Doctor Who: 10 Bizarre Powers You Forgot The Doctor Has

9. Speed Reading

Doctor Who David Tennant
BBC

One of the Doctor's powers that everyone is well aware of is his genius intellect. Most of the knowledge he possesses probably comes from pure life experience (something that you get a lot of when you've lived for over a century), but since he's capable of reading entire books in a matter of seconds, it's also likely that he absorbs a lot of information this way, too.

Early on in the classic serial City Of Death, the Fourth Doctor casually thumbs through a book for a brief moment, and then puts it down. When Romana asks him if he liked it, he replies "Not bad. Bit boring in the middle", implying that he read the whole thing - in about three seconds flat.

Flash-forward to the modern era - specifically, Series 5's The Time Of Angels - and the Eleventh Doctor says a variation of that Fourth Doctor line after he flicks through a book about the Weeping Angels, telling River Song that it was "Not bad. Bit slow in the middle."

In between these two examples, the Ninth Doctor speed-reads a copy of The Lovely Bones in the first episode of the 2005 revival, remarking that it has a "sad ending". Right on the money with that review, Doc.

In this post: 
Doctor Who
 
First Posted On: 
Contributor
Contributor

Danny has been with WhatCulture for almost nine years, and is currently Doctor Who Editor and WhoCulture Channel Manager, overseeing all of WhatCulture's Whoniverse coverage. He has been writing and video editing for 10+ years, and first got a taste for content creation after making his own Doctor Who trailers and uploading them to YouTube (they're admittedly a bit rusty by today's standards). If you need someone to recite every Doctor Who episode in order or to tell you about the making of 1988's Remembrance of the Daleks, Danny is the person to ask.