In the climactic episode of the 2023 Doctor Who 60th Anniversary specials, The Giggle, viewers witnessed an extraordinary showdown. Doctors 14 and 15 confronted the enigmatic Toymaker atop UNIT HQ, engaging in a seemingly innocuous game to decide the fate of the universe. The chosen game? A simple game of catch. As the Toymaker himself declared, “It’s a simple game, really, but I think… if you drop it, you lose.” This singular rule governed their high-stakes contest.
Despite his flamboyant and chaotic nature, the Toymaker is established as a being bound by the rules of games. Earlier in The Giggle, a dialogue between Donna and the Doctor underscores this very point during a card game:
Donna: But he’ll cheat.
The Doctor: No.
The Toymaker: No! Shame.
The Doctor: That’s the one thing he won’t do.
Donna: But they’re his cards. It’s all tricks. Of course he’ll cheat!
The Doctor: The only rules the Toymaker follows are the rules of the game. They bind his entire existence. I win or I lose, and that’s it.
This exchange firmly establishes that the Toymaker, for all his reality-bending power, adheres strictly to the agreed-upon rules of any game he plays. Thus, in the game of catch, the single, unambiguous rule was: drop the ball, and you lose. This begs a significant question: how, then, did the Doctors manage to defeat the Toymaker in such a seemingly straightforward contest?
Throughout The Giggle, the Toymaker boasts of his countless victories over powerful entities throughout history. Even if we take these claims with a grain of salt, the episode vividly showcases his breathtaking abilities. He manipulates reality with ease, demonstrating time travel, spatial manipulation, matter transmutation (turning bullets into rose petals), mind control, and a flair for theatrical showmanship. The Doctor himself marvels at the Toymaker’s power, noting his capacity to travel vast stretches of time “like stepping through a door.” Given such immense power, which surely must encompass superhuman reflexes and coordination, the Toymaker’s defeat in a simple game of catch becomes profoundly puzzling.
Considering the Toymaker’s god-like abilities and the seemingly trivial nature of the game, it’s difficult to comprehend how he could possibly lose when the only condition was to not drop the ball. Was it a moment of overconfidence? A strategic miscalculation? Or is there a deeper, perhaps yet unexplained, aspect to the Toymaker’s defeat in this pivotal game of catch? The very simplicity of the game, juxtaposed with the Toymaker’s immense power, makes his loss in The Giggle one of the most intriguing and debated points within this Doctor Who anniversary special.
