Trivia / Doctor Who 60th AS "The Giggle"

• Acting in the Dark: David Tennant hadn't watched "The Final Test" prior to making the episode, though he admitted that he probably should have, since it would inform his performance better.
• Author's Saving Throw:
  • The Toymaker has been negatively re-evaluated by some in recent years as a racist caricature due to being played by a white actor in Mandarin garb (despite the fact that no attempt was made to play him as Chinese), decidedly not helped by the fact that the same serial has another character within the Toymaker's domain casually drop the N-word. Russell T. Davies acknowledged this in a behind-the-scenes featurette, deciding that instead of ignoring the perception that it would be integrated directly into the character, having Harris's Toymaker impersonate several different Earth accents while making openly racist remarks to cement his status as a deliberately Politically Incorrect Villain.
  • The Toymaker's line about "having made a jigsaw of [the Doctor's] past" was stated by Russell T. Davies as being an attempt to form an "out" for the Doctor's extremely convoluted and often outright contradictory backstory — viewers can accept the parts they like, and dismiss anything else as just the Toymaker messing with them.
  • The whole situation with the Meta-Crisis Doctor, with handwaves about how he'll be able to continue as a Doctor and such, purely to close off the Ten/Rose shipping is done much more neatly with the Fourteenth's departure, with him explicitly getting his own 1:1 duplicate of the TARDIS, along with effectively becoming Rose Noble's Cool Uncle as Donna adopts him into her family, while also co-existing with his successor.
• The Cast Show Off:
  • Neil Patrick Harris, who is a trained stage magician, gets a chance to show off his juggling and card-shuffling skills as part of the Toymaker's attempts to trap the Doctor into games. Harris also gets to show off his dancing ability when the Toymaker arrives in the present day with a sequence set to "Spice Up Your Life". He also shows off an impressive range of accents, going through German, American, French, and British with apparent ease. (In behind the scenes footage Harris expresses both frustration and elation at having to do all these things at once, and includes "two different accents" as part of the difficulty rating of one scene.)
  • Bonnie Langford also has an opportunity to show off her singing voice as she demonstrates the scales.
• The Character Died with Him:
  • After the in-universe status of Sarah Jane Smith had been left ambiguous following the death of Elisabeth Sladen in 2011 — her death and funeral had been mentioned in the web special "Farewell, Sarah Jane", but the special had fallen into Canon Discontinuity status after several parts of it (most notably Tegan's, Ace's, and Kate Stewart's backstories) were contradicted by "The Power of the Doctor" — this is the first time in the series proper that her death is confirmed.
  • Sabalom Glitz is mentioned by Mel as having died at the age of 101, following the death of his actor, Tony Selby, in 2021.
• Character Outlives Actor: According to Russell T. Davies' Instagram, Wilf was meant to have more of a presence in this special, but it never came to pass due to Bernard Cribbins' death while filming the episode. The narrative works around this by having Wilf briefly portrayed via a line reused from "The Poison Sky" before Donna gives him over to UNIT in order to ensure his safety, before he's mentioned as being off-screen shooting moles in the final scene.
• The Other Darrin: The Toymaker here is now played by Neil Patrick Harris, succeeding the late Michael Gough. Given the character's nature as a Reality Warper in-universe, the change in appearance since 1966 is not unreasonable. The episode does overlay footage of Gough over Harris to strongly imply this early in the episode.
• Refitted for Sequel:
  • "Journey's End" had originally featured a scene where the Tenth Doctor had given the Metacrisis Doctor a piece of coral so he and Rose Tyler could grow their own TARDIS, but it was cut for timing reasons. The idea is revisited in a fashion here, with the Fifteenth Doctor using the Toymaker's hammer to create a duplicate TARDIS for the Fourteenth Doctor.
  • "The Celestial Toymaker" briefly toyed with Darrining the First Doctor in response to William Hartnell's failing health. Initially, the Doctor would become invisible at one point in the story, then be played by a different actor when he reappeared. However, this concept was vetoed. Here, the Toymaker is directly responsible for the Fourteenth Doctor's regeneration or, more specifically, bi-generation.
• Role Reprise:
  • Lachele Carl returns as Trinity Wells, having not been seen since the end of the first RTD era in 2009.
  • John Mackay previously played Historical Domain Character John Logie Baird in Russell T. Davies' drama for ITV, Nolly, and plays him again in "The Giggle", with Davies believing the casting created a Shared Universe between the two shows.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Russell T. Davies thought that Stooky Bill would make for a good villain, but soon realized there was only so much he could do with an evil puppet. He then started thinking about potential puppet masters and hit upon the idea of the Celestial Toymaker returning.
  • Davies considered bringing back Peter Purves as Steven Taylor (the surviving companion from the Toymaker's first story), but ultimately decided against it. Purves did, however, reprise the role for "Tales of the TARDIS".
  • Fourteen's regeneration initially included Mel explaining the events of "Time and the Rani" to Donna before Fourteen cut her off.
  • The final scene originally had the Noble family acknowledging Wilf's passing as a tribute to the late Bernard Cribbins, but producer Phil Collinson successfully argued against it. Hence, Wilf is said to still be alive offscreen.
• Word of God: Three from Russel T. Davies:
  • He's said that the Toymaker "making a jigsaw of the Doctor's history" can be used to explain any perceived inconsistencies regarding the Doctor's origins (i.e. half-human, Timeless Child, etc.), and presumably any other inconsistencies regarding the series' wider canon.
  • In a podcast aired after the special's release, Davies speculated that the bi-generation could have affected the Doctor's entire timeline, meaning every Doctor could have survived their deaths (and retroactively bi-generated) in split timelines and be running around in a "Doctorverse". This could have been foreshadowed by the Seventh Doctor in Tales of the TARDIS, where he explains to Ace that in some timestreams, he regenerates as normal, and in others, he doesn't.
  • He also stated the Toymaker is part of a pantheon, with previous cosmic villains (the Eternals, Sutekh, House, the Gods of Ragnarok, etc) also being part of it.

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