Sonic screwdriver
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The sonic screwdriver is a fictional tool in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who. Its most common function is to operate virtually any lock, mechanical or electronic, and thus open doors for escape or exploration, or seal them for protection. The screwdriver is useless against wood (Series 4, episode 8, "Silence in the Library").It has also been used for repairing equipment, as an offensive weapon, and occasionally even to drive screws. Like the TARDIS, it has become one of the icons of the programme, and is closely associated with the Doctor.
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[edit] History
[edit] The original series
The sonic screwdriver made its first appearance in the serial Fury from the Deep, written by Victor Pemberton. It was then used by the Second Doctor as a multi-purpose tool from that point, with occasional variations in appearance over the course of the series. However, ownership of the concept was retained by the BBC, much to the chagrin of Pemberton, who later told an interviewer for Doctor Who Magazine, "I'm very cross that the sonic screwdriver — which I invented — has been marketed with no credit to myself. ... It's one thing not to receive any payment, but another not to receive any credit."[1]
Its abilities varied somewhat from story to story and the way it worked was never explicitly explained. However, the name implies that it operates through the use of sound waves to remotely exert physical forces on objects, such as the mechanisms inside locks. (The name also implies that it is used to drive screws, so that may be best taken with a grain of salt. However, it may have originally been made for that function, but was capable of doing much more.) In The Three Doctors, it functions as a radiation detector. In The Sea Devils the Doctor used it to detonate land mines from a distance, which he did again later in Robot. This particular model had a movable section that bobbed up and down when in use. Also in Robot, the Doctor used the screwdriver as a "miniature sonic lance" to cut out a lock.
The Doctor's Time Lady companion Romana constructed a sonic screwdriver of her own, first seen during the Fourth Doctor serial City of Death. It was smaller and sleeker than the Doctor's, and he was sufficiently impressed with her design that he attempted (unsuccessfully) to swap screwdrivers with her in Horns of Nimon.
The sonic screwdriver was written out of the series in 1982 when it was destroyed by a Terileptil in the Fifth Doctor serial The Visitation in order to prevent the Doctor from escaping captivity. This was done by Eric Saward on the instructions of producer John Nathan-Turner, who felt that the device had become an easy way out for writers, since the Doctor could use it to get out of just about any situation.
Saward had written out the sonic screwdriver believing that the Doctor would simply get a replacement from the TARDIS. However, Nathan-Turner did not want such a scene at the end of this story, or any others (although a scene of this nature did eventually occur at the end of "Smith and Jones"). The reason given was that the use of a device that could save the day in any way possible was very limiting for the script [2]. The series remained sonic screwdriver-free until it ceased production in 1989 (although the Sixth Doctor was occasionally seen using a "sonic lance") and it was not until the 1996 Doctor Who telemovie that the Doctor was seen to have a sonic screwdriver again, with a design that could be telescoped out for use and collapsed again when finished. The Tenth Doctor joked about the Fifth Doctor's lack of sonic screwdriver in the mini-episode Time Crash, by commenting on how he "went hands-free" and could "save the Universe using a kettle and some string".
[edit] The new sonic screwdriver
A completely redesigned sonic screwdriver, with a glowing blue light in addition to the sound effect, appeared in the 2005 series revival and the subsequent episodes that have followed. In its first incarnation, the prop used in the new series was notoriously fragile and was prone to breaking at the slightest strain. The toy version (made by Character Options Ltd.) was slightly larger to accommodate a working pen (with swappable ordinary and ultraviolet ink nibs), sound effects and batteries. It also includes an ultraviolet torch for viewing messages written in the ultraviolet ink. The Doctor Who production team at BBC Wales were so impressed by how much more resilient the toy sonic screwdriver was than the real prop, that they asked for and obtained moulds of the toy to use in the 2006 series.[3] The new prop is 7 inches long, like the toy, as opposed to the 5.75 inch version of the 2005 series. There are two differences between the sonic screwdriver prop and toy: The sonic screwdriver toy has two buttons on the side of the slider, while the actual prop has only one button on the slider; the sonic screwdriver prop also has a texture which is more like cracked ivory than the toy's beige plastic.
The new sonic screwdriver seems to derive from the same technology as the new TARDIS console, with the extended portion of the prop bearing a resemblance to the central column of the console. In contrast with Nathan-Turner's attitude that the sonic screwdriver should not be used as a cure-all, the new production team gave it even more functions than previous versions. However, the massive new functionality has only been used as a "fix all" device when they are trying to avoid lags in the plot of an episode.[original research?]
Some of the uses in the new TV series include: fixing a decades-broken Vortex Manipulator in a matter of seconds; deactivating an Auton arm; detecting and sending signals; intercepting teleportation; remotely activating processes inside the TARDIS; burning, cutting, or igniting substances; fusing metal; amplifying or augmenting sound, usually to stun or incapacitate an enemy; and, occasionally, driving screws. In the episode "World War Three", the Doctor grabs a bottle of port from a side table and threatens to "triplicate the flammability" of the alcohol with the sonic screwdriver, immolating himself and a group of Slitheen that are menacing him, however one of the Slitheen then claims that he is making it up and the Doctor is forced to rethink his strategy.
The sonic screwdriver was used as a joke on occasion: Jack Harkness criticised the concept in "The Doctor Dances" by asking "Who looks at a screwdriver and thinks 'hmm, that could be a bit more sonic'?", and Martha Jones asked if the Doctor also had a "Laser Spanner" in "Smith and Jones". According to a line in "The Doctor Dances", the Doctor actually created his sonic screwdriver because he was "bored [...] having a long night [and] had a load of cabinets to put up".
In "Doomsday", The Doctor states that the sonic screwdriver does not kill, wound or maim. In several episodes, including "The Christmas Invasion", "The Runaway Bride", "The Lazarus Experiment" and The Infinite Quest, the Tenth Doctor brandishes or uses it in a threatening manner. He occasionally goes so far as to use it to damage or destroy an enemy; however, in these instances the screwdriver is used to remotely disassemble a robotic enemy or turn an object into a weapon to use against a living enemy, not to kill or harm a living being directly. In "Partners in Crime" a beam from it was used to make Miss Foster drop her sonic pen; the pen can be observed to spark briefly just before she drops it, suggesting that he caused the pen to shock her.
In several episodes, it has been shown unable to open objects locked with a "deadlock seal"; this is often used as a recurring plot device when the writers want the Doctor to be trapped somewhere. Also, in "Silence in the Library", while trying to open a wooden door, the Doctor told Donna that the sonic screwdriver didn't do wood. In "The Long Game", "The Parting of the Ways" and "Utopia" it is shown operating and affecting various TARDIS controls from outside the vehicle; when the Doctor attempts to counteract the Master's theft of TARDIS, the bulb portion extends. During "Smith and Jones", the sonic screwdriver eventually burns out after the Doctor uses it to amplify the radiation output of a hospital X-ray machine. The Doctor, though initially saddened at the loss of the screwdriver, obtains a new one from the TARDIS at the conclusion of the episode.
[edit] Related devices
- In the 2005 episodes "The Empty Child" and "The Doctor Dances", Jack Harkness uses a "sonic blaster" (referred to by Rose Tyler as a "squareness gun") capable of disintegrating structures ("digitizing" them) and then reversing the damage done, among other functions.
- In The Sarah Jane Adventures, Sarah Jane Smith wields a "sonic lipstick", which is a gift the Tenth Doctor gave her alongside a new model of K-9At which point the doctor also breaks K-9 with the Sonic screwdriver "to protect the technology" another interaction in which the sonic screwdriver is used to destroy an object as seen in "School Reunion".[4] In terms of functionality, it is much like the sonic screwdriver, used primarily for opening and closing locked doors. Like the sonic screwdriver, the sonic lipstick was also created and promoted as a children's toy by Character Options.[5][6]
- In "Smith and Jones", the Doctor claims to have once owned a "laser spanner" until it was stolen by Emmeline Pankhurst, described by the Doctor as a "cheeky woman".
- In "The Sound of Drums", the Master reveals his laser screwdriver. Unlike the sonic screwdriver, it is used as a weapon that can kill as well as artificially age its target, with the aid of built-in technology developed by Lazarus Laboratories originally seen in "The Lazarus Experiment", and includes isomorphic controls, disabling the device outside of the Master's use. The design of the prop was meant to imply that the Master constructed it on Earth, and it was deliberately made larger than the Doctor's sonic screwdriver.[7] Like the Doctor's screwdriver and Sarah Jane's lipstick, the Master's laser screwdriver was also created as a children's toy by Character Options.[8]
- In the Doctor Who spin-off series Torchwood's series 2 episode "Fragments", genius Toshiko Sato's backstory reveals that she stole faulty designs from the Ministry of Defence and UNIT, which she used to construct a sonic device, referred to as a "sonic modulator", to trade to a terrorist organisation in exchange for her mother. The device is confiscated by UNIT, who imprison Toshiko until she is pardoned and recruited into Torchwood by Jack Harkness.
- In the series 4 episode "Partners in Crime", the "villain" Miss Foster is shown using a sonic device identified by her as a "sonic pen", which the Doctor describes as being "identical" to his screwdriver in functionality. This identicality means that, when held together with the screwdriver and operated simultaneously, they produce a painful high-pitched sound which shatters nearby glass. Its use also allows the Doctor to get into a computer core that has been "triple-deadlocked" by Foster. The Doctor later throws the sonic pen into a bin outside Adipose Industries. As with the sonic screwdriver, laser screwdriver and sonic lipstick, this has been made into a toy by Character Options. It is available in a double pack along with the sonic screwdriver. The screwdriver in this pack has a blue LED in the place of the ultraviolet light; the pen also features a blue LED light.
- In the episode "Silence in the Library", Professor River Song also possesses her own sonic screwdriver, which she claims to have been given by the Doctor himself. Hers is slightly bulkier and appears to be made from more antiquated materials but otherwise seems to function the same. The Doctor mentioned in this episode that he does not give his screwdriver to anyone. In the following episode, Professor Song mentions it has red settings and dampers, both of which the Doctor hasn't apparently added yet. Also, it contains a secret compartment which contains a neural relay to River Song, saving her at the episode's conclusion, which the future Doctor added and it being the reason the Doctor gave it to her.
[edit] Other appearances
[edit] Doctor Who and related media
The sonic screwdriver is mentioned frequently in licensed spin-off media. The canonicity of spin-off fiction is unclear (with the exception of the televised episodes of Torchwood referenced below).
- In the Big Finish audio drama Sword of Orion, the Eighth Doctor reveals that his sonic screwdriver has a torch built into the handle.
- In the Big Finish audio drama Blood of the Daleks the Eighth Doctor uses the sonic screwdriver to trace a transmission beam.
- In the Big Finish audio Pier Pressure Evelyn Smythe mentions that although the Sixth Doctor didn't possess a sonic screwdriver, he fondly remembered it as his "door key." The Sixth Doctor uses his fingernails as a stand-in for the screwdriver as an escape method in The Nowhere Place.
- The Seventh Doctor regained his sonic screwdriver in the Virgin New Adventures novels, with its first reappearance in The Pit, but it tended to be used rarely. The More Short Trips short story Special Weapons, set late in Season 24, indicates that the Seventh Doctor also has the Sonic Screwdriver. This same incarnation also uses the device in the Big Finish audios The Harvest and Dreamtime. His companions Ace and Hex use the device in the Doctorless audio The Veiled Leopard. In The Dying Days the Eighth Doctor used the device to reflect the sonic cannon of an Ice Warrior back at his attacker. The Virgin Missing Adventures novel Venusian Lullaby established that the First Doctor had one.
- The BBC Past Doctor Adventure Dreams of Empire by Justin Richards, set after The Ice Warriors and pre-dating Fury from the Deep, features the Second Doctor utilizing the device to break through a concrete wall. The novel The Murder Game, set much earlier and after The Power of the Daleks, has this Doctor escape from a locked room with a box-shaped sonic device, and muses on the advantages of building a smaller model. Stories with the device used by the Second Doctor before the screwdriver's first on-screen appearance are plausible as the Doctor in that story indicates that the machine "never fails," implying its successful use before that adventure.
- In the Eighth Doctor novel Alien Bodies, the Time Lord Homunculette has a sonic monkey wrench.
- A later Eighth Doctor novel, Father Time, features an amnesiac Doctor attempting to recreate the sonic screwdriver with 1980s technology, eventually producing a bulky device nicknamed the "sonic suitcase".
- The Sixth Doctor used a hand tool called a sonic lance in Attack of the Cybermen.
- In the New Series Adventures, it was used to cauterise wounds, as a soldering iron and to stop a clockwork mechanism (The Clockwise Man), to tie someone up to a chair by welding wires to the chair (Only Human) and to examine electronic standing stones (The Deviant Strain). However, some alien locks are impenetrable; in the Ninth Doctor Adventure Winner Takes All the Doctor fails to open a lock with it and concludes that it "hints at alien involvement". In The Monsters Inside and The Nightmare of Black Island, it was used simply to provide light, but in The Monsters Inside, it ran out of power in the process. In Only Human, the Doctor informs Quelly that it contains 29 computers. In The Stone Rose, it was used to sedate animals, and it in The Last Dodo it was used to distract them. Also in The Last Dodo it was used to liquefy tarmac, and then undo the process. (The Last Dodo) In another book, it is claimed that it has over 8500 different settings.[citation needed] In Peacemaker, it was used to stop bullets and to take apart guns.
- In the Torchwood episodes "Day One" and "End of Days", Captain Jack Harkness is seen to use a green device somewhat similar to a sonic screwdriver. Its origins and function are unknown.
- In the Torchwood episode "Greeks Bearing Gifts" a replica of the Doctor's sonic screwdriver can be seen on Toshiko Sato's desk. Toshiko also uses a "lockpick" device in a number of episodes which replicates the door-opening function of the screwdriver.
- In the Daleks video game (originally published for old operating systems of the early 80's), the sonic screwdriver is the only weapon that Dr. Who may use to teleport and defend himself against his robotic enemies, the Daleks.
- In the untitled story by Gary Russell featured in the first issue of IDW Publishing's Doctor Who comic book (published February 2008), the Tenth Doctor uses his sonic screwdriver to destroy a sword and later sacrifices it in order to defeat a Sycorax hunter. Later, he indicates that he needs time to "grow" a new sonic screwdriver.
[edit] Fan publications
[edit] Other media
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Trivia sections are discouraged under Wikipedia guidelines. The article could be improved by integrating relevant items and removing inappropriate ones. |
- A very similar pen-shaped multipurpose device called a "servo" was used by the intergalactic superspy Gary Seven in the 1968 Star Trek episode Assignment Earth. [9]
- The The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy text adventure game parodies the sonic screwdriver with tools such as the ultra-plasmic awl.
- In the BBC Radio 4 science-fiction comedy Nebulous, there is a parody of the sonic screwdriver in the sonic crowbar.
- In a The Catherine Tate Show Red Nose Day sketch, Catherine Tate's teenage tearaway character Lauren Cooper accuses her English teacher played by David Tennant of looking suspiciously like "the Doctor". After much provocation, he pulls out a sonic screwdriver and uses it to transform her into a Rose Tyler action figure.
- A sonic screwdriver briefly appears as an obtainable item (although it is never used for anything in the book) in the 1980s Fighting Fantasy book Sky Lord.
[edit] References
- ^ Cook, Benjamin (June 26, 2002). "Friend of the Earth". Doctor Who Magazine (318): 10-14.
- ^ Commentary on DVD of Castrovalva
- ^ "Toys and Games", BBC, 2005-07-26. Retrieved on 2006-10-29.
- ^ The Sarah Jane Adventures - The Official Site (HTML). Mr Smith's Attic Explorer. BBC. Retrieved on 2006-12-21. (UK Access Only)
- ^ C21 Media (January 30, 2007). "Licensees for Charlie and Lola, Sarah Jane". Press release. Retrieved on 2007-01-30.
- ^ Sarah Jane Adventures: Electronic Sonic Lipstick With Wrist Scanner @ Forbidden Planet - The Online Entertainment Megastore for Doctor Who and Star Wars Action Figures
- ^ BBC - Doctor Who - Series Three concept Artwork Gallery
- ^ Amazon.co.uk: Doctor Who - The Master Laser Screwdriver: Toys & Games
- ^ Servo - Memory Alpha, the Star Trek Wiki
