It is all but impossible to discuss the final Doctor Who 60th anniversary special, The Giggle, without some rather hefty spoilers. Suffice it to say many rumors regarding the special proved to be true. Even the unlikely ones. Especially the unlikely ones.

The Giggle picks up where Wild Blue Yonder ended, with the Earth of 2023 falling into chaos. A psychic plague causes everyone to act like they are right about everything. With the aid of UNIT, The Doctor (David Tennant) and Donna Noble (Catherine Tate) trace the plague to the first television broadcast. This heralds the return of one of The Doctor’s most powerful enemies (Neil Patrick Harris) and the arrival of the Fifteenth Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa.)

I can say, without hyperbole, that The Giggle opened the door for a new era of Doctor Who. Yet the special also honors the past and what came before, improving upon certain aspects of the classic series that have not aged well.

The best example of this is the appearance of Bonnie Langford. She played computer programmer Melanie “Mel” Bush without ever being allowed to handle a computer as a companion to the Sixth and Seventh Doctors. The Giggle reveals she now has a job with UNIT and gets to do more than scream at monsters.

Neil Patrick Harris almost steals the show, with his role allowing him ample chance to play upon his talents for song, dance, and magic. Yet the episode’s real MVP is Ncuti Gatwa. I do not believe any Doctor in recent memory has had so strong a first appearance.

Charismatic and cunning, it falls to Gatwa to be the capstone on what came before while selling some splendid technobabble. In my opinion, he hit the ground running and won the gold on his first try. Tennant and Tate are also allowed to give their characters more satisfying send-offs than one might expect given the past few years of Doctor Who.

Where the series will go next is anyone’s guess. Rumors of a UNIT spinoff and other series centered around the past Doctors have been hinted at. The Giggle offers enough dropped clues to set fans to theorizing.

Whatever does come next, it cannot be denied that Russell T. Davies has restored the mysticism of Doctor Who and the idea that anything and everything might happen. “People made of smoke and cities made of song” are just the start of it. Thankfully, we only have two weeks to wait for more.