“Ah, the Sonic Screwdriver, that most divisive object in the New Who arsenal. First introduced at the end of the sixties, it was written out of the show in 1982 at the instruction of producer John Nathan-Turner. Along with several other members of the production crew, Nathan-Turner felt that giving the Doctor a device that let him unlock doors, weld metal, detonate explosives, and fix machinery limited the writers’ dramatic options—so the old faithful got zapped by a Terileptil in ‘The Visitation’ and the series soldiered on without it.”
—Tim Martin et al., Not everybody loves the Sonic Screwdriver, in The Daily Telegraph (2015)
In 2010, the British Museum and the BBC decided to grapple with Earth history. After four years of planning, and presented over a period of six months on BBC Radio 4, they detailed one hundred objects of past art and technology, all of which are in the British Museum, that tell a history of the world. The one hundred objects ranged from a Tanzanian million-year-old hand axe, and the statue of a Minoan bull-leaper from the ancient culture on Crete, to the ship’s chronometer from Darwin’s HMS Beagle. The Museum suggested that this landmark project told “a” history, not “the” history.
So, what better way to give a sense of time about the influence of Doctor Who on modern culture than to set up our own thought experiment? For want of space, we shall reduce our list from one hundred objects down to a magical ten. But we will retain the same intention to briefly tell the chronological tale of each artifact from “a” chosen history of the Doctor and his travels. Each entry is accompanied by a “science gravitas” footnote, where we try to weigh up the deep and philosophical resonances of the artifact concerned.
The Pandorica was built by the Alliance to stop the Doctor from inadvertently destroying all of creation and existence itself. According to legend it was the prison of a warrior or goblin who dropped out of the sky and tore the world apart, until a good wizard tricked it and locked it up.
Science gravitas: the Pandorica was a prison hidden under Stonehenge, a world heritage site constructed over five thousand years ago and, like the Doctor, a British cultural icon. How’s that for double-whammy gravitas? Downside: despite being described time and again by the Eleventh Doctor as the “perfect prison,” the Pandorica was easily opened using, yes, you guessed it, the Sonic Screwdriver.
Also known as the Galaxy Eater, the Moment was the most dangerous and powerful weapon in all of creation. The Moment was able to breach time locks and create tears in the fabric of creation known as time fissures. The Doctor had intended to use it to end The Last Great Time War. Built by the ancients of Gallifrey, its sophisticated operating system was so advanced it became sentient and took the form of Rose Tyler.
Science gravitas: Joining the long list of sci-fi superweapons, the Moment got its name as it was capable of destroying whole galaxies within a single moment. Almost like an anti–big bang. Kind of.
The Untempered Schism was an opening in space-time, a gap in the fabric of reality through which can be seen the whole of the Time Vortex. Like all Time Lords, the young Master was taken for his initiation ceremony at the age of eight, during which he gazed through the Untempered Schism, and went bonkers. From then on he heard constant drumming, which worsened with time. As a sufferer of tinnitus, I’ll bet that drumming can get on your nerves after a while. It’s said that exposure to the Schism over billions of years is what gave the Time Lords their ability to regenerate, and was a major influence in their evolution.
Science gravitas: One can think of stargazing as a kind of Untempered Schism. Stargazing is certainly a window on the space-time fabric of reality, and since the further out you look the further back in time you see, it’s also a kind of Time Vortex, though admittedly not very vortexy.
The Time Television, also known as the Space-Time Visualizer, was a device that allowed the observer to watch any event in history. With an origin in the misty history of the Whoniverse, these televisions were used to watch Queen Elizabeth I, William Shakespeare (whom my late father used to call Billy Waggledagger), and The Beatles.
Science gravitas: The Time Television could tune in to events all over the Whoniverse by converting neutrons of light energy (utter scientific nonsense) into electrical signals. Sadly, the televisions only seem to come in black and white, in perhaps one of the most profound technological mismatches in sci-fi history: able to tune into the Universe, but only in monochrome.
The Sash is one of four important items inherited and owned by each new president of the Time Lords. It was initially fashioned by the Solar Engineer Time Lord, Omega, to allow him to not be destroyed by the Eye of Harmony, which he also created.
Science gravitas: Can protect the wearer from being spaghettified by the awesome forces surrounding a black hole. Science: nothing can protect you from being spaghettified by the awesome forces surrounding a black hole.
This perfect cube (what cube isn’t perfect?) was the purpose for the entire sixteenth season of Doctor Who. It contains the elemental force of the Whoniverse and is said to maintain the equilibrium of time itself. It consists of six segments, scattered and hidden throughout time and space. The Doctor’s mission was to locate them. When they are assembled into the cube they provide Godlike powers, which are too dangerous for any being to possess. It’s so powerful that it can be used to stop the entire Whoniverse.
Science gravitas: Joins the long list of sci-fi superweapons (see the Moment on page 165).
Is the TARDIS key a significant artifact? It’s the key to the exterior door of the Doctor’s space-time machine, so that’s pretty significant. It can be found in a variety of shapes and designs, but the key goes far beyond that. The key is Gallifreyan technology that opens other TARDIS doors, glows when the TARDIS is about to materialize, acts as a kind of remote that brings the TARDIS back, and can only be destroyed by being dropped into lava.
Science gravitas: The Whoniverse equivalent of a universal remote for domestic appliances, or a car key fob.
“Handles” was the name given by the Eleventh Doctor to a cyberman head that he’d gotten from the Maldovarium Market. Once all the scraps and electrics had been scooped out, the Doctor found himself with a docile robot head, which would obey his commands. After many adventures, Handles began to corrode and lost all function, reducing the Doctor to tears. Handles is the longest-serving companion the Doctor has had, as he was on Trenzalore with the Doctor for the first three hundred years.
Science gravitas: Handles has similar qualities to Amazon’s Alexa (such as reducing you to tears), only less annoying.
Anything associated with the Mona Lisa, Earth’s most famous work of art, is bound to be weighty. Doctor Who’s version of the painting is that it was commissioned in multiples (i.e. there were six forgeries made). Except you can’t really call them forgeries as Leonardo da Vinci painted them all. The six copies were stored away in a secret Parisian cellar until 1979.
Science gravitas: The Fourth Doctor ensured that future X-ray machines would be able to identify the copies as they have the writing “THIS IS A FAKE” written somewhere on the work.
Similar to the popular movie franchise but decades earlier, the Matrix is a massive computer system on Gallifrey that can provide a simulated cyberspace. It’s kind of like a Time Lord virtual reality system where virtual worlds can be created. Not only can it be accessed by wearing tech, such as the Crown of Rassilon, but it can also be physically entered via an entrance known as the Seventh Door.
Science gravitas: It holds the combined knowledge of all past and present Time Lords, including the imprints of their personalities. This idea appears to predate many sci-fi stories about the transcendence of consciousness via computer uploading.