We didn’t want David Tennant to go, and it was time for Ncuti Gatwa to finally take the Tardis keys, but in a twist we got both of them at once. It was no surprise, though, that Neil Patrick Harris was a scene-stealing romp, revelling in silly accents, closeup card magic and imaginative cruelty.
The Toymaker’s violence-dealing dance scene at Unit HQ to the Spice Girls rivalled the Master’s Rasputin routine in the Power of the Doctor, and seemed like the new Russell T Davies era writ large: bright, bold and knowingly silly, but with an underlying political message.
Shirley Anne Bingham (Ruth Madeley) was back too, and the barb a possessed Kate Stewart (Jemma Redgrave) aimed at her, that she had seen her getting up out of her wheelchair, was oddly prescient. It was filmed months and months ago, but echoed the ludicrous discourse after Madeley’s first appearance about whether a character in a wheelchair could be capable of crossing their legs. Online discourse like that was one of Davies’ real-life targets with this script, with its not-too-subtle messaging that having every human online and 100% certain they were right about everything was a recipe for global chaos.
A return for former companion Mel (Bonnie Langford) meant she finally got to show that her character really had been, as described, a computer programmer, and not just an eternally-in-distress 1980s damsel. And Langford got to use her singing and dancing skills for plot-driven reasons too.
At its heart, for the first 40 minutes, this was about Tennant and Catherine Tate (Donna). At times tender, at times dry or sarcastic with each other – “I’m already running!” – but always friends. When Donna so effortlessly negotiated a future job at Unit, you feared the worst for her – that it would be another fantastic dream she would never get to have, but she ended up with her family life, and an unexpected plus one in the shape of a grounded 14th Doctor.
Gatwa’s entrance, due to the show’s first ever “bi-generation”, appears to be acting as a character cleanse for the Doctor and a potential soft timeline reset for the show as a whole. It meant a huge tonal shift for the final third, leaving the demise of the Toymaker almost an aside as the Doctors stood together, using the 60th anniversary to wave goodbye to the past and usher in the future.
Sum it up in one sentence?
The Toymaker returns to drive the human race to distraction with a doll, only to find they’ve gifted the Doctor a home.
Life aboard the Tardis
We got the awkward conversation that happens every time a current companion meets an earlier one – “but you’d never mentioned them”. And the Toymaker’s puppet replay of the grisly fates of Amy, Clara and Bill rammed home how life on the Tardis has become a hazardous occupation in the modern era.
Fear factor
The scenes inside the Toymaker’s shop had a creepy dreamlike feel to them, with the dolls at times evoking horror movie vibes – albeit a horror movie you can show to eight-year-old kids on a Saturday teatime.
Mysteries and questions
The Meeps’s reference to its boss in the first special, and the Toymaker saying there was a thing hiding in the universe that even he was afraid to challenge, but would be somebody else’s game, seem to be setting up a big bad for Gatwa’s first full season. And the Master couldn’t really be trapped for all eternity in a gold tooth? Of course not. That was surely the hand of the Rani picking up the tooth after it dropped.
Deeper into the vortex
-
There were too many callbacks to count, but the biggest was the Toymaker, who, as briefly glimpsed in colourised clips, first appeared played by Michael Gough in a 1966 story with William Hartnell. Gough was due to reprise the role in The Nightmare Fair, a 1986 Colin Baker story, but BBC bigwigs had other ideas, put the show on hiatus, and we ended up with Trial of a Time Lord instead. The 1966 story has three episodes missing from the archive, but an animated version using the original audio soundtrack will be released next year. Though from the trailer it looks like it was animated in Roblox, so YMMV.
-
As Kate Stewart, Jemma Redgrave has now appeared in stories featuring the 10th, 11th, 12th, 13th, 14th, 15th and War Doctors. That equals or eclipses the number of Doctors that her character’s father, Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, appeared with, depending on how pedantically you count them.
-
Russell T Davies has said that one of the reasons he thought of casting Harris as the Toymaker after working with him on It’s a Sin was because the actor is a magic enthusiast and has done his own standup magic routines before.
Next time
Ncuti! With trousers on for at least some of the time! Millie Gibson! Davina McCall! Christmas! Goblins from (probably) outer space! It all starts at 5.55pm Christmas Day on BBC One in the UK and on Disney+ all around the world.
