Doctor Who: The Giggle (2023) – A Fantastic (for now) Collision of Past, Present and Future (Review)

After a short but sweet run of 60th anniversary specials, the era of the Fourteenth Doctor is over and Ncuti Gatwa is now officially the iconic Time Lord, though this handover process hasn’t happened in the usual way. We will get to this in due course, never fear, because there is a lot to unpack in The Giggle, but I will say that if I was forced to choose a favourite of these three specials, it would be this one. I admit this is a brave statement, since at the time of writing If The Star Beast and Wild Blue Yonder were compartmentalising Doctor Who’s penchant for bombastic teatime entertainment and freaky abstract ideas into two separate episodes, The Giggle does what I love even more – both of those at the same time.

Despite being the same length as the preceding two episodes, The Giggle has a lot to do. We have to introduce and then resolve the Toymaker storyline, give Fourteen and Donna appropriate goodbyes, give Ncuti a suitable introduction, incorporate UNIT into the story as well as a returning appearance from 1980s companion Mel, played by Bonnie Langford. Even for an hour-long episode, that’s a lot of things to get done, and it could’ve led to disaster – overstuffed narratives were a major flaw of the Chibnall era. Luckily, Russell does not waste time. He gives us easily the best cold open of this trilogy of episodes, giving us a great first impression of Neil Patrick Harris chewing up as much of the scenery as he can, and setting up just one of the many elements at play in The Giggle as the Toymaker embeds himself in all of television and media.

As my previous reviews of Netflix’s A Series Of Unfortunate Events will illustrate, I have an affection for Neil Patrick Harris playing over-the-top and camp villains, and his Toymaker oozes camp with every single line and action. Every set piece with him was great, with the juggling at the start, the freaky as hell dolls, and his puppet show of companion deaths being wonderfully creepy. There’s not a moment here where NPH isn’t hamming it up to the nth degree, and it’s all the better for it.

I can’t not mention the scene where he infiltrates UNIT headquarters dancing to Spice Up Your Life, turning bullets into roses and soldiers into big balls, and tangoing with Jemma Redgrave and Bonnie Langford. It’s one of the most extravagant sequences the show’s done in recent memory, but it’s deliriously entertaining and astonishingly well-directed. Director Chanya Button has a lot of things to accomplish here, but there’s some fantastic shots throughout and she makes a jam-packed episode a much less cumbersome episode than it could’ve been.

One of the very few things that angry far-right reactionaries correctly predicted with this new Russell T. Davies era is that it would still be, for the want of a better word, “woke.” And The Giggle proves this in dividends. Of course these people are inherently wrong since Russell has always had his finger on the political pulse (and the fact this still needs to be addressed is very sad), but so far this side to him hasn’t been displayed too much. Yes we had all the pro-trans stuff in The Star Beast, but that was bound to happen since we were focusing so much on Donna’s daughter Rose.

However, The Giggle basically addresses all the conspiracies and hysteria that have been going on ever since Brexit. There’s digs at anti-vaxxers, people who are anti-immigration, and a brilliant quick dig at the UK government when we see the in-universe prime minister responding brashly to a journalist’s questions. This could be classed as out of date, since the prime minister Russell is obviously satirising here is Boris Johnson who thankfully got kicked out a year and a half ago, but remember that these episodes were written and filmed while Boris was still clinging on, and also that the other aspects Russell is touching upon (mass hysteria, social disorder, bigotry) are very much still present.

Russell also knows not to let this political undercurrent overpower any of the other elements this episode is juggling, most notably concluding the story of the Fourteenth Doctor and Donna Noble, and introducing Ncuti Gatwa as the Fifteenth Doctor.

Bloody hell, here we go.

Some of the big mysteries we’ve had ever since Jodie regenerated into David Tennant is, why has the Doctor got this face back? Is it part of the Toymaker’s influence? How will Ncuti come in to the fold? Well, now we have all those answers – kind of.

In the first instance of such in the show’s long history, the Doctor bi-generated. The Toymaker shoots the Fourteenth Doctor so he can play a third game with another Doctor, and just as Fourteen accepts his fate and begins regenerating, it stops. He feels a strange sensation, asks Donna and Mel to pull him, and in a strange but wonderful moment, the new Fifteenth Doctor is yanked out of him, and for the first time ever, the preceding Doctor co-exists with the new one, and beats the Toymaker in a game of catch.

I don’t care about this canon shift at all. Like, at all, I could not give less of a toss about this for the moment. In recent years, we’ve seen the Doctor’s Gallifreyan origins entirely uprooted with the reveal of the Timeless Child, the return of Gallifrey after a decade followed by its destruction again just five years later, and the Master using a bunch of technobabble to force a regeneration from him into the Doctor. Canon has been shifted so much in recent years that I’m completely and utterly apathetic to people tinkering around with it – to a certain extent. Teases by Russell of all previous regenerations working on this level, so that all of the other incarnations still live on and grow old, do worry me for how they could potentially undo character arcs, assuming that he does not have a multiversal plan in mind.

At the moment this is all useless conjecture since we have no idea where this is going. And as it stands, I found the last act of this episode a lot of fun. Ncuti Gatwa is instantly brilliant with bags of charisma and emotion, and I had a smile on my face every time he was on screen. People may moan that Gatwa got overshadowed by Tennant, but on the contrary, I think Ncuti’s moments of consoling Tennant and persuading him to settle down show that he has authority and, more importantly, that he is unmistakably the Doctor. We also have a rough roadmap of where Ncuti’s era may go now – this new UNIT team, the Meep’s “boss”, the Toymaker’s “legions.” These specials weren’t just a victory lap, they’re also laying the foundations for the new track and I find these really intriguing.

I also think the way that Fourteen’s story has ended is satisfying too. However, I also think that this marks an end to the Doctor’s story altogether. Since another Doctor has spawned from this unusual regeneration, it gives this Doctor a chance to fully settle down, something that he’s secretly always wanted. Finally, the Doctor is allowed to rest, knowing that this new Doctor is doing the work for him and he can enjoy all the pleasures of life with the Nobles. It very much feels like an ending to the New Who era of the show that Russell was discussing, and now that we’re resetting the season count with Ncuti, the Doctor can start afresh after recovering from the trauma they went through.

The Giggle is definitely a lot. It’s dark, it’s celebratory, it’s bonkers, it’s emotional, and oh so Russell T Davies. The Giggle may also do some things that can prove controversial and canon-reshaping, but since we don’t know where any of these things will go, we cannot moan about them right now. So, here’s me putting my cards on the table – at this current time, in December 2023, I really enjoyed all these specials and I am really optimistic about the future of my favourite show of all time. Bring on Christmas, bring on the Fifteenth Doctor and Ruby Sunday, and bring on the next 60 years.

Alex’s Archive: Dr Who – The Giggle (2023)