Fictional tool used by the titular character in Doctor Who
Sonic screwdriver
Doctor Who television series element
The Twelfth Doctor's second sonic screwdriver, first seen in 2015, as a toy made by Character Options.
Publisher
BBC
First appearance
Fury from the Deep
16 March 1968
Created by
(Series)
Sydney Newman
C. E. Webber
Donald Wilson
(Story) Victor Pemberton
Genre
Science fiction
In-universe information
Type
Hand tool
Function
Various, see Functions
Affiliation
The Doctor
The sonic screwdriver is a fictional multifunctional tool[1] in the British science fiction television programme Doctor Who and its spin-offs, used by the Doctor. Like the TARDIS, it has become one of the icons of the programme, and spin-off media such as The Sarah Jane Adventures and Torchwood have replicated its functions in devices such as the sonic lipstick, sonic blaster, sonic probe, sonic modulator and sonic cane.
The sonic screwdriver was introduced in 1968 in the story Fury from the Deep, and used twice more (The Dominators and The War Games) during the Second Doctor's tenure. It became a popular tool for the Third Doctor and Fourth Doctor. It was written out of the series in 1982 due to the limitations it caused when writing for the show. It then featured briefly in the 1996 Doctor Who television movie, before making a full return in the 2005 continuation of the series.
Throughout the programme, there have been many different versions of the sonic screwdriver, as with subsequent Doctors the design of it was changed. It has also been destroyed on a number of occasions, thus leading to the introduction of the next model. Not all iterations of the Doctor have used the sonic screwdriver on screen; the Fifth Doctor in fact opted not to replace his after it was destroyed in "The Visitation".
The Twelfth Doctor loses his sonic screwdriver to the creator of the Daleks, Davros, after lending it to him when he was a child. In the last episode of Series 9, the Doctor received a new sonic screwdriver from the TARDIS in place of the sonic sunglasses he had been using temporarily in the meantime.
Despite the Doctor's claim not to give his screwdriver to anyone, he gives one to his own doppelgänger in "The Rebel Flesh", and gives his to Rory Williams in "The Girl Who Waited" after having either given or loaned one to him for use in "A Good Man Goes to War" and loaning him one in "The Big Bang". He also gives one to River Song in "The Husbands of River Song" which is then used by the Tenth Doctor to save her life in "Forest of the Dead".
^Malankar, Nikhil (28 March 2017). "Sonic Screwdriver: 50 Uses of This Device From Doctor Who". Tell Me Nothing. Archived from the original on 9 August 2017. Retrieved 9 August 2017.
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