Well, he said he didn’t want to go, and boy, he really meant it, didn’t he?
Russell T. Davies’ trilogy of 60th anniversary specials wraps up with ‘The Giggle’, and talk about going out on a high. You could certainly say with some measure of confidence Davies likes to set himself some challenges, and in the space of just 61 minutes, he had to tell a coherent story which took place across two different time periods, and involved the return of some old allies and a former companion, a dangerous villain who hailed from the programme’s past, the departure of an outgoing Doctor and companion, and the introduction of the new boy. No mean feat, but both Doctor Who and Davies are past masters of managing to do the impossible without even blinking.
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For those who listen to fan chatter on social media, in some quarters there has been disgruntlement loudly voiced about the show’s anniversary specials not being exactly what they expected from a celebration of the Doctor’s 60th year on our screens. Because, as we all know, nothing is ever as good as the imaginary version of the series which lives in some fans’ heads. If they were after a multi-Doctor extravaganza, chock full of old friends and foes alike, then ironically it seems that ‘The Power Of The Doctor’ – from the controversial previous showrunner Chris Chibnall – had already given them all that they wanted. And, curiously, a tale which featured the birth of television – ‘The Giggle’ – would have been thematically better than ‘The Power Of The Doctor’ for the task that it had of marking the BBC’s 100th anniversary in 2022.
Fortunately, Davies is not one either to pander or bow to fan opinion, and is instead focused firmly upon making the best show possible for as wide an audience as he can muster. Oh, and what a gloriously wild ride ‘The Giggle’ has been, serving up a deliciously bonkers thrill-fest, one which has managed to subvert expectations of regenerations being a mournful, sad time for both the hero and the audience, and delivering a joyous and life-affirming experience for all. If ever there was going to be a bold, brash mission statement for Davies’ new approach to Doctor Who, then ‘The Giggle’ is definitely that, writ large across the nation’s – nay, the world’s, thanks to its Disney connection – screens. It just goes to show us that six decades is a handful of heartbeats to a Time Lord, and there is plenty of life in the old Doc yet.
Perhaps one of the series’ much broader horizons now is the appearance of Neil Patrick Harris as ‘big bad’ of the story, in a spot of star casting of which Doctor Who could have only dreamt in earlier iterations. The Toymaker was perhaps one of the most problematic of characters in Who’s history, with not just the cultural appropriation of having dressed like up a Chinese mandarin in his original appearance in 1966 (played by Michael Gough), but also the adverse connotations of the word ‘celestial’ – relating to China and the Far East – being used in the story title of ‘The Celestial Toymaker’, as well as one of the Toymaker’s playthings using the N-word during a recitation of the rhyme ‘Eeny, Meeny, Miny, Moe’.
Yes, bringing the Toymaker back now would not be without its set of challenges, Davies acknowledging the character’s controversial past by having him display overt racism at one point. However, it was perhaps an unexpected twist to have the Toymaker – who possesses the power of a god – to break into our mortal realm, and have him do a totally OTT dance routine to the Spice Girls. Davies certainly does like to insert bits of pop culture into his Who, from Britney Spears’ ‘Toxic’ being revered as a classic piece of Earth music in the year Five Billion, to having the Master heralding the decimation of the entire human race to the strains of ‘Voodoo Child’ by Rogue Traders. The campiness is never far from the surface, but it really is impressive how Davies manages to incorporate this into his work without it ever feeling alienating.
Harris is probably best known for playing Barney Stinson in How I Met Your Mother, or in his breakout part as the titular lead in Doogie Howser, M.D., but genre fans may well recall him from playing the villain of the piece in the Joss Whedon project Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog. His versatility is well used throughout ‘The Giggle’, having to cope with a range of accents, puppeteering, juggling whilst monologuing, magic tricks, and also delivering a credibly sinister threat. All of his talents are certainly on display here, but perhaps a feat more impressive than rehabilitating the image of the Toymaker is doing the same for ex-companion Melanie Bush, played by Bonnie Langford. It just demonstrates that when given an actual character, plus things of real consequence to do, how wasted she was in the 1980s.
Of course, some of this appears to be due to her having now become part of UNIT, who – with their new and shiny Stark Tower-esque London HQ – have clearly been positioned to be one of the promised spin-offs from the show. Besides building on all his previous work in that area, and doubling down on his aspirations for an MCU-esque ‘Whoniverse’, it seems Davies is intent upon broadening the horizons of the show in other ways, with the mythos of the show receiving the biggest kick since, well, the last one. Yes, in a move sure to have fans respond in their usual calm and measured way to any shakeup, Davies has given us the gift of bigeneration, which gives him a way to both wrap up the show, while at the same time continuing it in a soft reboot, less encumbered by 60 years’ worth of backstory and baggage.
David Tennant and Catherine Tate have been nothing less than spectacular in their triumphant return to Doctor Who, and Davies has managed to walk back two of the biggest of the emotional gut punches from his original time in charge of the programme. Finally, we get a happy ending not only for Donna Noble, but also Tennant’s Doctor, who finds the thing he needed to make him truly at peace and content. In giving us the very definition of ‘Physician, heal thyself’, we have a Doctor who can finally forgive himself and move on, leaving his replacement mended and whole. Never before has the next Doctor literally been so much a new man, and Ncuti Gatwa’s introduction has been truly breathtaking, his taking over the key to the TARDIS offering a whole infinity of storytelling possibilities and opportunities, while managing to hit the ground running.
After appearing to have been on the wane for so long, Doctor Who’s future now looks to be so bright and spectacular, with the coming prospect of a Christmas Day special in just over a fortnight’s time. There looks to be little risk of Davies simply reliving past glories as showrunner again, and purely on the strength of these three specials, RTD – like the Toymaker – has an awful lot of balls.
