The Giggle

Chapter the 304th, is having a laugh, isn't it?!

Plot:
The Doctor and Donna return to Earth to find everyone driven out of their wits. London is a battle-zone with everyone attacking everyone else, believing only they are in the right. UNIT come along in helicopters and take the Doctor and Donna to their new skyscraper HQ; Mel is working for them now, and is reunited with the Doctor, having travelled back to Earth somehow. When a new satellite network was recently connected up, it started broadcasting a signal that affected people, but UNIT have developed a bracelet that gives the wearer immunity. The Doctor traces the source back to 1925, the first ever television picture captured by John Logie Baird of a vent's doll called Stooky Bill. The Doctor takes Donna back to 1925 and they find the toyshop where the doll was bought, and confront the Toymaker, old foe of the Doctor's. After a bit of roaming around the Toymaker's realm, the Doctor and Toymaker play another game against each other, but the Doctor loses. That makes it 'one all' after the Doctor's defeat of him years before. The Toymaker wants to have the best of three rematch in 2023 and disappears. The Doctor and Donna race back after him to UNIT HQ, where he arrives lip-syncing and dancing to the Spice Girls, and killing people. A big powerful superweapon has been used to destroy the new satellite and cancel the giggle signal, but the Toymaker takes it over and zaps the Doctor, as he believes that the third game must be played against a new Doctor. A rare thing happens, though: bi-regeneration, and instead of changing, the Doctor splits in two. The two Doctors beat the Toymaker at a game of catch, and he is imprisoned in UNIT HQ (bound in salt). The new Doctor manages to duplicate the TARDIS. He goes off for new adventures, while the old Doctor stays on Earth with Mel, Donna and the other Temple-Nobles as his surrogate family.

Context:

On the 4th July 2024, there was a general election in the UK. As mentioned too many times to count in this blog over the years, I am a politics nerd, and will usually stay up into the wee small hours watching news coverage of the results coming in. It was no different this time. On a previous occasion - see here - I watched a Doctor Who when there was a lull (after the exit poll and a couple of initial counts, there's usually a gap before the results come thick and fast). I planned to do the same with The Giggle when it had come up for the blog (a tale about conflict between people who each believe only they are right and everyone else is wrong seemed apt somehow). As it turned out, though, the eldest (young man of 18, who'd voted that day in his first ever election) wanted to join me for the coverage. He wasn't keen on seeing The Giggle again so soon, so instead we watched episodes of political sit-coms The Thick of It and Parks and Recreation. A few days later, The Giggle became the first Doctor Who I watched for the blog under a new Labour government; I watched it alone from the BBC iplayer one evening.

Milestone watch: I've been blogging new and classic Doctor Who stories in random order since 2015, and I'm now closing in on the point where I finish everything and catch up with the current stories being broadcast serially. This post marks the second completion of an entire Doctor's televisual era, that of the fourteenth Doctor (as portrayed by David Tennant) following the recent completion of Paul McGann's eighth Doctor. People may not think this counts, for two reasons. First, the fourteenth Doctor is played by the same actor as the tenth Doctor and so some might lump them together (and I haven't finished blogging the tenth Doctor's stories yet); second, if you separate out the second incarnation played by Tennant, that incarnation only appears in three stories in total, so perhaps referring to it as a "televisual era" is a bit grand. The narrative in those three stories, though, is at pains to define him as different to the previous Doctor, albeit with the same face, so I'm taking it. Two down, thirteen to go...

First Time Round:

Watched with the whole family (Better Half and three kids, two boys and a girl) on its live broadcast on 9th December 2023. The decorations were up in our house, the Christmas playlist was in full swing, and we were starting to get just a little bit festive. The Giggle was the third of a set of three early Christmas gifts for that year. Unfortunately, it marked the end of the season of goodwill for the Better Half and the series. It's one of those unfortunate twists of fate: Ncuti's performance is exactly like a bloke at work that she doesn't get on with, right down to the use of "Honey" and "Babes" when talking to people (which I find harmless, but I can see how it might not go down well with various generations of feminists who'd just about won the battle to get certain older males to stop calling them "Love" and "Darlin'"). There isn't much that can be done; it's just one of those things. She gave it another couple of chances, persevering with the Goblins Xmas story and Space Babies, but has bailed on anything after that.

Reaction:

There's a lot packed in to this story's running time. Russell T Davies writes as someone who knows he's got one of the most (if not the most) popular Doctor actors in David Tennant for only a short and rapidly diminishing time, and doesn't want to waste a second. The pre-credits scene (like that of the previous special) takes us briefly back in time to inject a small amount of historical setting into the trio of specials that are mostly contemporary or spacey. The setting of 1925 and John Logie Baird's first experiments with television is an interesting one, inspired by research Davies did for the series Nolly that he made just before he took up the Doctor Who showrunner gig again, with the same actor John Mackay as Baird. The very first images ever shot on television were of a creepy doll that looks like something out of a scary Doctor Who episode; it's a gift. The moment where the dummy, burning under the lighting required to capture an image, falls forward and its mouth opens is a great jump scare. Once the idea of a puppet villain was in his head, that sparked the idea of a puppet-master that led Davies to the 1960s vintage Who character of the Toymaker. That decision made, there's very little Stooky action required in the episode ultimately, the repeated image of the face is enough. There's also one wonderful scene of Catherine Tate as Donna attacked by dolls, which displays some wonderful marionette work by the behind the scenes puppet-masters and allows Tate to shine. The story keeps moving on to the next thing, though; the horror changes from Chucky to The Purge: the giggle associated with that early TV image is beamed out by a recently completed satellite network to bring out the worst of humankind. Early scenes of carnage as London fights are very effective, and accompanied by a great and giddy score by Murray Gold. Then UNIT helicopters turn up, and we're already on to the next bit.

This fast movement probably takes us whizzing past any worries that some things don't add up on first watch, but upon rewatching they might give us pause: the Toymaker has godlike powers, can turn people into balloons and bullets into flower petals with just a touch; so, why did he need to wait for the launch of some satellite and connection of some network? Maybe we can chalk this up to the Toymaker's sense of fair play. He can only use our own technology to effect this change as this is all about showing humanity itself. This next section allows for some satire (the politician broadcasting how little he cares about the populace - "No change there, then" says Donna sardonically), some fan service (2000s regular cameo newscaster Trinity Wells is back, shame she's the equivalent of an anti-vaxxer in the world of this story), and drama. This last is provided by Jemma Redgrave as the redoubtable Kate Stewart going feral when she turns off her control bracelet and succumbs to the giggle. It is a tour de force, but it makes me feel slightly uneasy: are we really one dose of anger away from becoming reactionary and bigoted? I hope not, but Davies often does like to present the darker side of humans en masse. The Doctor ("Hating each other? You've never needed any help with that.") and the Toymaker ("And then there are the mind games, oh, the dating and ghosting, the deceit and the control") both get very critical of the human race. Not much time to dwell on this further, though, as the Doctor and Donna zip back to 1925. Almost in passing in this section, Davies also manages to introduce some new UNIT characters (The Vlinx! A handsome soldier!) and reintroduce the character of Mel, finally giving Bonnie Langford's character something of a proper backstory too.

Where were we? Our heroes have found the Toymaker. As the villain of the piece, Neil Patrick Harris is never not outrageous, but never not sinister. He does voice work, costume changes, juggling, puppetry, lip-sync and dancing - it's a very demanding role, and he rises to the challenge. There's physicality in the performance, but also control. The confrontation scene of the Doctor and Donna in the 1925 toy shop is sublime: the Doctor works out who he is facing and worries for his companion, but she won't take any crap from the Toymaker or anyone. The cherry on the cake is the moment of memory where we get a couple of brief colourised clips of William Hartnell and Michael Gough from the story of the Doctor's previous run-in with this god-like gamester. The story as a whole is a gang show with a big cast of UNIT regulars, but these moments of Tennant and Tate together, facing off to the baddie, are the ones that I'll really treasure, with some memorable dialogue ("Dice don't know what the dice did last time, games don't have a memory"). There's more fan service when the Toymaker puts on a puppet show to get Donna (and any audience member) up to speed with the Doctor's recent history. It's not long, though, before the plot and our heroes are on the move again. The dialogue even picks up on this break-neck shuttling ("I'm already running" says Donna with exquisite timing as the Toymaker's realm collapses around them). Back to 2023, the Toymaker attacks (accompanied by the Spice Girls' Spice Up Your Life). The giggle plotline is switched off by a great big plot-device / gun, but the Toymaker takes control of it, and shoots the Doctor. We viewers are wrong-footed; we knew that this was coming, but it's too soon - there are still 19 minutes to go, so it can't be time for Tennant to regenerate quite yet, can it?!

The final section gives Davies the chance to play regeneration as a happy ending for the first time. We don't have to mourn the old Doctor because he splits into two: one David Tennant, and one brand-new Ncuti Gatwa version. It's a novel-ish idea (the Doctor splitting into two versions of himself after a regeneration happened in one of the big Tennant stories in his first time around, after all). But it gives a chance for the two Doctors to interact, and what could be more Doctor Who anniversary special than a multi-Doctor story?! The risk is more that Gatwa is going to get overshadowed than Tennant, I feel, but he holds his own with aplomb. I'm not so sure about the decision to split the clothes between the two Doctors such that Gatwa spends the rest of the story running around in his boxer shorts. Gatwa only getting half a costume in his first episode is made up for by him having the most costume changes of any lead actor in his stories thereafter, I suppose. The Doctors challenge the Toymaker to a game of catch in a well-shot sequence. They defeat the bad guy, split the TARDIS into two (ridiculous of course, but fun) and then the pace slows down to explain why things have been so hectic up to now. This is the Tennant Doctor's chance to retire. He's been rushing around and wearing himself (and herself before that) out, and he needs to stop. There's an interesting idea buried in here that he must have been successful in this, because the Gatwa version is so well adjusted (having done "rehab out of order"). There's also a bizarre section where lots of significant and not so significant moments in the Doctor's history are namechecked (Mavic Chen was a puzzling choice of foe to come to the Doctor's mind at this moment). The Doctor is able to settle down with a family of sorts, the Temple-Nobles, Wilf and Mel, while Ncuti goes off into the Space-Time vortex to new adventures (accompanied by Gold's boisterous and wonderful theme for the fifteen Doctor).

Tennant's last line "I've never been so happy in my life" shouldn't leave a dry eye in the house. The set-up presents problems for the future, though, as every time Ncuti goes back to UNIT HQ in contemporary London, Tennant is out there somewhere and there's no logical reason why he shouldn't be called in to help out. This goes double for Tate who we see during The Giggle haggling for a job at UNIT (in a very funny scene). There's a few other minor blemishes: they make the best of it that they can, but it's very obvious that Bernard Cribbins isn't in the episode; he sadly passed away after filming the scene for Wild Blue Yonder; it's nice to get a reference to Sabalom Glitz in 21st century Who, but if he dies aged over 100, then how old is Mel supposed to be now? It seems odd to make a thing of the TARDIS finally being wheelchair accessible but then not letting Shirley go in. Donna's line asking the post bi-regeneration Doctors if they come in "a range of colours" feels like a microaggression to me, and should have been cut. The negatives are a small fraction compared to all the good stuff crammed in there, though.

Connectivity:

Both The Giggle and The Night of the Doctor were special Doctor Who episodes shown in an anniversary year that ended in a regeneration that was a bit unusual compared to the established norms of the process (bi-regeneration, or guided regeneration using the Sisterhood of Karn's potions).

Deeper Thoughts:

The Duckpond Factor. Serial TV drama, where sequences can get written and rewritten at a fast speed, and editing can leave scenes or lines on the cutting room hard-drive (the modern equivalent of the cutting room floor), will often contain the odd moment that accidentally or expediently doesn't get a clear explanation. Serial TV drama, particularly genre fare such as Doctor Who, increasingly is structured with arc plots that run over the course of one or more seasons, so will often contain moments without a clear explanation where that explanation is being deliberately withheld to pay off in future. For the viewer, and the amateur reviewer like what I am, this presents the challenge of knowing how to tell the difference. What looks like a plot hole might not be a plot hole, it might be something that's going to be covered in an episode's time, or a season's time, or many years into the future. Does one give a story the benefit of the doubt or not? Steven Moffat, showrunner of Doctor Who for most of the 2010s, presented the most difficulties in this regard; he clearly had a long-term plan that played out for the three seasons and specials starring Matt Smith, with questions being raised and answered throughout that time, right up until Smith bowed out in The Time of the Doctor. But he also left loose ends, like any writer. For all those years, certain fans were waiting for an explanation of a comment in the very first story of Moffat's tenure The Eleventh Hour, where the Doctor queries new friend Amy about why there are no ducks in her home town's duckpond. It could have just been a line of dialogue not meant to have any significance, it could have had a scripted explanation that later was cut, or it could have been meant to be left to the audience member's imagination (a popular theory is that the ducks - like Amy's parents - have been sucked out of existence through the crack in time in Amy's childhood bedroom; likely correct, but never confirmed).

When presented with moments in current episodes that have the 'duckpond factor', and knowing that there's at least another season of Doctor Who in the can that could furnish more information about what we've seen thus far, what is one to assume? And what about the extra complicating factor of recent Who embracing the supernatural in its storytelling (something that of course was thoroughly rationalised in the text of the show)? In a story like 73 Yards, for example, one isn't intended to ever fully understand everything that's going on, so it's even harder to know what one should worry about. Of course, some fans worry about everything, and maybe let that leads them to some unnecessary negativity. In an interview in July 2024, showrunner Russell T Davies mentioned that he will likely never reveal why Anita Dobson's recurring character from Ncuti's first run episodes Mrs. Flood keeps breaking the fourth wall, looking right down the camera and seemingly addressing the audience directly. He says: "That hasn’t been explained, and it might never be, frankly... It’s very interesting, within the Doctor Who offices, we know exactly why that happens and yet I’m showing no sign of putting that on screen." This has got a lot of people online hot under the collar, and I can't understand why. He doesn't say that he won't explain who Mrs. Flood is, only that he might not explain why she sometimes acts as a Greek Chorus. Steven Moffat was quick to defend Davies on twitter, explaining that it's something that has happened in Doctor Who consistently through its history (and of course in many a drama or comedy going right back to the ancient Greeks).

Once we know Flood's true nature, we will probably quite easily be able to join the dots for ourselves. In the same interview, and receiving the same online opprobrium, Davies explained that there had originally been a line in The Devil's Chord, explaining how some temporal feedback or similar phenomenon caused the big song and dance number to happen at the end of the story. The explanation was even shot, but they cut it as it was "boring". He speculates that the scene "probably would have made a lot of people happy", but I think he's wrong. If you don't like the song and dance at the end, you'd probably still dislike it even with a one-line fig-leaf to explain it; if you do like it, and you have any kind of imagination at all, you'll almost certainly have done your own mental housekeeping and assumed your own explanation along the lines of what was cut (as I did myself in my blog post for the story, written long before Davies's interview). At least he's explained it in an interview: it's more than the duckpond conspiracists got. The Giggle sees the fourteenth Doctor bow out without a definitive in-universe explanation for why his clothes changed when he regenerated from Jodie Whittaker; nobody seems as bothered by that, or any of the numerous loose ends throughout Who's history. Mind you, the story also contains the wonderful line from the Toymaker to the Doctor "I made a jigsaw out of your history" which could be used to explain literally anything that's happened before or since. Will this make Doctor Who fans satisfied? Probably not. Many fans complained that the other 21st century Doctor Who showrunner Chris Chibnall's stories were over-explanatory. It's almost as if the Doctor Who showrunner job is an impossible one where you can't please people!

In Summary:

Well, that's alright then! (In fact, it was better than alright, it was very good.)