10 Times Doctor Who Appeared In Movies

8. Cars 2

Cars 2 reverse the polarity
Disney

A much more subtle reference now, one found during the finale of Pixar's Cars 2.

Here, British spy cars Holley Shiftwell and Finn McMissile are captured and tied up inside Big Ben. To escape, Holley determines that she must change the direction of the clock (or "turn back time", as she puts it), and while she's struggling to do this, she also states "if I can just reverse the polarity".

"Reverse the polarity", as Who fans will know, is one of the most famous phrases in the show, spoken by many Doctors across the classic and modern eras - though it's most associated with Jon Pertwee's Third incarnation.

Considering the timey-wimey context of this Cars 2 scene, there's no way the line was anything other than a nod to Doctor Who. And with Disney now involved in Doctor Who directly, it's fun to look back on this in retrospect!

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Danny has been with WhatCulture for over ten years, and is currently Doctor Who Editor and WhoCulture Channel Manager, overseeing all of WhatCulture's Whoniverse coverage. In 2022, he took charge of WhoCulture and has grown it into the biggest Doctor Who channel on YouTube, and one of the biggest Doctor Who communities on the web full-stop. He has been writing and video editing since his early teens, and first got a taste for content creation after making his own Doctor Who trailers, off the back of a burning obsession with the Matt Smith era of the show. Like many his age, he first got into Doctor Who with the 2005 revival, but has since gone back and fallen in love with the classic years too. If you need someone to recite every Doctor Who episode in order, or to give you a random factoid about the making of Gridlock, Danny is the person to ask!