tell that Harris is enjoying every moment of playing this character. From the constantly changing accent that he speaks in to the darker, colder moments - Harris is relishing this.

The best moment is when the Toymaker attacks U.N.I.T. H.Q. All the while lip syncing and dancing to The Spice Girls "Spice Up Your Life". If this sounds utterly ridiculous then that's probably because it is...but that's the entire point. The Toymaker is camping it up whilst he playfully massacres innocent people - it's literally like someone doing a song and dance routine outside a gas chamber. The scene is both wildly funny and also chilling at the same time. Once again its that line between the camp and the sinister that Doctor Who (when it's done right) does so well. The Toymaker is a great villain. I hope we see more of him in the future.

We get a few returning characters in this story too - Donna's family, Kate Lethbridge-Stewart, Shirley Anne Bingham - but one particular returnee stands out...Bonnie Langford as Melanie Bush. Mel originally appeared in Doctor Who back in the mid 80's initially as companion to Colin Baker's sixth Doctor before going on to travel with Sylvester McCoy's seventh Doctor. 

I never took to Mel at the time - mainly because she took over from Nicola Bryant's Peri (my first major screen crush) as companion. The character was written as a "goody two-shoes" know it all and Langford was very shrill and "stage school" in the way she played Mel. Thankfully Langford is now a lot older and more experienced. She's matured as an actress and toned down her performance by several notches. Modern day Mel is a much more likeable character and I actually enjoyed her in this (it helps that she's a lot better written as well). Langford is set to return in the next series as an ongoing supporting character and I'm actually quite up for that. If you'd have told me that 30 odd years ago I would have laughed in your face...its nice to be proved wrong sometimes.

Right. Back to that regeneration...

Normally when the Doctor regenerates we get a whoosh of bright lights and special effects and there before us is the new actor...the new Doctor. It's something thats happened many times over the past 60 years - the ingenious narrative device that has enabled the show to grow, evolve and survive for as long as it has. We've known since before David Tennant returned for the 60th anniversary that Ncuti Gatwa has been waiting in the wings to take over and here we finally get to see that happen.

The fourteenth Doctor gets shot. He starts to regenerate...only this time he DOESN'T. To coin a phrase what ? What ? WHAT ????

This time the Doctor BI-GENERATES. It seems the laws of reality have been thrown into a state of turmoil by the very presence of the Toymaker being in our universe and now the truly impossible CAN and DOES happen. Instead of changing his face - the Doctor SPLITS INTO TWO SEPARATE BEINGS - The fourteenth Doctor and the fifteenth Doctor existing side by side...

At first they both stand there like a pair of multi-racial co-joined twins before figuring out how to separate themselves. It's a great scene and a truly memorable way for Gatwa to make his enterence.

Straight away Gatwa makes his mark - his Doctor is fun, compassionate and charismatic. He somehow just radiates youth and energy and vitality. This is a Doctor that has truly been renewed in every way.

Due to this quirk of fate we now have two Doctors in residence. To deal with this - the new Doctor suggests that the old Doctor has a period of retirement. A chance to lick his wounds and heal from the trauma of his past few lifetimes. The fourteenth Doctor agrees to this and appears to settle down to a life of picnics and piss ups in Donna's back garden, recounting tales of his past adventures to his new found human family. You could argue that this is R.T.D having his cake and eating it - keeping the ever reliable Tennant on the sidelines in case Gatwa doesn't work out - but I don't think it'll be a problem really...I'm sure Gatwa is going to turn out absolutely fine. If anything we'll probably just see Tennant's Doctor turn up in a few of the new spin-off series which are being talked about from time to time. Whatever ever happens the future looks to be in safe hands.

SFX - Once again the visual effects are to a good standard for a BBC funded sci-fi show, generally CGI but with the odd bit of practical stuff thrown into the mix.

Perhaps the most effective are the Toymaker's human puppets - particularly the one he makes to resemble and mock the Doctor...

They just look wrong. I can imagine a few kids had nightmares after seeing these.

Theres also Stooky Sue and her "Babbies" which attack Donna - wooden ventriloquist dummies come to life...

Then theres the "bigeneration" where the two Doctors split into separate beings...

VIOLENCE  - The implication is that literally THOUSANDS of people are killed during the wave of violence and anarchy that sweeps over the planet (technically this is probably one of the Doctor Who stories with a larger body count than most), all this happens off-camera though.

Donna gets into a fight with killer dummies where she literally knocks Stooky Sue's head off (the Babbies aren't quite so keen to take a bite out of Donna after that).

We get the Toymaker's U.N.I.T.  H.Q. "Spice Girls massacre" where he transforms a pair of soldiers into colourful balls. The rubber balls contain thier screaming faces - the Doctor grimly informs us that they're dead...

The Toymaker then proceeds to throw a bunch of U.N.I.T. staff members off the roof of thier London skyscraper H.Q. (again off-camera). "I think they've still falling" quips the Toymaker.

The fourteenth Doctor gets lazerd through the body causing him to regenerate/bigenerate...

RATING - The Giggle is a great end to the 60th anniversary specials. They definitely saved the best till last. It does everything that a good episode of Doctor Who should do and does it very very well.

It's exciting, funny, grim, dark, creepy and twisted. It acts as the perfect close to the fourteenth Doctor's mini-era and the previous 60 years as a whole and nicely sets up the fifteenth Doctor's bold new era and the future that lies beyond.

5 psychotic immortal gods out of 5.

ART -

Shown below is the cover art for the Target novelisation now available as an e-book and coming out soon for those of us who prefer our books to be made from the corpses of murdured trees (that'll be me then)...