'The Giggle' (Story Code 13.12) by Russell T Davies

“He’s found his way into this reality. And I think it’s all because of me. ‘Cos I got clever didn’t I? I cast that salt at the edge of the universe. I played a game and let him in. An elemental force with the power of a god and he’s driven the human race mad with a puppet.” - The Doctor

In 1925, Charles Banerjee visits a London Soho toyshop, where he buys a ventriloquist’s dummy named Stooky Bill from a very creepy toymaker. Banerjee takes the dummy back to his boss, pioneering engineer John Logie Baird, who uses the doll as the subject of his first television broadcast. As the dummy’s head melts under the hot lighting, a strange giggle can be heard…

Today: the Doctor, Donna and Wilf make their way through the chaotic streets of Camden, as everyone around them is consumed by anger and violence. Dancing amongst the melee is the Toymaker, now dressed in top hat and tails, and revelling in the carnage; the Doctor is caught up in a quick dance with him, before UNIT troops appear on the scene. After Donna orders the soldiers to take Wilf home, she, the Doctor and the TARDIS are transported across London to UNIT’s skyscraper headquarters. The Doctor’s pleasure at seeing Shirley Bingham and Kate Lethbridge-Stewart again quickly turns to delighted surprise, when he is reunited with his old travelling companion, Melanie Bush, now also working for UNIT. In the main control room, the Doctor and Donna are briefed on the situation: two days ago, everyone began thinking they were right, resulting in violence across the world. UNIT have maintained their calm with the aid of protective armbands called Zeedex, created by a friendly alien Vlinx that works for them; Kate demonstrates this ‘spike’ effect by removing her armband: she quickly becomes belligerent and violent, and has to be quickly subdued by troops, and her Zeedex replaced. Curious that he, Mel and Donna are unaffected, the Doctor wonders if it is due to long-term travel in the TARDIS. Shirley explains that the violence coincided with the activation of a South Korean satellite, which effectively linked every computer system into one online network; Shirley reassures the Doctor that the network has been checked and confirmed as safe. Examining a recording of Kate’s brainwaves, Donna notes how the spikes could be musical notes in a tune; Mel sings it, and everyone finds the melody strangely familiar. When Shirley identifies it as the giggle of Stooky Bill, from the first television transmission, the Doctor realises that this recording has been hiding in every screen ever since, spread across the world as technology develops. To prove his point, the Doctor sonics the screens in the UNIT control room, causing each to display the face of Stooky Bill. But who is the puppeteer turning humanity’s inner hatred against itself? The Doctor has a feeling he knows… While Kate uses the Doctor’s authorisation to bring out UNIT’s galvanic beam gun and take down the Korean satellite, the Doctor catches up with Mel: she explains how she travelled with Glitz for many years until he died, after which she got a lift back to Earth and took up a job offer from Kate. Elsewhere in UNIT, Kate offers Donna a job too!

Using the TARDIS, the Doctor and Donna journey back to the vicinity of Logie Baird’s lab in 1925 Soho, to find the shop that sold Stooky Bill. Seeing a toyshop nearby, they enter and meet the owner - whom the Doctor recognises as his old foe, the Toymaker. The powerful elemental being vanishes, leaving the Doctor and Donna caught in a game Hide and Seek, searching endless door-lined corridors for their elusive enemy; the Doctor wonders if his recent invocation at the edge of the universe invited the Toymaker back into this dimension. Separated from Donna, the Doctor encounters Charles Banerjee, his body wrapped in paper; when the Doctor frees him he discovers that Banerjee’s head now sits atop a wooden puppet’s body, its strings manipulated from on high by a giant Toymaker; then Banerjee’s face turns into the Doctor’s… Donna finds herself in an attic, where she is attacked by Stooky’s wife and children. Having dealt with the wooden menaces, Donna finds the Doctor; but their reunion is interrupted by the Toymaker, who gleefully performs a stage show listing the Doctor’s losses using puppets of Amy, Clara and Bill, and a recreation of the Flux’s destruction of the universe. Accepting the Doctor’s challenge to play a game, the Toymaker happily pulls out a pack of cards; while shuffling them he baits the Doctor about making his history into a jigsaw, how he defeated the Master and turned him into a gold tooth, before curiously mentioning his fear of ‘the one who waits’. Questioned about the terrible effects of the giggle, the Toymaker explains how he gave everyone the ability to win, trapping them in a never-ending game. Playing ‘highest card wins’ the Doctor cuts an 8 - but the Toymaker cuts a king, winning the game. However, the Doctor reminds the Toymaker that he won the previous game, forces the Toymaker to agree to best-of-three. Before he leaves the Toymaker spitefully collapses up his toyshop, the Doctor and Donna only just getting outside before it folds up into a tiny toybox.

Returning to UNIT HQ, the Doctor and Donna arrive as the galvanic beam destroys the satellite. Leaving the toybox with Mel, the Doctor gives Shirley a program to detect the energy signature of something decaying after ninety-eight years; he needn’t have bothered, as the Toymaker appears out of nowhere, dressed as a bandleader, and dancing to the tune of the Spice Girls’ ‘Spice Up Your Life’. The Toymaker spins Kate and Mel, smashing them into their surroundings, turns soldiers into bouncy balls, and gunfire into harmless flower petals; he then seizes control of the galvanic beam, aiming it at the Doctor and his friends. The Doctor offers his foe the chance to travel with him in the TARDIS, playing games together across the cosmos; but the Toymaker refuses: having fallen in love with humanity, he sees Earth as the ultimate playground. Wanting to play with a different Doctor, the Toymaker shoots the Time Lord through the chest with the galvanic beam to trigger his regeneration. As the Doctor collapses to his knees, his body starting to heal from glowing regeneration energy, Donna and Mel rush forward to take his hands. The Doctor starts to regenerate… and then stops. The Doctor’s regeneration feels different this time, and he instructs his friends to pull his arms; they do so, and are astonished to see the Doctor’s body begin splitting in two, as a new incarnation starts to appear from within him. They finally become two separate Doctors - they haven’t regenerated, they have bigenerated! The Toymaker is delighted that he now has two Doctors to kill again and again; however, when the Doctors challenge him to a final game, the evil entity is forced to agree to play the oldest game ever: 'catch’. The game lasts for a while and gets very competitive, but the Toymaker eventually misses the ball, losing the game. The older Doctor claims his prize, and banishes the Toymaker from existence forever; the Toymaker folds up into a neat little package, falling into the toybox that Mel slides under him. With the Toymaker gone, the corrupted giggle signal stops, and humanity is released from its hold. The younger Doctor mourns for those lost in the fighting, but is consoled by his newer - and older - self. As they walk inside UNIT HQ, they fail to see a woman’s hand pick up a gold tooth lying on the ground…

Showing off his TARDIS control room to his new self, the younger Doctor wonders how they will share the ship. But the new Doctor knows that his younger self feels tired from all his adventures, and needs to stop for a while to fix himself; he knows this happens, because he himself feels fine. Donna offers the doctor the chance to stay in one place, believing that he chose to revisit his former face as a clue to finding her, and a home. After the Doctor agrees to stay, the new Doctor grabs a giant mallet and heads outside; suspecting that a trace of the Toymaker’s domain still lingers, he claims his own prize by striking the TARDIS with the mallet, causing it to split in two as well! Bidding farewell to his younger self, Donna, Mel and Shirley, the new Doctor steps into his TARDIS and departs….

Some time later, the Doctor enjoys a meal with his new family: the Nobles, and Mel. The Doctor has decided to stay with them for a while, and he feels the happiest he has ever been. Elsewhere, in his TARDIS, the new Doctor sets course for adventure, his next destination: Christmas…


David Tennant (The Doctor), Catherine Tate (Donna Noble), Charlie De Melo (Charles Banerjee), Neil Patrick Harris (The Toymaker), John MacKay (John Logie Baird), Ross Gurney-Randall (Middle Aged Man), Alexander Devrient (Colonel Ibrahim), Ruth Madeley (Shirley Bingham), Jemma Redgrave (Kate Lethbridge-Stewart), Bonnie Langford (Melanie Bush), 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 Featherson (The Toymaker Dance Double), Karl Collins (Shaun Temple), Jacqueline King (Sylvia Noble), Yasmin Finney (Rose Noble), Ncuti Gatwa (The Doctor)

Directed by Chanya Button

Produced by Vicki Delow
Executive Producers Russell T Davies, Julie Gardner, Jane Tranter, Joel Collins and Phil Collinson
A Bad Wolf / BBC Studios production

TX (BBC 1 & BBC 1 HD):
9th December 2023 @ 6.30 pm

Notes:
*Featuring the Fourteenth Doctor, Donna, Mel, Kate Lethbridge-Stewart and UNIT, and introducing the Fifteenth Doctor

*This story is the third of the 60th anniversary specials, and is sixty-five minutes long

*It was also made available in Ultra-High Definition (UHD) on the BBC's iPlayer, and streamed on Disney+ outside the UK and Ireland on the same day