GALLERY
CAST
Regular Cast
David Tennant (The Doctor), Catherine Tate (Donna Noble)
Guest Cast
Neil Patrick Harris (The Toymaker), Charlie de Melo (Charles Banerjee), Jemma Redgrave (Kate Stewart), Ruth Madeley (Shirley Anne Bingham), John Mackay (John Logie Baird), Bonnie Langford (Melanie Bush), Ncuti Gatwa (The Doctor), Glen Fox (Pilot), Tim Hudson (Edward Lawn Bridges), Aidan Cook (The Vlinx), Nicholas Briggs (Voice of the Vlinx), Lachele Carl (Trinity Wells), Leigh Lothian (Voice of Stooky Sue), Luke Featherston (The Toymaker Dance Double), Karl Collins (Shaun Temple), Jacqueline King (Sylvia Noble), Yasmin Finney (Rose Noble)
CREW
| Written by | Russell T Davies |
| Directed by | Chanya Button |
| Produced by | Vicki Delow |
SYPNOSIS
The giggle of a mysterious puppet is driving the human race insane. When The Doctor discovers the return of the terrifying Toymaker, he faces a fight he can never win
PLOT
In Soho, 1925, Charles Banerjee enters a toy store to purchase a Stooky Bill doll for his employer. His employer, John Logie Baird, needs a test subject for the first few shots of his newest invention. The pair place the dummy’s head under the bright lights and begin the test – the first ever television recording. Back in London, 2023, there’s chaos everywhere, rioting in the streets, people insisting that they’re right, all the time, and attempting to argue with them drives them into a rage. UNIT arrives on the scene and takes The Doctor and Donna to UNIT HQ where they’re united with Shirley Anne Bingham, Kate Stewart, and Melanie Bush, all inoculated to the goings on due to a small armband created by UNIT. When these armbands are de-activated, a distortion becomes present in their normal brain activity – a waveform that wasn’t there previously. Upon analyzing the waveform and playing it as a sound, they find that it corresponds to laughter, laughter that accompanies the first recording of Stooky Bill which has been hidden in every screen ever since, waiting until two says ago, when the launch of the KOSAT 5 satellite finally gave the whole of the human race access to the internet.
The Doctor and Donna trek back to 1925, searching for the cause of madness sweeping humanity, and trace Stooky Bill to the toy store, entering it and encountering the Toymaker. He recognises his old foe, let into the world due to his invocation of a superstition – a line of salt – at the edge of the universe, and chases after him, telling Donna to return to the TARDIS. Donna doesn’t, and the two become trapped in the Toymaker’s funhouse labyrinth. The two become separated and have to stumble their way around. The Doctor encounters Charles Banerjee, turned into a marionette for losing a game to remove the giggle in his head, forced to dance on command as the Toymaker wills. Donna encounters living dolls, the family of Stooky Bill, and breaks them as they try to eat her.
The two reunite as they find themselves the guests of honor at the Toymaker’s puppet show, an attempt to recount The Doctor’s adventures since leaving Donna for her. The deaths of Amy Pond, Clara Oswald, and Bill Potts. As each are mentioned, The Doctor objects, none of them died under his care, all lived on in some form or fashion. The Toymaker is dismissive and treats the nitpicking with contempt, bringing up the Flux, and how it was killing everything under the watch of the Doctor. The Doctor, unable to take more, challenges him to a game. As they set up the game, the Toymaker brags about the fun he’s had since arriving in the universe, defeating God and turning him into a Jack-in-the-Box, making a jigsaw out of the Doctor’s history, being The Master’s last hope of life, and sealing him inside a gold tooth when he lost. The two decide on a game to play, a simple cut of the deck, high card wins. The Doctor turns over an eight. The Toymaker, a king. As the Toymaker goes to claim his prize, The Doctor points out that long ago he was the one that won their game. So the two are tied, and the rules of games dictate that it must be best of 3. The Toymaker agrees, best of 2023, and disappears, causing the labyrinth to collapse around the remaining pair, the toy store folding up into a small toy box.
In 2023 UNIT manages to shoot down the KOSAT 5 satellite using their galvanic beam, breaking the chain of satellites forcing the giggle into people’s heads. The Doctor arrives and hands Mel the box to look after, telling UNIT that they’re facing an elemental force that can meddle with reality and can step from 1925 to now as easily as walking through a door, so they need to be careful. Of course, as he explains this, the Toymaker literally walks through a door he’s created in the middle of the room doing a song and dance number. Everything UNIT attempts to interfere with him is completely ineffective, they collapse into bouncy balls if they try to touch him, their bullets turn into rose petals. When he finishes his song, he disappears through the floor before then showing up at the galvanic beam. The Doctor, begging him to stop, offers to leave with him, to take their games to the stars, the Time Lord and the Toymaker, just to leave this planet alone. The Toymaker is tempted, but declines – he considers Earth to be the ultimate playground.
The Doctor then insists that they finish their game, causing the Toymaker to fire the galvanic beam at him. As he played the first game with one Doctor, the second with this Doctor, it follows that the last game must be with the next Doctor. The Doctor begins to regenerate, and as he accepts the change, it dies away. He asks Donna and Mel to pull on him, something feels different this time. As they do, The Doctor breaks in two in a shimmer of regeneration energy, one being the Fourteenth Doctor, the other being the Fifteenth. Everyone is confused, not sure as to what happened, which the Fifteenth Doctor explains quickly – he’s apparently bi-generated, though it’s supposed to have been a myth.
It is decided, since this is a new incarnation, they may now play the contest properly. The two Doctors together united defeat the Toymaker, by catching a ball and throwing it to him, who fails to catch it. He is defeated, and the new Doctor whacks a giant wooden mallet into the TARDIS, creating another TARDIS, which Donna thinks is nuts. Donna suggests to the Fourteenth Doctor that he should briefly settle down and have a normal life, for a few years. He agrees and says goodbye to his other self.
Inside the original TARDIS, the Fourteenth Doctor and Donna decide to settle down on Earth for a while, and have some lunch outside on a sunny day with Donna’s family and Mel. Meanwhile, the Fifteenth Doctor plays some music from a newly-instated jukebox, and takes the TARDIS off, to new adventures.
NOTES
REGENERATION
Bi-generation is an extremely rare mutation of regeneration that results in Timeless Child’s species and Time Lords splitting into their current incarnation and the one they would have become. This doesn’t result in temporal paradoxes as they are both the concurrent versions of the same person. It’s unknown if this means the one who bigenerated has the same retaining regenerations.
TARDIS
After the TARDIS is duplicated, the Fourteenth Doctor’s interaction [statement unclear] no longer randomly takes him off course. This is because the Fifteenth Doctor is still out there, being taken where “The Doctor” is needed in the universe.
THE DOCTOR
The Doctor still remembers key things that happened in his past lives; such as his exile period working for UNIT, the Key to Time quest, the event of Logopolis, Adric’s death, his wife River and losing Rose Tyler.
PEOPLE
Sarah Jane Smith is confirmed dead by 2023.
The Toymaker says he turned the Guardians of Time into Voodoo dolls.
The Master begged the Toymaker to save his life if he won a game, having been too badly injured on the Cyber-conversion planet to regenerate; he lost the game and was imprisoned in the Toymaker’s gold tooth.
Sabalom Glitz died at the age of 101 after tripping over a Whiskey bottle. He had a Viking-themed funeral.
MUSIC
The Toymaker has the Spice Girls song Spice Up Your Life playing when he breaks into UNIT to torment everyone.
UNIT
When setting up the template in the sub-frame, Donna asks Mel if it is static or dynamic; she responds that it is the latter, as UNIT uses Triad.
LONDON
In Albion Chambers, an alleyway located in 1925 Soho, The Doctor and Donna pass posters for Henrik’s and School of Motoring.
NOTES
This story’s upcoming debut was mentioned alongside the other 2023 specials in the non-fiction feature Back in Business published in Doctor Who The Official Annual 2024 on 7 September 2023.
Russell T Davies was inspired, when researching John Logie Baird during the production of Nolly, to write an episode around the puppet. He later realized that a two-foot tall puppet wouldn’t be the most intimidating foe, so decided to use the Toymaker as the antagonist.
Bernard Cribbins was originally intended to appear in this episode as Wilfred Mott. However, his health prevented him from doing so, making the previous episode his final acting performance prior to his death. Wilfred still appears briefly in the episode, through use of a stand-in actor, archive audio, and visual effects.
The archive audio used for Wilfred was taken from the Poison Sky.
This is the only post-2005 regeneration episode not to feature either The Daleks or The Master, not counting the latter’s brief appearance imprisoned in the Toymaker’s gold tooth.
Discounting the special cases of Time and the Rani and The TV Movie, the regeneration scene occurs much earlier than in most regeneration stories. However, being a bigeneration, it is a unique circumstance in that it is not actually a change of appearance that takes place, but rather a new incarnation is “split” from the former.
Davies revealed in his in-vision commentary that The Giggle almost included a scene which mentioned Wilfred Mott passing, saying “It was immensely sad, it was beautiful, and it was very much a reaction to what had literally just happened, ’cause it felt very, very strange so I felt like we had to acknowledge it.”, and mentions that it was Phil Collinson who prevented the scene from happening.
MYTHS
Donna would regenerate into the Fifteenth Doctor instead of the Fourteenth Doctor [source needed] (this theory gained some attention before the airing of the 2023 specials, but was proven false during the first special)
CONTINUITY
Doctor Who The Official Annual 2024 contained several works of fiction which teased some of the characters in The Giggle:
The short story First Day of the Doctor contained an obscured snippet of a page of the Fifteenth Doctor’s diary, containing a quote of his line “Someone tell me what the hell is going on here?”
The spot-the-difference puzzle Double Danger depicted The Doctor asking an individual for help with the then-unnamed version of the Toymaker portrayed by Neil Patrick Harris.
Colourised footage from the Celestial Toymaker is shown when The Doctor identifies the Toymaker. One of the scenes appeared at the end of the Daleks in Colour.
Mel mentions Kate Stewart offering her a job, which was alluded to at the support group meeting in The Power of the Doctor.
Donna is also offered a job at UNIT, having lost her last one prior to the events of The Star Beast.
Footage of Rose Noble during the garden party at the Nobles’s home was used in the pre-titles sequence of The Star Beast; this episode contextualises the footage not as a flashback, but actually as a flashforwards.
Some of the set dressing in the episode contains Easter Eggs to previous stories:
Posters are seen around 1925 Soho for Henrik’s, the department store Rose Tyler worked for in Rose.
Although not visible in the final cut of the episode, one building was given Sanderson & Grainger branding, the department store the Eleventh Doctor briefly worked for in Closing Time.