Neil Patrick Harris stars in Doctor Who's The Giggle - but who is The Toymaker?

David Tennant’s Fourteenth Doctor faces an old foe in the third and final Doctor Who 60th anniversary special, “The Giggle”, but just who exactly is The Toymaker (played this time around by Neil Patrick Harris) who will likely play a part in Tennant’s regeneration into Fifteenth Doctor Ncuti Gatwa in Saturday’s episode?

Also known as The Celestial Toymaker, the villain has popped up in other media away from the main TV show since its inception, but his first on-screen appearance was during the third series of classic Who starring the First Doctor, William Hartnell.

Partly missing, but soon to be restored as an animation out next year using off-air audio recordings, “The Celestial Toymaker” introduced the immortal being as an entity who sets up elaborate games to try and trap people for eternity as his “playthings”.

The episode saw the Doctor made invisible by the Toymaker, before being forced to play what was known as the Trilogic Game (based on the puzzle game Tower of Hanoi, which involves transferring a stack of discs of increasing sizes from one rod to another).

With the Doctor needing to make the final move to win the game, but at the cost of the Toymaker’s world being destroyed with everything in it (save for the villain himself, who is immortal), the time traveller found a loophole by imitating the voice of the Toymaker to make the final move inside the Tardis, escaping in the spaceship just before the Toymaker’s world imploded.

Seen by some as coincidentally foreshadowing “The Giggle”, the Doctor tells his companions at the end of their meeting with the adversary that “the mind is indestructible [and] so is The Toymaker”.

He continues: “Yes [I defeated him], just at this moment, but there will be other meetings in another time.”

One of his companions, Dodo, then replies: “Then your battle with him will never end.”

“Yes, you’re quite right, my dear,” the Doctor concedes.

The Celestial Toymaker | Doctor Whowww.youtube.com

And now it looks like the time has come for them to face off again, with Neil Patrick Harris succeeding Michael Gough in the role in “The Giggle” – without the silk robes and word ‘Celestial’ in his title.

The anniversary episode’s description reads: “The giggle of a mysterious puppet is driving the human race insane. When the Doctor discovers the return of an old enemy, he faces a fight he can never win.”

Two preview clips from the episode – which has a run time of an hour and one minute – sees the Doctor rush to stop a man from getting run over on a street which has descended into chaos, and the Doctor and The Toymaker having a chilling conversation.

According to the man facing off against the car, “everyone started thinking they’re right all the time, and they won’t change their mind”.

He added: “If you try to argue, they go mad.”

Other scenes from the episode tease the return of the military organisation Unit (including The Toymaker aiming a giant turret at their HQ) and the Doctor warning companion Donna Noble (Catherine Tate) that “I don’t know if I can save your life this time”.

Even writer and showrunner Russell T Davies has warned “big things happen” in an episode which is “so big and so full”, that fans should “try to watch it live”.

“The Giggle” kicks off at 6:30pm on Saturday on BBC One.

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