Delving into the secrets of Doctor Who's greatest gadget.
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00:00The Tardis? Bessie? The machine that goes ding? The Doctor has utilised countless devices
00:05over the decades, and the sonic screwdriver has been a constant almost from the beginning.
00:10It can fire off laser beams, blow stuff up, and double as a marker pen? Okay then. But
00:15there's so much more to this almighty gizmo than you might have realised. I'm Ellie
00:20with WhoCulture, here with 10 secrets of the sonic screwdriver you need to know.
00:2510. It's not as powerful as you think
00:28The most common criticism levelled at the sonic is that it's too strong, that it can
00:32get the Doctor and their crew out of any spot no matter how implausible. Stuck in a room?
00:37Screwdriver. Being attacked by a robot? Screwdriver. Need to whip up a three-course meal in ten
00:41minutes before your in-laws arrive? Well, not that this has ever been confirmed in the
00:45show, but the answer is still, probably, screwdriver.
00:48It's not the all-powerful device that many people think it is, though. There have been
00:52plenty of moments that have cut the metallic legs out from under this seemingly faultless
00:57gadget. In Bad Wolf, it's mentioned that the sonic can't open the deadlock seal attached
01:01to the door of the Big Brother house. Deadlock seals would return in School Reunion, The
01:05Time of Angels, and others, and have proved to be the sonic screwdriver's greatest enemy
01:09over the years. Well, those and something else as well, but we'll get to that later.
01:13The sonic can't open the TARDIS doors from the outside if they've been manually locked,
01:17as demonstrated when the Master did so in Utopia. And most bizarrely of all, the Tenth
01:21Doctor once revealed that his trusty screwdriver doesn't work in the presence of some hair
01:26dryers. If only the Daleks had hair to dry, they'd have stopped the Doctor centuries
01:29ago.
01:309. They weren't all original builds Though it's undergone several rebrands over
01:36the years, the sonic has always maintained the same basic design. A pocket-sized metallic
01:41cylinder with a button on the side and some sort of glowy thing at the end. Sounds about
01:45right? Yeah. So, you might be surprised to learn that despite having such a simple template,
01:49the Doctor Who team hasn't always brought it to life from scratch themselves.
01:53Take the Third Doctor's screwdriver from the 1970s. A longer looking shaft, stop it,
01:59with a yellow bit in the middle and a thin circular shape sitting on top, is quite a
02:02unique look for the sonic. And that might be because it was cobbled together from two
02:07props from an entirely different outlet. The BBC had bought a load of stuff from the recently
02:12defunct Century 21, the company behind Gerry Anderson shows like Thunderbirds and Joe 90.
02:18The Third Doctor's sonic was made from two items. The main bit was a recycled prop from
02:23the 1966 film Thunderbirds Are Go, while the transmitter on top was another recycled
02:34prop from an episode of Captain Scarlet. I mean, that's pretty cool, huh? Also, I know
02:38that they're completely different films and they're decades apart, but in researching
02:43this, I now have the busted Thunderbirds Are Go song stuck in my head from the early 2000s.
02:48You're welcome, you can all have that stuck in your heads as well now.
02:518. It works via psychic interface The sonic screwdriver is basically magic.
02:56It can do pretty much anything you want it to with the press of a single button. How
03:00does one little device do so many different things? Seriously. While the answer to this
03:04has never been expressly stated outright, it was sort of revealed in a throwaway line
03:08in the series 6 episode Let's Kill Hitler. With the 11th Doctor Amy and Rory in Nazi
03:13Germany pursuing a recently regenerated River Song, the best character ever, the sonic ends
03:17up in the hands of Mrs Pond, who is sucked into the Tesselecta along with Rory soon after.
03:23While attempting to use the sonic against the Tesselecta's antibodies, Rory tells
03:27her that it has a psychic interface, and that you should simply point and think to ward
03:31off their attackers. In other words, the sonic reads the mind of its user and does exactly
03:35what they're thinking. Fry some bacon, tune a guitar, turn regular glasses into sunglasses.
03:39Ugh. The possibilities are ridiculous. Now let's be honest, this is clearly a massive
03:43cop-out to get around the sonic's endless uses, but at least it's a cop-out that
03:47makes a certain amount of sense in-universe.
03:507. The 14th Doctor's is the Ultimate Sonic
03:54There's plenty to be excited about whenever a new Doctor comes around, and the chance
04:00to gawk at a new version of the sonic screwdriver is one of the most tantalising. Before Shooty
04:05Gatwa gets his fabulous hands on a version of his own, though, David Tennant will have
04:09another stint as the screwdriver's owner. And what a screwdriver it is.
04:14As explained in Doctor Who Magazine, the 14th Doctor's new bling pays homage to just about
04:19every single previous version of the beloved prop, with a few other surprises to boot.
04:23The cracked texture in the middle is a nod to the 9th and 10th Doctor's sonic, the
04:26four prongs that prop out of the casing are a callback to Matt Smith's, and the Master's
04:31laser screwdriver even gets a shout out too with the silver-slash-gold bit at the bottom.
04:36And the easter eggs do not stop there. The top part was designed to resemble a Dalek
04:41cannon, while the small circles next to the prongs are a nod to the roundels inside the
04:46TARDIS.
04:47Now, considering that 14 is going to be around for the 60th anniversary specials, it makes
04:50sense that his weapon of choice should celebrate his most iconic enemies, as well as his previous
04:55forms. Is it a weapon? There's a question for you. In the comments, let us know. Can
05:00the sonic screwdriver be considered a weapon or not?
05:036. Ace's Sonic Screwdriver
05:06Plenty of characters have wielded a sonic screwdriver, or a variation thereupon, over
05:11the years. There's the aforementioned laser screwdriver, Miss Foster's sonic pen from
05:15Partners in Crime, and who could forget good old Sarah Jane and her sonic lipstick.
05:20These are fine and all, but what about some examples from Classic Who? Any non-Doctor
05:24Sonics out there? Well, yes, there very nearly were. In the 1989 serial Battlefield, companion
05:30Ace was supposed to be given her own, newly constructed sonic. This may have acted as
05:34a precursor to her becoming a Time Lord in training, a plotline that would have materialised
05:39had the show not met its end later that year. For whatever reason, Ace's screwdriver was
05:43axed from the story's final plans.
05:45Though, out of all the Doctor's companions, doesn't Ace seem like the perfect choice
05:49to be given one of her own? With her bash-first-ask-questions-later attitude, it would be fun to see her wielding
05:54a weapon like the sonic. Again, is the sonic a weapon?
05:58But considering she's now a player in the new Who-niverse after the power of the Doctor,
06:02maybe now is the time to do what Battlefield didn't.
06:065. The Sonic Variations Speaking of alternate Sonics, the three we
06:11just mentioned are merely the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the insanely wide array of
06:16sonic devices that have appeared in the show over the decades. The 6th Doctor once wielded
06:21a sonic lance, which he used as a weapon against the Cybermen, there's the 11th Doctor's
06:25sonic cane from Let's Kill Hitler, and then perhaps the most divisive one of all, the
06:2912th Doctor's sonic sunglasses. Some people love them, some people hate them. You decide
06:34for yourself, I think you can tell how I feel about them. And all this is without even mentioning
06:38the sonic modulator built by Tosh in Torchwood, or Missy's sonic umbrella, and who could
06:43forget old Amy Pond's sonic-screw-up-note-sonic probe in The Girl Who Waited, or River Song's
06:48sonic trowel in The Husbands of River Song. There's also a sonic suitcase in the Expanded
06:52Universe which just begs so many questions. They might get a bit silly at times, but there's
06:57still something so joyous about seeing a variant crop up. Let's just hope no writer ever
07:01decides to invent the sonic underpants, because that might just cross a line.
07:064. It Originally Didn't Exist Imagine a world where the sonic screwdriver
07:11never became a thing. Think about how many classic moments wouldn't have happened,
07:15how many scrapes the Doctor would have got stuck in, and how many toys wouldn't have
07:18been sold. Oh, the horror. As it turns out, you don't need to imagine
07:22too hard, as this was very nearly the case. The script for 1968's Fury from the Deep
07:27initially called for Patrick Troughton's second Doctor to use a regular old screwdriver
07:32to inspect the metal box attached to the pipeline. But when production assistant and later Doctor
07:37Who director Michael Bryant saw this, he decided that it was too boring. Bryant pitched the
07:41idea of a special tool that operated using sound waves, and so visual effects designer
07:47Peter Day created a new bit of hardware to add to the Doctor's arsenal. Thanks to one
07:51crew member and their great suggestion, one of the most recognisable pieces of Who mythology
07:56was born. This story gets even weirder when you find
07:59out that Troughton didn't even use this new prop for the episode. He kept dropping
08:03the screwdriver due to some cold weather, so the whistle from Deborah Watling's life
08:07jacket was used instead. Oh, simpler times, eh?
08:103. Why It Doesn't Work on Wood There you go. You didn't think we'd miss
08:15this important fact, did you? In Series 4's Silence in the Library, Donna
08:19asks the Tenth Doctor to use his sonic screwdriver on a door. He replies that he can't because
08:24it's made of wood. Thus began the long-running gag that for all its wondrous abilities, the
08:28trusty screwdriver simply doesn't do wood. This joke ran throughout the entirety of Steven
08:33Moffat's time in charge, and has entered popular culture as one of the most well-known
08:37phrases in the show. The question is, though, why? Why doesn't it do wood?
08:41Series 8 pitted the Twelfth Doctor and Clara against a giant forest that covered the Earth
08:46overnight. This naturally spells big trouble for the sonic. After scanning a nearby tree,
08:51the Doctor notes that they have no circuits and no mechanism, and that the sonic interacts
08:56with any form of communication you care to mention. Sadly, trees have no moving parts
09:00and don't communicate. In other words, the sonic only works on machines
09:04and not on anything organic. If there was a robot with wood encasing, then it would
09:08work fine, but pure wood on its own? No chance. Maybe the Master should build an army of
09:13wooden monsters if they really want to come out on top. Why have none of the enemies ever
09:17thought of this? Seriously, you're missing a trick here.
09:202. It exists in real life. Sort of. Doctor Who has a weird habit of accidentally
09:26predicting our future. Things like NFTs, ice volcanoes, and Tenth Planets were all featured
09:32in the show before they became reality, and we might one day be able to add the sonic
09:36to that list too. In 2012, scientists working at the University of Dundee in Scotland developed
09:41an ultrasonic device capable of not just moving items but rotating them accurately. This breakthrough
09:47was hoped to give surgeons more freedom to use ultrasound to treat a number of conditions
09:52without the need to cut open the patient. While this real sonic screwdriver can't
09:55run thousands of calculations at the same time, it was still a landmark achievement
10:00in medical science. Like Doctor Who's own device, our sonic screwdriver is capable of
10:05much more than just spinning things around, said Dr. Mike McDonald of the Institute for
10:09Medical Science and Technology at Dundee. Doctor Who has been around for so long that
10:14its effects on everyday life are clear to see. Fingers crossed that the next Who-related
10:18invention is somebody figuring out how to make a fridge bigger on the inside than it
10:23is on the outside. Unlimited snacks? Yes, please.
10:261. It's the TARDIS's sibling. The first time the Tenth Doctor met Martha
10:31Jones, he spent more time worrying about his broken screwdriver than he did about the
10:35well-being of her patients, which, to be honest, sums up their relationship quite nicely.
10:40Ten fried his favourite toy after leaving it in an x-ray machine, resulting in an actually
10:45quite cool variation of the sonic, complete with some gnarly-looking burn damage.
10:50Concert artist Peter McKinstry, who also helped design the revamped Davros for the Series 4
10:55finale, was tasked with bringing the burnt screwdriver to life. In doing so, he revealed
11:00an interesting detail of the device's backstory. Along with his concept art, McKinstry noted that
11:05he designed the innards of the sonic, specifically those green crystals in the dome, as a nod to the
11:11Tenth Doctor's green time rotor at the centre of his TARDIS's console. He refers to the sonic as
11:16the TARDIS's little brother because they come from the same technology.
11:20Now, we've seen numerous times that the TARDIS can make a new sonic screwdriver,
11:24but the idea of them having this almost symbiotic relationship is something that's yet to be
11:28explored, but sounds really cool. Imagine if the sonic also comes to life one day,
11:33and then the Doctor fancies that too. I mean, that's got Moffat written all over it.
11:38And that's everything for this list, but since we've been talking about the TARDIS,
11:41which let's be honest is the Doctor's other favourite gadget, why not check out every TARDIS
11:46interior ranked, and you can let us know in the comments of that video whether you agree with
11:50our ranking or not. In the meantime, I've been Ellie with WhoCulture, and in the words of River
11:54Song herself, goodbye sweeties.