In The Giggleabout which little is known, an enemy of the Doctor will make his first appearance since 1966. It will be Neil Patrick Harris, in the role of the Toymaker.
The last episode of 60 years of Doctor Who, The Giggle, airing this Saturday, December 9 on Disney+, is set to introduce Neil Patrick Harris into the series. He plays an existing character: the Toymaker. Yet even if you’ve watched the modern series in its entirety, you probably don’t know who the Toymaker is. We have to go back in time much further.
The Toymaker is an enemy of the Doctor
The trailer is clear: Neil Patrick Harris is in the shoes of a “villain”, who brings chaos to London. The Toymaker is indeed an enemy of the Doctor.
He first appeared in 1966 as Michael Gough, three years after the series premiered. It was the very first Doctor, played by William Hartnell, who faced him. The Toymaker has never reappeared in the series since. The episode itself, which dates back to the time when Doctor Who was still in black and white, was even… lost. It’s not the only one: during the 1970s, the BBC erased episodes to make room (different times, other hard drives). Today, only the 4th part of this episode remains, and a few audio traces and photos of the rest.
This strange Toy Maker will therefore return to the series for the first time in 57 years (in the series specifically, because the character returned in the extended universe – audiodramas and comics). But who is he exactly?
The Toymaker is also called Celestial Toymaker, because of the cosmic, almost divine nature of his being: he is immortal. He is capable of creating worlds and thus influencing the entire reality of this “pocket”. It remains to be seen how much he can influence reality as a whole, outside of the worlds he creates. The trailer for The Giggle suppose he can — and the members of UNIT have a strange bracelet on their wrists, presumably it’s technology to block the effects of his psychic influence.
The Toymaker has an appetite for creating games and toys to carry out his schemes. He can even transform beings – those who have lost in his games – into his own puppets. Thus, in 1966, in the lost episode, the Toymaker managed to teleport the Doctor and his companions to his kingdom, separated them, and put them to the test in a series of games. The Doctor and his crew had finally succeeded in deceiving him and even destroying this kingdom (in fact, it is not impossible that he was particularly vengeful towards the Doctor).
Did the Toymaker influence 14th’s regeneration?
We know that The Giggle could potentially answer the big question of these special anniversary episodes: why did the 10th Doctor’s face return, which is a first and what seemed impossible? Since the Toymaker has the potential ability to influence reality itself, many theories assume that this is part of his plan to trap the Doctor (trap him in what and why, no one knows).
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