Doctor Who: Who-ology (Dr Who)
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LIKES:
Apples (Fourth, Eleventh)
Bananas (Ninth, Tenth)
Celery – it turns purple in the presence of certain gases in the Praxis range of the spectrum. And it’s good for your teeth (Fifth)
Chocolate Easter Eggs (Tenth)
Cocoa (First)
Coffee (Third, Ninth)
Fish fingers and custard (Eleventh)
Fruitcake (Fourth)
Garlic (Fourth)
Ginger beer (Fourth)
Gorgonzola (Third)
Gumblejack (Sixth)
Ice cream (Second)
Jammy dodgers (Eleventh)
Jelly babies (Second, Fourth, Seventh, Eighth)
Lemon sherbets (Second)
Lime and soda (Tenth)
Liquorice Allsorts (Fourth)
Mutton broth and bread (Third)
Patty cake biscuit (Second)
Pomegranates (First)
Porridge with a dash of salt (Fourth)
Pork, potatoes, carrots (Second)
Scones (Eleventh)
Tea – the Third Doctor liked a cup of tea so much that only the Brigadier and the tea lady were allowed into his lab (Terror of the Autons) (Second, Third, Fourth, Fifth, Seventh, Eighth, Ninth, Tenth, Eleventh)
Wine (Burgundy) (Third)
DISLIKES:
Apples (Eleventh)
Bacon (Eleventh)
Baked beans (Eleventh)
Bread and butter (Eleventh)
Burnt toast (Seventh)
Carrot juice (Sixth)
Carrots (Eleventh)
Pears (Tenth)
Wine (Eleventh)
Yoghurt (Eleventh)
ONE LUMP OR TWO?
The Third Doctor’s sweet tooth sees him stirring a very worrying four spoons (at least!) of sugar into his hot, sweet UNIT tea. (Invasion of the Dinosaurs)
The Ninth Doctor has just two lumps of sugar in his tea. (The Unquiet Dead)
FOOD THE DOCTOR CLAIMS HE INVENTED
Banana Daiquiri (The Girl in the Fireplace)
Pasta (Pond Life)
Yorkshire pudding (The Power of Three)
THE DOCTOR’S ABILITIES
‘Dramatic recitations, singing, tap dancing. I can play the Trumpet Voluntary in a bowl of live goldfish.’
The Doctor, The Talons of Weng-Chiang
Over the years the Doctor has displayed all manner of talents. Although different incarnations have different skills, so far the Doctor has been seen to:
Hypnotise people, with or without fob watches (various)
Perfectly mimic other beings (The Celestial Toymaker)
Regenerate into an entirely new body when his old one is damaged beyond repair or ‘wearing a bit thin’ (various, see The Regeneration Game)
Regenerate the very clothes he’s wearing (The Tenth Planet). He even manages to regenerate a pair of boots into shoes in Logopolis too!
Sense danger. When Dalek agents stole his TARDIS in 20th-century London, the Doctor claimed he could feel his enemies ‘closing in all around’. Of course, he may have just been melodramatic. (The Evil of the Daleks) He’d previously sensed that there was something alien about the Post Office Tower in The War Machines, saying his skin had a pricking sensation, just as it did when Daleks were near.
Resist alien truth machines (The War Games)
Place himself into a coma to recover from certain injuries, such as being grazed by a bullet (Spearhead from Space)
Transmigrate objects such as reels of tape (The Ambassadors of Death)
Withstand considerably more G-force than mere humans (The Ambassadors of Death)
Survive extreme drops in temperature (The Daemons)
Experience premonitions through the medium of dreams (The Time Monster)
React ten times faster than a human – or so he claimed while driving Bessie at speed (The Time Monster)
Telepathically communicate with his TARDIS (The Time Monster)
Link minds with other Time Lords. (The Three Doctors)
Reduce his body temperature to speed up the healing process (Planet of the Daleks)
Escape the effects of manipulated time fields (The Invasion of the Dinosaurs)
Put himself into a trance-like complete sensory withdrawal (The Monster of Peladon)
Type faster than any secretary, human or otherwise (Robot)
Withstand strangulation thanks to his respiratory bypass system (Pyramids of Mars)
Understand foreign and alien languages (The Masque of Mandragora), a Time Lord gift he can share with his companions – although the TARDIS is later revealed to play a part in this (The End of the World)
Survive extreme heat (The Hand of Fear)
Shatter glass by singing a single note (The Power of Kroll)
Detect jumps in time (City of Death)
Mirror-write (City of Death)
Speed-read (City of Death, Rose)
Survive the sub-zero temperatures of space for six minutes (Four to Doomsday)
Bowl a left handed googlie (Four to Doomsday)
Cure concussion in others by tweaking their earlobe (Remembrance of the Daleks)
Convince people to obey his will through the power of words alone (Battlefield)
Render people helpless by simply applying his fingers to their heads (Battlefield, Survival)
Ease pain with a mere touch (Curse of Fenric)
Write different things with two hands simultaneously (The Curse of Fenric)
Forge signatures from memory (The Curse of Fenric)
Expel foreign bodies such as a medical probe from his cardiovascular system, even breaking his skin in the process (Doctor Who)
Pick pockets (various)
Slow down his perception of time to negotiate obstacles such as giant fan blades (The End of the World)
Speak five billion languages (The Parting of the Ways) including Baby (A Good Man Goes to War) and Horse (A Town Called Mercy)
Identify human blood types by taste (The Christmas Invasion) as well as viscum album, the oil of the mistletoe plant (Tooth and Claw), iron (The Idiot’s Lantern), the age of paint on a shed (The Eleventh Hour), and the mineral composition of grass (The Hungry Earth). He can also identify where an envelope was manufactured by licking it (Day of the Moon)
Re-grow appendages using residual regeneration energy – so long as the said appendage gets hacked off within the early hours of a regeneration. (The Christmas Invasion)
Absorb Roentgen radiation, channel it through his body and expel it – a trick he learnt with Roentgen bricks in the nursery (Smith and Jones)
Hear the TARDIS’s operations from a considerable distance (The Sound of Drums)
Identify the decade by smelling the air (although the appearance of a vintage car may help) (The Unicorn and the Wasp)
Expel a dose of cyanide by stimulating the inhibited enzymes into reversal. All he needs is some added protein, ginger beer, salt and a snog. From Donna (The Unicorn and the Wasp)
Open the TARDIS with a click of his fingers (Forest of the Dead)
Wipe memories (Journey’s End)
Play football to a surprisingly high standard (The Lodger)
Transfer memories by means of a head-butt (The Lodger)
Share his regenerative energy with other Time Lords, (The Angels Take Manhattan) an ability shared by River Song (Let’s Kill Hitler)
OTHER TIME LORD ABILITIES
Susan shows evidence of telepathy in The Sensorites.
The Time Lords in The War Games are able to inflict extreme pain with just the power of their minds.
The Master shares the Doctor’s mimicry talents. He is able to perfectly impersonate the Brigadier in The Time Monster.
Morbius shields his mind from the psychic probing of the Sisterhood of Karn. (Pyramids of Mars)
Romana feigns death by stopping both her hearts. (Destiny of the Daleks)
Professor Chronotis manipulates the beating of his twin hearts in time to Gallifreyan Morse. (Shada
)
The Master merges his decaying Time Lord body with that of another life form. (The Keeper of Traken) He subsequently transforms his mortal remains into a gloopy, slime-snake that inhabits and reanimates Bruce the ambulance driver’s body. In this form he also spits out deadly, paralysing mucus. (Doctor Who)
THE MANY WIVES OF DOCTOR WHO
‘Look, sorry. I’ve got a bit of a complex life. Things don’t always happen to me in quite the right order. Gets a bit confusing at times. Especially at weddings. I’m rubbish at weddings. Especially my own.’
The Doctor, Blink
THE DOCTOR’S FIRST MARRIAGE
The Doctor very rarely mentions his family but, over the years, he has let slip a few details. In The Tomb of the Cybermen, the Second Doctor tells Victoria that the memory of his family sleeps in his mind, while years later, in The Curse of Fenric, the Seventh Doctor admits he doesn’t know if he has any family any more. In The Empty Child, Doctor Constantine confides that he has been a father and a grandfather but the Second World War has left him as neither. The Doctor comments that he knows the feeling.
When he left Gallifrey, the First Doctor was travelling with his granddaughter, Susan Foreman (An Unearthly Child), and the Tenth Doctor tells Rose Tyler that he ‘was a dad once’ (Fear Her). It’s fair to assume that he had a partner, maybe even a wife, and that she was probably Gallifreyan, as Susan was brought up on the Doctor’s home planet.
Later, when faced with his new daughter, Jenny (see Other Notable Relations) the Doctor says that he can see his family in her, the hole they left and the pain that filled it. He claims that when they died, part of him died with them.
MARRIAGE TO QUEEN ELIZABETH I
In The End of Time, the Doctor boasts that he married ‘Good Queen Bess’. He later suggests, in The Wedding of River Song, that ‘Liz the First’ waited in a glade to elope with him.
Others are aware of this royal wedding, too. On Starship UK (The Beast Below), Queen Liz 10 needles the Time Lord about his relationship with the Virgin Queen (he’s ‘a bad, bad boy’ apparently) while the Dream Lord points out the Doctor’s love of redheads, specifically mentioning poor old Lizzy (Amy’s Choice).
For whatever reason, the liaison, it seems, did not go well. Elizabeth herself doesn’t seem too happy to see her former hubby at the Globe theatre in 1599. In fact, as soon as she claps eyes on the Tenth Doctor she orders his decapitation! That must have been some break-up (The Shakespeare Code).
If all this wasn’t complicated enough, at one point Amy Pond (the Doctor’s mother-in-law from his fourth marriage) accidentally married Henry VIII (the Doctor’s father-in-law from his second marriage) while she was still married to Rory. To add insult to injury, the muddled matrimony happened on the Ponds’ wedding anniversary.
The First Doctor uses a Time-Space Visualiser to spy on a conversation between Queen Elizabeth I and William Shakespeare in The Chase. Little does the old rogue know he’s looking at his future trouble and strife.
MARRIAGE TO MARILYN MONROE
24 December 1952. The Doctor attends a party in Hollywood, California with the young Kazran Sardick and his sweetheart, Abigail. Just as he is about to sing a duet with Frank Sinatra, the Doctor somehow manages to ‘accidentally’ get engaged to Marilyn Monroe. The Time Lord tries to skedaddle, but there is no escape – Marilyn has already booked a cab to the chapel. The Doctor reluctantly slopes off to marry the model-turned-actress.
Do they go through with the wedding? Well, when Marilyn later manages to phone the TARDIS, the Doctor questions the chapel’s legitimacy… (A Christmas Carol)
‘Yes, I made some cocoa and got engaged.’
The Doctor, The Aztecs
This isn’t the first time the Doctor has accidentally got engaged. The First Doctor cosies up to an elderly Aztec woman called Cameca, making her a nice cup of cocoa. Little does he know that such an act is a proposal of marriage. The man just can’t help himself. Although the Doctor reveals a lovable sentimental streak as he leaves Mexico with the brooch his fiancée gave him – harrumphing all the way, of course. (The Aztecs)
MARRIAGE TO RIVER SONG
How many times have we heard this story? Boy meets girl, girl kills boy, girl tries to stop herself killing boy and so creates a slowly disintegrating bubble universe where all time is happening at once, boy tries to persuade girl to really kill him after all in order to save the universe, boy marries girl to seal the deal (revealing the extent of his cunning plan in the middle of the ceremony). Boy kisses girl. Girl kills boy. Boy survives by encasing himself in a robot double of his own body. They live happily ever after. (The Wedding of River Song)
But if the Doctor married River in an aborted time line, in front of alternative versions of her parents, did the wedding actually take place? Then there’s the fact that he didn’t actually tell her his name – possibly invalidating the ceremony in the first place. Nothing’s straightforward when it comes to the Doctor and weddings.
THE DOCTOR’S TWIN – THE OTHER DOCTOR
While on the run from Harold Saxon, Martha thought the Doctor was about to admit that the Master was his evil brother. However, a year later, the Doctor was about to be blessed with a brother – of sorts. And it all started with a swordfight on an alien ship…
LONDON, 25 DECEMBER 2006
The newly regenerated Tenth Doctor gets his hand chopped off by the Sycorax Leader on a spaceship hovering above London. The severed appendage tumbles down into the capital. (The Christmas Invasion)
LONDON
The hand is recovered, possibly by Torchwood, and finds itself in the care of Captain Jack Harkness, who is looking for a way to escape from Earth. He pops it in a jar and keeps it close to him – his very own ‘Doctor Detector’.
CARDIFF, FEBRUARY 2008
The TARDIS materialises in Cardiff to refuel. In Torchwood’s base beneath Cardiff Bay, the nutrients around the Doctor’s hand start bubbling, indicating that the Time Lord is nearby. Hearing the TARDIS, Jack stashes the hand’s jar in his backpack and finds the time machine just as it dematerialises. Jack clings on to the side of the Police Box and hitches a lift. (Utopia)
MALCASSAIRO, 100 TRILLION
The Doctor is reunited with his former hand, which stays on board the TARDIS after the Time Lord, Jack and Martha defeat the Master back on 21st-century Earth. (Last of the Time Lords)
LONDON, 2009
During the Dalek occupation of Earth, the Doctor is shot by a Dalek and is dragged into the TARDIS by his companions, where he starts to regenerate. As soon as the regenerative energy has repaired the damage to his body, the Doctor siphons the additional energy into his handy spare hand – a perfect bio-match. (Journey’s End)
THE CRUCIBLE THE MEDUSA CASCADE, 2009
The Daleks drop the TARDIS containing Donna and the Doctor’s spare hand into a core of Z-neutrino energy to destroy it. Instead, the hand comes into contact with Donna and, packed with all that regenerative juice, triggers an instantaneous biological metacrisis. In layman’s terms, the hand grows into a partial copy of the Doctor, part Time Lord, part human – his twin. While the new Doctor shares the original Doctor’s memories and feelings, he also inherits some of Donna’s personality, only has one heart, cannot regenerate and will age like a normal human. Isn’t that wizard?
BAD WOLF BAY ALTERNATIVE EARTH, 2009
After the new Doctor commits genocide by wiping out the Daleks, the Doctor entrusts him to the care of his former companion Rose Tyler. As the TARDIS leaves the alternative universe, the new Doctor and Rose kiss. (Journey’s End)
THE DOCTOR’S COMPANION – THE TARDIS
‘Look at you pair. It’s always you and her, isn’t it, long after the rest of us have gone. A boy and his box, off to see the universe.’
Amy, The Doctor’s Wife
There is one constant in the Doctor’s life – his TARDIS. When the TARDIS’s living soul was dropped into the body of the young woman Idris, we learnt a few things about his relationship
with his Type 40 TT-capsule:
The TARDIS is an eleven-dimensional matrix and was already a museum piece when the Doctor was young.
The first time he touched the TARDIS console, he said she was the most beautiful thing he had ever known.
When they’re alone, the Doctor calls the TARDIS ‘sexy’.
In the past, when they’ve materialised where the Doctor didn’t want to be, it was because the TARDIS was taking him where he needed to go.
The TARDIS thinks of the Doctor’s other companions as ‘strays’. She thinks of the Doctor as ‘her thief’.
THE DOCTOR’S DAUGHTER – JENNY
The Tenth Doctor unexpectedly became a father again on the planet Messaline in the year 6012 (The Doctor’s Daughter). Captured by human soldiers, the Doctor was forced to give a tissue sample against his will. The soldier’s progenation machine extrapolated the Doctor’s DNA, creating a female soldier whose first words – after being handed a rifle – were ‘Hello, Dad’.
When the Doctor described his new daughter as a ‘generated anomaly’, his companion Donna christened her Jenny, a name which the Doctor thought was as good as anything. However, as they tried to unravel the mystery of the Messaline war, the Doctor began to build a connection with Jenny, only to have her cruelly snatched away when she took a bullet meant for him. He left the planet, believing her dead, but Jenny revived after his departure. Taking a shuttle, she blasted off into the universe, ready to follow in Dad’s footsteps – saving planets, rescuing civilisations, defeating creatures and running an awful lot.
HOW TO GROW SOLDIERS USING A MESSALINE PROGENATION MACHINE
Take a sample of diploid cells.
Split the diploid cells into haploids.
Recombine haploids into new diploids in a different arrangement.
Accelerate growth into full adult.