10 Greatest CGI Moments In Doctor Who History
5. The Toymaker Flat-Packs (The Giggle)
By the time the 60th anniversary rolled around, CGI technology had expanded wildly since 2005 and so too had the Doctor Who budget. Now under the Disney umbrella, the possibilities were near-endless in what could be achieved. While some uses of CGI left me baffled as to what the hell they were thinking – looking at you, corridor scene in Wild Blue Yonder – others left me equally baffled as to how on earth they managed to achieve it.
This is absolutely the case with the Toymaker’s final moments in The Giggle. After the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Doctors defeat the Toymaker in an epic game of catch, he suddenly begins to flatten and fold up, before falling into his boxed prison. What’s so impressive about this scene is how seamless the merging of real life and CGI is. Neil Patrick Harris is delivering dialogue throughout this transformation which blurs the lines even further. You cannot tell where the practical performance ends and the CGI begins.
To this day, my mind is still boggled by this sequence. Full of the tongue-in-cheek charm so intrinsic to Doctor Who while also showcasing immense skill from the VFX team. This demonstration brought optimism for what Disney Doctor Who would look like moving forward... and then came along Space Babies a few months later.