10 Doctor Who Episodes That Accidentally Changed The Show Forever

The Doctor's signature piece of equipment throughout their various incarnations is the good old sonic screwdriver. This magical multi-tool is as important to the Time Lord as Superman’s cape or James Bond’s pistol, and you’d be hard-pressed to find any fan who didn’t receive one under the Christmas tree as a child.

Yet the sonic wasn’t always as important as it is now. Its first appearance was a brief, unremarkable scene in the first episode of 1968’s Fury from the Deep, where the Second Doctor uses it to… examine a pipe on a beach. Riveting stuff.

It’s doubtful that Victor Pemberton knew what he’d started when he wrote the unassuming instrument – which, on the page, was intended to be a regular screwdriver – into his script, but the sonic stuck around, making a few more appearances in the '60s before really taking centre-stage in the mid-to-late '70s, as the Doctor’s go-to space army knife.

It became such a recurring fixture that in 1982, producer John Nathan-Turner ordered it to be blown up in The Visitation, as he thought it had become a crutch for writers. If he thought it was bad then, we can only imagine his reaction to Matt Smith waving it around every 30 seconds in 2010.