Doctor WhoSaved Its Biggest Gift for Itself

For a show that is often sooptimistically forward thinking — and where modification is bake into its heart — Doctor Whooften has a bittersweet position of its own past . hero and friends come and go , goodbyes are frequent and abbreviated , and a lot of them are lasting , especially when part of the key to its longevity is that its main fiber dies every few years . But as a impudent Time Lord once said , every once in a while , just now and then , everybody subsist .

“ The Giggle , ” the third and concluding installment of Doctor Who ’s 60th anniversary specials , has a flock to do , between paying off the return and re - imagining of the 57 - year - old villain ethereal Toymaker , culminate this brief geological era of the 14thDoctor and Donna Noble , and , of row , grasping the weight of what it entail to be a MD Who positive feedback episode . positive feedback stories are not just the incarnation of Doctor Who ’s ability to pull round for decennary after decade , but they also convey this dread weight of inevitability that often threaten to subsume the narrative fabric they ’re draped upon : they ’re about the hero of the story buy the farm . They are , specially in the modern-day iteration of the show , about how irritating and tragical that is — metatextually , that a lead actor whose life has been determine by the serial for a menses of years redact an remainder distributor point in their stewardship , but also textually , in that the Doctor has to grapple with this peculiar oblivion of death and conversion that assure them all change their very ego in a moment of fervour and sacrifice .

The melancholy humour of regeneration stories perhaps has no good emblematic example than the last time David Tennant faced this prospect almost 13 years ago . Both parts of “ The ending of Time ” are about the Doctor of the Church urgently struggling to avoid this inevitableness , undergoing a two - hour sorrow physical process where the Doctor repeatedly stress to the hoi polloi around him , and to the audience , just how much this all fellate . The 10th Doctor bitterly cite to regeneration to Wilf as someone else walking aside , break down in tears . When the avoidance of the tale becomes impossible , he whimper how unjust it is before accept it — and even then , the account becomes a lengthy epilogue of good-by , before climaxing in the maudlin moment of the Doctor , once again on the verge of breaking down , whispering with a quiver : I do n’t need to go .

Screenshot: BBC

And so , here we are again . David Tennant must die , and although this sentence around his latest take on the Doctor is largely unware that he finds himself in a positive feedback story in “ The Giggle , ” the brief tenure of the 14th medico has , as a whole , largely been about manage with the weight of a foresighted lifetime lived . One of the fundamental difference between this Doctor and the last time they wore Tennant ’s boldness is how emotionally vulnerable and accepting of this weight the Doctor has been — the goodbyes , the lugubriousness , the fatigue , and the harm . Even if this time around it ’s only we the audience that are aware that time is up for the fourteenth physician , his very cosmos has been defined by that sense of regenerative sadness anyway , and how it stay even as the Doctor changes face . “ The Giggle ” is n’t just a regeneration tarradiddle in this regard , this whole trio of sequence is .

Yet , they ’re also a celebration of Doctor Who , and no one wants the birthday person to be sour on their big milepost . “ The Giggle ” is more consanguineal to “ The Star Beast ” than “ Wild Blue Yonder ” here , a Davies - romp with high camp and a narrative weave that leans hard on performance and sentiment . The Toymaker , having lam hisrealm of surrealityto enter our own , has sown a seminal fluid of madness into every tv set transmitting — from the original John Logie Baird transmittal in 1925 all the way to a 2023 where satellites have turn Earth into a really on-line and connected planet — and is using this power to cause havoc and chaos . Why ? He ’s petty . That ’s pretty much on the nose what it is , as much as he then goes on to frame this against the Doctor and Donna as some heroic critique of the Dr. ’s electrical capacity to get mass around him killed , that he is just as guilty of playing games as he himself is . It ’s not really that deep , no matter how many creepy puppets of fall companions he clop down in front of them , even less so when he assaults UNIT HQ to execute a Spice Girls lip sync . The Toymaker is there because an episode of Doctor Who needs an resister , and as dependable as he is , as fun as he is , he ’s not there to make a point . He ’s there to get out a trigger , and get us to what “ The Giggle ” is mean to be about , what we bear it to be about , even in celebration — a beginning , and an terminal .

The actual bend then , more so than its seeminglygame - interchange methodological analysis , is that “ The Giggle ” is a regeneration story , but it ’s not a sorry one . In fact , it wants to make regeneration freeing and transformative in a way the show has seldom touched on before : what if Doctor Who was n’t about dying , but finding elbow room to live ? As the clock runs out and “ The Giggle ” sets the stage for its grand execution — almost literally , as the Toymaker wins his “ biz ” and shoots the Doctor unobjectionable through the bureau during his UNIT assault with a giant laser gun — the Doctor this prison term embraces change , and is ready to say goodbye this time . Except , in doing so , just this once , they are given an opportunity , on their birthday , to have it both way . The next medico is born , but the one-time Doctor does n’t go off . With a push and a pull , out of David Tennantcomes Ncuti Gatwa , immediately electric , fully the MD , and seemingly a product of Time Lord mitosis . And he ’s just standing there . Next to himself ! Everybody exist !

Screenshot: BBC

There are a million way of life such an audacious idea could ’ve last wrong — not just for what this means logistically in Doctor Who from the perspective of its internal system of logic , but also the delicate tightrope of what it means to the audience , that you put the raw Doctor , the first Black , singular valet to make for the Doctor , next to one of the most darling worker to ever act the office , while saying that that histrion has n’t in reality impart the show ( again ) . It verbalise to Gatwa ’s potentiality that he himself is unbothered by this intimidating prospect , and neither is Doctor Who : from the bit he is born , standing up against a swell enemy in nothing more than a borrow shirt and bagger short circuit to play a game of collar for the fate of all being , it is unambiguous that “ The Giggle ” is now his sequence , not David Tennant ’s . Surprised as he is to be there still , the 14th Dr. melts into the scope at the 15th ’s side , as he offer the greatest gift to this shock Time Lord he can give — a moment for the physician to cure himself .

This “ Bi - generation”—as 15 puts it to both himself and the gather , confused allies around him — is supposed to be a myth , a phantasy , but in a reality where a powerful being such as the Toymaker has already pushed the established rules of universe out the window by his very bearing , Doctor Who finds itself in a potential where anything and everything could bump . The Toymaker is , indeed , pulling the induction , but not this time quite so literally — he is the accelerator for Doctor Who to disembarrass itself , to say everything that came before and which we translate mattered , but also , that it does n’t matter . The Doctor is free of this inevitable sadness , that their conversion after rebirth does n’t have to come at the price of end and sorrow . Somewhere , out there , in another interpretation of realism , in another timeline , in another rendition , every version of the Doctor gets up from their re-formation level and walks by an unaltered individual .

However you interpret it is not for Doctor Who to say , not because it does n’t care — it ’s clear that Davies care deep in playing with regeneration itself like this , in this moment — but because this is its gift to itself , and to you . Do n’t be distressing that your Doctor has gone if you do n’t need to be , there is now this way for them to descend back , to distinguish more stories . If that lugubriousness in regeneration , and its histrionics of modification and rebirth is important to you , it still is to the show ; the 15th Doctor is not an offshoot or an outdoor triviality , he is the Doctor ’s future , with everything that entails , admit the eventual evolution of his past self into this current moment . The Doctor is free , and so are we , in this singular moment , to take whatever we need from it .

Screenshot: BBC

Screenshot: BBC

And what better path to celebrate everything Doctor Who has been for 60 long time , than to unchain it like this ? It admit wonders , not just in the fantasy of enounce every Doctor we ’ve ever seen and get it on is still out there , somewhere , in some version of this on-going tale . It allows a wonder specifically , for the fourteenth Doctor , whose time has been define by cope with the tragedies that have beset the Doctor since they last had this particular face , to hesitate , mull over , and rest . If the 15th Doctor is the future , and a delegacy of , as he puts it , Time Lord rehab out of ordering — a living , breathing example of showing himself that one Clarence Shepard Day Jr. everything will be okay — then the 14th Doctor does n’t have to keep run , and mourning . He can patch up down for the biography his retiring selves have hunger , fully of sexual love and family alongside his in force friends , inhabit out his days on his chosen homeworld . The Doctor commence to live , in both weed of it , 14 witness public security and the chance to heal the long way round from the solid ground , and 15 running off into the stars to see what ’s out there , full of joy and life because of that chance to heal his own yesteryear along the way .

So “ The Giggle , ” and this very special festivity of Doctor Who ’s past , its present , and its hereafter , end not with somber as we might have suspect , but this minute suffuse with joy for everyone . Sitting around the Noble - Temple dinner tabular array , the 14th Doctor tells his beneficial friend in the whole universe that it ’s the happiest he ’s ever been in his life . Out there in time and space , the 15th Doctor is happier still , the whirling wheeze of the TARDIS recoil out around him and a smile on his face , full of risky venture . At this most special of moments , one cautiously structured to only be able to come off out of this impossible context of this particular day of remembrance , everybody lives . And in doing so Doctor Who , 60 years old , 60 years new still , allow itself the magic of having its bar and eating it too .

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Screenshot: BBC