Doctor Who Is Entering Its Pink Jacket Era
NOTE: This post contains spoilers for the entirety of the Doctor Who 60th anniversary specials, including and especially "The Giggle."
There are dozens upon dozens of ways to talk about where Doctor Who has ended up after "The Giggle." The commencement of the RTD2 era brings with it a plethora of bold moves and statements—many, if not most, of which will be better explored by other people. However, a major theme of the third and final special feels like exactly my wheelhouse: the subject of story, of canon, of lore, and (most importantly) of Play.
Amidst rolling back the Metacrisis, recontextualizing the Timeless Child, and introducing bi-generation (and what Russell T Davies terms the "Doctorverse" as seen in Tales of the TARDIS), he made another major statement about where the show stands and where it will likely be going. In short, we seem to be getting the high sign that it's time to put down the canon welders and the slide rules... at least for a bit. It appears the RTD2 era will be an era less bound by the show's own rules of logic and more open to writerly whims.
Or, to put it in the parlance of my other favorite decades-long show, it's going into its Pink Jacket era.
A brief history of Lupin the 3rd will have to wait for another day. Suffice to say, it is a very long-running anime franchise with its own unique eras and stock characters. Each creative mind to touch the series, from Hayao Miyazaki to Godzilla Minus One director Takashi Yamazaki, puts their own unique spin on it. And each era of the TV series is denoted stylistically by a new color palette for our protagonist, the freewheeling grandson of Arsène Lupin. In films and TV specials, those different-colored jackets have become shorthand for what "flavor" of Lupin we can expect.
1984 brought Lupin the 3rd Part III, with a more cartoonish color palette as well as more cartoonish plots. (Think legitimately Looney Tunes ideas, even more than usual.) Since then, Pink Jacket has become a less evoked Lupin style, but an unmistakable one. In 2018's Lupin the 3rd Part V, which contained interstitial episodes paying tribute to each era, the Pink Jacket tribute episode was about Lupin trying to make himself dumber to crack a safe that would only open if a brainwave-reading machine determined you were dumb enough. (Spoiler: it ended with him gorging on fish to make himself so smart that the IQ meter Pac-Manned around.)
Part III was not "bad" (as it was misremembered before we had the luxury of streaming) so much as it was silly, unhinged, and joyfully committed to being that way. And with what we've seen in "The Giggle," I think we're being invited into a similar era for Doctor Who.
The choice to bring back the Toymaker was an interesting and fan-pleasing one. He appeared in one televised story, 1966's "The Celestial Toymaker," played by Michael Gough. And while he's been in and around the books and comics and Big Finish audios, the Toymaker's appearance in "The Giggle" is his first return to the televised series — done with an impeccable balance of menace and camp that only Neil Patrick Harris can dish out. As before, he is a powerful otherworldly being: one beholden only to the rules of fair play, who delights in reducing other powerful beings to playthings.
As we saw in "Wild Blue Yonder," the Doctor appears to summon the Toymaker by invoking a bit of nonsense at the edge of the universe: attempting to thwart the Not-Doctor and Not-Donna with a superstition. With this silly (and frankly Doctor-ly) approach, the Toymaker makes his way into our world, and all bets are off. People are puppets, bullets are rose petals, the Master is a gold tooth in a mouth of too many teeth... it's all a bit wild.
Throughout the episode, the Doctor attempts to explain the Toymaker's MO by stating that there are actually three states of being: Order, Chaos, and Play. Play is not governed by Order or Chaos, and is not beholden to normal rules. It's what makes the Toymaker so dangerous... but, as the Doctor points out, what could also potentially make him so wonderful.
While the Toymaker is naturally not going to change his ways, his state of Play influences the episode. We see our first bi-generation: a Time Lord myth almost certainly brought into reality by the Toymaker's anything-goes mentality. (Note how overjoyed he is at the prospect of bi-generating the Doctor ad infinitum so he can take his time mowing them down.) In one of his first acts as incumbent Doctor, Ncuti Gatwa (still in his pants) hits the TARDIS with a big comedy mallet to double it. He implies that the Toymaker's state of Play may be in effect for just long enough for him to gain "his" prize... but I personally believe the Toymaker's influence will last a bit longer.
And I believe we are being invited to rejoice in this influence.
Doctor Who fans are unmatched in their ability to canon-weld. I've seen this in action as someone who's been writing on the ragged edges of canon for a handful of years now, introducing a WWE branch to Faction Paradox and letting Iris Wildthyme finally enter the City of the Saved. One thing I learned when writing across these expanded universes is that the harder you try to account for everything, the sadder you'll be, and the harder a time you'll have telling the story you want to tell.
In short: if a callback is fun, it's worth it. If trolling through decades of audios, comics, and books to ensure all the corners are tucked in makes it so you can't write... don't do that. The lovely thing about a rights holder is they'll let you know what you can and can't do, and they will rarely limit you as hard as your own dive through the franchise's history will. And as the Whoniverse gets bigger and fuller, we're hitting capacity. There will come a time when you can't add to it for fear of inadvertently "decanonizing" something in the eyes of a subsection of the fans.
While I don't always agree with RTD's creative choices (Martha deserved way more credit and I stewed about Donna's exit for 13 years), I will defend to the death his aptitude for building and future-proofing a show. Someone with his eye for showrunning will have noticed that after the Time War, the Hybrid, the Timeless Child, and the Flux, the series's lore is approaching critical mass... even without counting the expanded universe. In order to continue to tell stories that appeal to old and new fans, something has to give. We need to be allowed to put down the strict rules for a minute and simply play.
The Toymaker, as we're reminded, will always abide by the oldest and most basic rules of play: the rules that keep things fair and fun. He may be a bastard and a half, but he'll never actually cheat. And I believe that's our ruleset for the RTD2 era: guidelines to make sure everyone has a good time, but anything goes otherwise.
Davies has already said that he's looking to go more fantasy than sci-fi in the new season, and the early previews of "The Church on Ruby Road" show that we're getting a pirate ship full of sky goblins. And while I believe the bi-generation represents many powerful things (which I may talk about some other day), I think it also represents the future of the show, at least for now: allowing the heaviness of the past to be put aside to rest and process, and looking forward with joy and curiosity.
Doctor Who is going to get sillier, weirder, and more fantastical than ever. And for as much as I've loved previous seasons, I have a feeling this sea change will be the exact refresh the series needs.
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