The Giggle (event)
The Giggle was an infection caused by the Toymaker that made every human believe that they were inherently correct, which was coded into the laugh of Stooky Bill. (TV: The Giggle)
History
Background
As the Fourteenth Doctor reflected, the First Doctor first met the Toymaker after letting the TARDIS fall into his realm. Though the young Doctor escaped after beating the Toymaker at his Trilogic Game, the Toymaker was eventually enabled to enter the Doctor's universe with "delight" (TV: The Giggle [+]Loading...["The Giggle (TV story)"], The Celestial Toymaker [+]Loading...["The Celestial Toymaker"]) when the Fourteenth Doctor called upon the superstition of salt warding off evil to hold back the Not-things while at the edge of the universe, where "the walls [were] thin", (TV: Wild Blue Yonder [+]Loading...["Wild Blue Yonder (TV story)"]) the fact that he had "played a game" resulted in the Toymaker being "let in".
Running amok, the Toymaker played games with players across the universe, including the Guardians of Time and Space, whom he turned into voodoo dolls, and "God", whom he turned into a jack-in-the-box after gambling with Him. He would go on to claim to have "made a jigsaw out of [the Doctor's] history", a claim which shocked the Fourteenth Doctor, (TV: The Giggle [+]Loading...["The Giggle (TV story)"]) who was still distraught over what he had learned about apparently being the Timeless Child. (TV: Wild Blue Yonder [+]Loading...["Wild Blue Yonder (TV story)"]) He encountered the Spy Master, who was "dying", (TV: The Giggle [+]Loading...["The Giggle (TV story)"]) his body "failing" due his botched plan to hijack the Doctor's body through a forced regeneration. (TV: The Power of the Doctor [+]Loading...["The Power of the Doctor (TV story)"]) The Master "begged for his life with one final game", but he lost, whereupon the Toymaker imprisoned him inside his gold tooth "for all eternity". The only person the Toymaker avoided playing against was an entity he called "the One Who Waits", claiming to have "seen it hiding" and simply run away. (TV: The Giggle [+]Loading...["The Giggle (TV story)"])
Legacy
On 1 December 2023, when asked about her life during an interview with Davina McCall on a television programme, Ruby Sunday listed "the pandemic, [...] the recession, and the Giggle" as events she had recently lived through. (PROSE: The Church on Ruby Road [+]Loading...{"page":"6","chaptnum":"Two","1":"The Church on Ruby Road (novelisation)"})
The Fifteenth Doctor inferred that the Goblins were "the legacy" of the Toymaker, whose legions had followed him (PROSE: The Church on Ruby Road [+]Loading...{"page":"100","chaptnum":"Thirteen","1":"The Church on Ruby Road (novelisation)"}) into the universe after the Fourteenth Doctor inadvertently summoned him at the edge of the universe. (TV: Wild Blue Yonder [+]Loading...["Wild Blue Yonder (TV story)"], The Giggle [+]Loading...["The Giggle (TV story)"]) Indeed, after the Fifteenth Doctor negated a cracked timeline the Goblins created, they faded from view, as though they had been erased from existence, or pulled back into another world. (PROSE: The Church on Ruby Road [+]Loading...{"page":"137","chaptnum":"Eighteen","1":"The Church on Ruby Road (novelisation)"})
