Doctor Who: 10 Bizarre Powers You Forgot The Doctor Has

One of the fun things about the Doctor being an alien is that the character doesn't need a clearly-defined set of rules that dictate their biology or skillset.

While traits like regeneration and two hearts are core staples and will probably never be changed, the Doctor's otherworldliness means that the writers of the show can, basically, give the character any random powers they can think of, and they don't necessarily have to explain them.

As a result, the Doctor has developed a wide range of occasionally useful, sometimes useless, and often insane abilities over the years, some of which were only used once or twice, and others that gradually became regular occurrences, but still tend to be overlooked (or forgotten) by a good number of Who fans.

Realistically, there isn't anything that the character can't do, because any strange powers that are added in future can be explained with the simple phrase "she's an alien". For all we know, the 27th Doctor could end up having super strength and laser eyes, but until then, the Doctor's skillset already contains its fair share of weirdness...

An advanced sense of smell and taste might not seem like a useful ability when you're battling aliens and saving planets, and yet, the Doctor still manages to find plenty of uses for those well-developed taste buds and that powerful sense of smell, the latter of which would give a trained sniffer dog a run for its money.

There are so many examples we can turn to here. In The Christmas Invasion, the Tenth Doctor inspects a button on the Sycorax ship, and tastes the red liquid that's powering it. Straight away, he's able to figure out that it's A-positive human blood, "with just a dash of iron". Then, in The Eleventh Hour, the Doctor sniffs and tastes Amy Pond's garden shed and correctly guesses that it's twelve years old, and in Day Of The Moon, he licks an envelope and deduces its planet of origin.

In addition, the Thirteenth Doctor once ate some soil and worked out that there was a gift shop roughly 25 miles away - one that had a low Tripadvisor rating. Mad skills.

He's also able to determine the nature of a planet's atmosphere within a matter of seconds - as seen in The Time Of Angels - and in The Unicorn And The Wasp, he steps out of the TARDIS, whiffs the air, and instantly works out that he's in the 1920s.

While we're on the topic of the Doctor's senses, he also has incredible eyesight too. In The Eleventh Hour, he's able to "freeze frame" his surroundings and analyze countless small details from dozens of feet away, all within a short space of time.