6 Iconic Doctor Who Gadgets We’d Like to See in Real Life

As the longest-running science fiction series on television, Doctor Who has fired the imagination of generations. The BBC series’ immense success is not just due to the talented actors who play the Doctors and their companions, but also to the unique science fiction concepts dreamed up by the writers and showrunners. At its core, Doctor Who offers a wish-fulfillment fantasy as expressed by the Doctors themselves. Pulled from their ordinary lives to travel with him through space and time, the Doctor’s many companions make viewers feel like they, too, can be whisked away from their grim everyday lives to explore distant galaxies, impossible futures and dusty pasts. The series is now so popular that it has been picked up to stream on Disney+ to introduce the Fifteenth Doctor, played by Ncuti Gatwa.

The world of Doctor Who is filled with a procession of impossible technology and gadgets. From time-traveling machines of varying proportions to seemingly normal, everyday objects with capabilities far beyond what you might expect, these devices have made fans wish they were real. This too is part of the wish-fulfillment fantasy of Doctor Who, as it represents the power the Doctor exposes his companions to. So we’ve rounded up some of the coolest Doctor Who gadgets we wish existed in real life. Let’s dive in, or as the Tenth Doctor would say, allons-y!

Sonic screwdriver

Let’s start with the obvious. If you’ve watched even one episode of Doctor Who, you’ve probably found yourself wishing that sonic screwdrivers were real. Far from simple, these bizarre digital wands are the Doctor’s pocket deus ex, capable of solving seemingly any problem with a shaky, unsteady wave. They can give readings of their surroundings and the area around them. They open locked doors, repair broken machinery, hack into computer systems, and more. In fact, listing everything the Doctor has used Sonic for over the course of the historic series could fill a book. Sonic screwdrivers are capable of interfacing with virtually any technology—analog or digital—to make the user’s will a reality. They even work as defensive weapons, as they can disrupt and malfunction other people’s weapons.

With a sonic screwdriver, you’d never have to worry about losing your keys or forgetting your bank password. Fixing your house, computer, or time machine would be easier than ever. Of course, sonic screwdrivers have their drawbacks. For one thing, they don’t work on wood. And if they were real, there would be chaos as people would open locked doors for no reason, breaking into houses and banks as easily as walking into a grocery store. Still, it’s hard not to crave this ridiculously over-the-top plot device. We’d probably take Thirteen’s (Jodie Whittaker) Sonic. She built it out of scrap!

Literally Every Mobile Phone (Super Phones)

One of the gadgets we all crave most in Doctor Who is any mobile phone. At first glance, these devices are unremarkable. Many are decades old and don’t even run apps. They’re also not fictional inventions, as most of the props used are real mobile phones from companies like Nokia and Motorola. However, in the company of the TARDIS, any humble mobile phone can be transformed into a Super Phone, capable of making calls across any distance in time and space. This technology allows the Doctor’s companions to call their loved ones back when they left Earth, no matter how many millennia in the future or past they travelled.

The implications of this are astonishing, as anyone with the Super Phone can effectively call anyone else with a phone at any time. This means that you could theoretically call your deceased loved ones long after they’ve died, or contact your future descendants. You could call people before disasters strike to spare their lives, or ask people in the future what will happen next in your timeline. Of course, like most of the technology in Doctor Who, this magical plot device has no chance of becoming reality. Like the TARDIS and the Doctor himself, it’s a wish-fulfillment fantasy that allows fans to imagine the impossible.

TARDIS

Another gadget that appears in almost every episode and is an obvious choice here is the TARDIS, the Doctor’s space and time machine, which is bigger on the inside. Either of these possibilities would be enough to justify wanting it to be real, but together it’s the most powerful spaceship in science fiction history. And yet the TARDIS’s capabilities don’t end there. It’s proven countless times to be virtually indestructible, able to be caught inside a supernova without sustaining any damage. It’s an indestructible time machine that travels through space and doubles as a residence. Oh, and it repairs and rebuilds itself to keep up with the latest design trends. Who wouldn’t want that?

It’s not enough that the Doctor’s TARDIS is broken, but imagine how much nicer a new one would be. The distinctive sound it makes when taking off and landing, as well as its permanent appearance as a police emergency phone, are all because its chameleon circuit – the part that allows it to transform into various everyday objects to avoid detection – was broken. If TARDISes were real and you could drop into a dealership, they’d sell you a TARDIS that could disguise itself as anything you wanted and fly away in complete silence. But even a broken Doctor’s TARDIS would be an obvious improvement over your Toyota.

Vortex manipulator

BBC

After the TARDIS, the time travellers of Doctor Who use Vortex manipulators. These wrist-mounted devices allow people like Captain Jack Harkness (John Barrowman) to jump through time with ease. This has certain advantages. While the Doctor has to leave his TARDIS behind on every adventure, those with Vortex manipulators have time travel at their beck and call, no matter where they are. They are usually issued to members of the Time Agency, a secret group of time-travelling spies from the 51st century. Newer models of Vortex manipulators leave no trace of their use, meaning that other time travellers could not follow the Time Agent through time by tracking the signal.

The Vortex Manipulator would be incredibly useful for the same reasons as any other time machine, but while other Doctor Who time machines such as the TARDIS can be inaccurate, the Vortex Manipulator’s advantage is that, in addition to its portability, it is incredibly precise in calculating the point in time the user is transported to. While the Doctor often lands approximately in the time period he wishes to visit, Time Agents can land exactly when they wish, so their actions are undetectable. They are able to change the course of history with surgical precision.

The biggest drawback to these wrist-mounted time machines is that they can be easily stolen or lost. Time Agents typically take great care to protect their Vortex Manipulators, lest they fall into the wrong hands and leave the Agent trapped in time.

Timey-Wimey Detector

One of the most beloved quotes from Doctor Who is the phrase “Timey-wimey”, coined by the Tenth Doctor (David Tennant) to describe a machine he built to detect temporal anomalies. It appeared in the episode “Blink”, one of the most beloved episodes from previous and current showrunner Russell T. Davies’ Doctor Who, although the episode itself was written by his successor, Steven Moffat. In the episode, the Doctor guides people through a time puzzle involving the Weeping Angels, quantum-locked assassins who send people back in time, take the form of statues, and can only move when they are not looking at them. The function of the Timey-wimey detector, the Doctor says, is to “go ‘ding’ when something is there”.

The Timey-Wimey Detector has one major flaw: it cooks every egg within a 30-pack radius of the machine, killing any birds they’re in. Honestly, it would be worth having one just to get a perfectly cooked egg for breakfast every morning, not to mention the ability to detect people displaced from their time in that area.

Psychic Paper

BBC

Of all the Doctor Who gadgets that would be awesome, only the most chaotic of us would choose the psychic paper. It’s a sheet of paper that shows the viewer what their mind wants them to see. The user can also manipulate its properties. For example, when the Doctor wants to get into a government facility, they show their psychic paper to a guard who sees high military qualifications or whatever else is necessary to let the Doctor in. While the Doctor uses this power for the good of humanity, it’s easy to imagine all the mischief someone could get up to if this technology existed in real life.

More than ever, entrances to forbidden spaces are guarded by digital locks rather than human guards, and often both human and digital security is in place. Think of how luxury apartments used to have doormen to let residents in, and now they have apps. But as we see so clearly in episodes like Season 2’s “Army of Ghosts,” where Rose Tyler (Billie Piper) uses psychic paper to bypass the electronic security of a vault door, it can even fool computer systems.

In real life, AI could bring us closer to the chaos that psychic paper would unleash. For example, the Google Pixel 9 series’ Reimagine feature could add things to a photo that don’t exist, such as placing car crashes on a photo of an empty street, which some believe could be used for insurance fraud or other nefarious purposes.