Physician Who blew its massive handoff to Ncuti Gatwa’s fifteenth Physician

It’s Physician Who custom that one Physician’s last episode is the following Physician’s first. This handoff is likely one of the coolest issues in regards to the present. You by no means actually know what you’re going to get, and every little thing feels new once more. Final weekend, the guard modified as soon as once more, in one other first for the sequence following Jodie Whittaker’s tenure as the primary girl within the function. Sadly, the momentous event was marred by what looks like an extremely boneheaded determination in how the transition was made .

The Fifteenth Physician, nevertheless, is all the time going to have an asterisk by his identify. A bit of footnote, denoting that his introduction — as actor Ncuti Gatwa takes his historic place as the primary Black man to imagine the function in Physician Who’s 60-year historical past — is totally different from the remaining. It makes the entire affair really feel like an alarming step again proper earlier than what many nonetheless hope may be an incredible leap ahead for the long-running sequence.

[Ed. note: Spoilers for the ending of “The Giggle” follow.]

As an episode, “The Giggle,” the final of Physician Who’s three Sixtieth-anniversary specials, is a hell of a trip, if a bit dense. The premise includes a subliminal message hidden in each display screen, in all places, driving the world mad, a heavy-handed metaphor that may drag the entire episode down if the story dwelled on it a lot. Fortunately, it doesn’t — author Russell T. Davies largely makes use of this plot for spectacle’s sake, to present the episode an apocalyptic scale. He places far more power into the episode’s villain, the Toymaker.

A deep pull from Physician Who historical past, the Toymaker first appeared throughout William Hartnell’s (the very first Physician!) tenure on the run. He’s not proven up on display screen since, however nonetheless resurfaced within the odd Who novel or radio play by means of the years. In casting Neil Patrick Harris to resurrect the function, Davies lastly provides the three specials a way of historical past that this trilogy of specials has been missing, one which stretches again to earlier than the trendy period of Physician Who Davies kicked off in 2005.

The Toymaker additionally thrusts us into the brand new period of Physician Who. A creature from past the universe who sees all of existence by means of an amoral lens of video games and play, the Physician’s plan for defeating him includes difficult him to a recreation — solely, within the form of logic loopholes Physician Who’s so keen on deploying, the Toymaker calls for to play the following Physician — and shoots a beam proper by means of the Physician’s chest.

That is the place “The Giggle” falls aside. As a substitute of regenerating into Ncuti Gatwa’s Fifteenth Physician, one thing bizarre referred to as “bigeneration” occurs, and the Physician splits in two: David Tennant’s Tenth Physician and Gatwa’s Fifteenth. It’s not a brief factor, both — because the particular’s denouement performs out, it’s made very clear that Ten will stay alive and properly, albeit settling down into the function of Enjoyable Alien Uncle to Donna Noble’s household off display screen, whereas Fifteen goes off to do Physician Who issues. They every even get their very own TARDIS.

The entire thing smacks of cowardice. In making the wildly inconsistent determination to make the primary Black Physician a bizarre anomaly that retains the earlier white one in play, Gatwa’s Fifteen is now categorically not the Physician, undercut by the truth that the opposite man continues to be on the market, even when he by no means really reveals up.

There are charitable methods to learn why this occurred. Davies’ Physician Who work is finest characterised as extraordinarily sentimental, and his plots will ceaselessly toss out logical sense if the emotion of a scene is sensible to him. As a sentimental author, it’s very potential that Davies couldn’t bear to kill his most-loved Physician a second time, or that the symbolism of Tennant’s Physician wishing Gatwa’s good luck and sending him off struck him as extra emotionally befitting such a historic handoff. Taking a look at it this fashion, nevertheless, strains credulity, and there’s little cause anybody must be so beneficiant.

Physician Who, beneath the tone Davies himself set in 2005, has established itself as embracing a form of matter-of-fact progressivism that channeled the optimism of science fiction to indicate how humanity may, in truth, higher itself over time. To that finish, the sequence has usually — albeit clumsily — labored to be inclusive and compassionate in suits and begins, matter-of-factly introducing queer characters (together with Donna’s trans daughter Rose within the Sixtieth anniversary specials) and endeavoring to make the Physician’s world rather less lily-white. We might be higher, and the Physician was there to cheer us on.

Which makes this form of gaffe all of the extra irritating, and nearly retrograde. It’s the type of mistake you’d suppose distinguished creators had been finished making. Granted, the ending of this story is just not written but. We’re nonetheless in between seasons, with a Christmas particular episode left to present Gatwa’s Physician his first correct journey earlier than he kicks off his run in earnest in 2024. It’s potential that Davies plans to handle the best way “The Giggle” reads as making the primary Black Physician appear to be a carve-out that permits regressive holdouts to stay to “their” (white) Physician. TV is a serial medium, and the push and pull between viewers and artists is a part of the sport.

Gatwa, for his half, is unbelievable. Even with out pants — which he by no means manages to placed on earlier than the credit roll — the Fifteenth Physician shines in the previous couple of moments of “The Giggle,” with a smile that may gentle up the sky and an eagerness to see every little thing and go in all places. It’s a testomony to his expertise and allure that he makes it really feel like ready to see how this all performs out can be value it.