[Spoilers!] I LOVE a good quote, and there are some truly great lines in this show. I tried to get it down to my top three contenders from each episode (courtesy of www.planetclaire.tv), but sometimes less, sometimes more. I’ve added some commentary, but here they are in episode order. I’ll soon follow this with a ranked list.
Episode 0: “The Christmas Invasion” (Russell T. Davies)
It’s a bit long, but we really do need the context, Doctor #10’s/David Tennant’s first full dialogue, and his priorities are 1) saying ‘hi’ to his friends, 2) talking about tea, and then 3) how he looks. It’s pretty classic
Sycorax Leader (Sean Gilder): …then your world will be gutted and your people enslaved.
Alex [Translating]: Hold on, that’s English.
Harriet: He’s talking English.
Rose: You’re talking English.
Sycorax Leader: I would never dirty my tongue with your primitive bile.
Rose: That’s English. Can you hear English?
Alex: Yes. Definitely English.
Sycorax Leader: I speak only Sycoraxic!
Rose: I can hear English. It’s being translated. Which means it’s working. Which means— [The TARDIS opens]
The Doctor: Did you miss me? [The Sycorax leader attacks] You could put someone’s eye out with that. You just can’t get the staff. Now you, just wait. I’m busy. [Turns to his friends] Mickey, hello! And Harriet Jones, MP from Flydale North! Blimey! It’s like This Is Your Life! Tea! That’s all I needed. A good cup of tea. A superheated infusion of free radicals and tannin. Just the thing for heating the synapses. Now, first thing’s first. [To Rose] Be honest. How do I look?
Rose: Um… different.
The Doctor: Good different or bad different?
Rose: Just… different.
The Doctor: Am I ginger?
Rose: No, you’re just sort of brown.
The Doctor: I wanted to be ginger! I’ve never been ginger. And you, Rose Tyler! Fat lot of good you were. You gave up on me! [Taken aback] Oo! That’s rude. Is that the sort of man I am now? Am I rude? Rude and not ginger.
The next part of the dialogue is equally classic: the only thing we know for sure about the Doctor is that he can talk.
Sycorax Leader: Who exactly are you?
The Doctor: Well, that’s the question.
Sycorax Leader: I demand to know who you are!
The Doctor: I don’t know! See that’s the thing. I’m the Doctor. But beyond that I just don’t know. I literally do not know who I am. It’s all untested. Am I funny? Am I sarcastic? Sexy? Right old misery? Life and soul? Right-handed, left-handed? A gambler, a fighter, a coward, a traitor, a liar, a nervous wreck? I mean judging by the evidence I’ve certainly got a gob.
The final bit reminds me a lot of Evil Dead 2, where Ash Williams cuts his hand off. Rather, it’s what I wish would have happened, and how Ash might react.
The Doctor [about his regenerated hand]: Of course I’m still The Doctor then.
Rose: No arguments from me!
The Doctor: Wanna know the best bit? This new hand? It’s a fightin’ hand!
Episode 1: “New Earth” (Russell T. Davies)
Say that 10 times, fast.
Rose: What’s the city called?
The Doctor: New New York.
Rose: Oh come on.
The Doctor: It is. It’s the city of New New York. Strictly speaking, it’s the fifteenth New York since the original. So that makes it New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New York.
Russell T. Davies, as I’ve mentioned, likes to wax poetic about humans, but here is one of his briefest bits:
The Doctor: The human race just keeps on going—keeps on changing. Life will out. Ha!
This dialogue with the Face of Boe spans multiple episodes and covers quite the plot twists. Here, it’s just textbook enigmatic.
The Face of Boe: I had grown tired of the Universe, Doctor. But you have taught me to look at it anew.
The Doctor: There are legends you know. Saying that you’re millions of years old.
The Face of Boe: Now that would be impossible.
The Doctor: Wouldn’t it just. I got the impression there was something you wanted to tell me.
The Face of Boe: A great secret.
The Doctor: So the legend says.
The Face of Boe: It can wait.
The Doctor: Oh! Does it have to?
The Face of Boe: We shall meet again, Doctor, for the third time—for the last time—and the truth shall be told. Until that day.
The Doctor: That is enigmatic. That is textbook enigmatic.
Episode 2: “Tooth and Claw” (Russell T. Davies)
I’m not certain how the Doctor continues to travel to the wrong place and time, but he always seems to land where and when he needs to be. And his Scottish is hilarious. Rose’s…not so much.
The Doctor: 1979! Hell of a year! China invades Vietnam. The Muppet Movie. Love that film. Margaret Thatcher. Ugh. Skylab fell to Earth with a little help from me. Nearly took off my thumb. [Walking out of the TARDIS] And I like my thumb. I need my thumb. I’m very attached to—[Sees the armed men on horseback]—my thumb. [To himself.] 1879. Same difference.
Captain Reynolds: You will explain your presence and the nakedness of this girl.
The Doctor: Are we in Scotland?
Captain Reynolds: How can you be ignorant of that?
The Doctor: Oh, I’m dazed and confused. I’ve been chasing this wee naked child over hill and over dale. I’nt that right, ya timorous beastie?
Rose: Och! Ay! I’ve bin oot and aboot.
The Doctor: No, don’t do that.
Rose: Hoots mon.
The Doctor: No, really don’t. Really.
So much for his honor as a traveler in time.
Rose: I want her [Queen Victoria] to say “We are not amused.” I bet you five quid I can make her say it.
The Doctor: Well if I gambled on that it’d be an abuse of my privilege as a traveler in time.
Rose: Ten quid?
The Doctor: Done.
And happy is code for…?
Sir Robert: I’m sorry, Mum. It’s all my fault. I should’ve sent you away. I tried to suggest something was wrong. I thought you might notice. Did you think there was nothing strange about my household staff?
The Doctor: Well, they were bald, athletic—your wife’s away, I just thought you were happy.
Episode 3: “School Reunion” (Toby Whithouse)
The Doctor using all the cool-kids lingo. Sounds about as well as when I try it.
The Doctor: It’s very well-behaved, this place. I thought there would be happy slapping hoodies. Happy slapping hoodies with ASBOs. Happy slapping hoodies with ASBOs and ringtones. [Pleased with himself.] Yeah? Yeah? Oh yeah! Don’t tell me I don’t fit in.
The sad truth of the Doctor/companion relationship. Sadly, there’s one companion he could have.
The Doctor: You can spend the rest of your life with me, but I can’t spend the rest of mine with you. I have to live on. Alone. That’s the curse of the Time Lords.
Tennant’s Doctor rarely flexes, but here’s one of those times.
Finch: And what of the Time Lords? I always thought of you as such a pompous race. Ancient, dusty senators so frightened of change and… chaos. And of course, they’re all but extinct. Only you, the last.
The Doctor: This plan of yours, what is it?
Finch: You don’t know?
The Doctor: That’s why I’m asking.
Finch: Well show me how clever you are. Work it out.
The Doctor: If I don’t like it, then it will stop.
Finch: Fascinating. Your people were peaceful to the point of indolence. You seem to be something new. would you declare war on us, Doctor?
The Doctor: I’m so old now. I used to have so much mercy. You get one warning. That was it.
Episode 4: “The Girl in the Fireplace” (Steven Moffat)
I’m going a bit overboard on this episode, but Steven Moffat just nails it. First off, the Doctor backing off his initial statements is pretty common, but always funny.
Mickey: It’s a spaceship. Brilliant! I got a spaceship on my first go.
Rose: It looks kind of abandoned. Anyone on board?
The Doctor: Nah. Nothing here. Well, nothing dangerous. Well, not that dangerous. Know what, I’ll just have a quick scan. In case of something dangerous.
“Temporal hyperlink” is fancy talk for “magic door.”
Mickey: You said this was the 51st century.
The Doctor: I also said this ship was generating enough power to punch a hole in the Universe. I think we just found the hole. Must be a spaceship with a temporal hyperlink.
Mickey: What’s that?
The Doctor: No idea. Just made it up. Didn’t want to say “Magic Door”.
Never listen to reason.
Reinette: You seem to be flesh and blood at any rate, but that is absurd. Reason tells me you cannot be real.
The Doctor: Oh, you never want to listen to reason.
The second bit in the reboots about companions wandering off, and we need this one for context.
The Doctor: Rose? Mickey? Every time! Every time! It’s rule one. “Don’t wander off.” I tell them, I do. Rule one. There could be anything on this ship. [Sees the horse]
When dealing with the Doctor, perspective is key.
Mickey: What’s a horse doing on a spaceship?
The Doctor: Mickey, what’s pre-Revolutionary France doing on a spaceship. Get a little perspective.
The Doctor’s “drunken” put-downs are great: “You’re Mister Thick Thick Thickity Thick Face from Thicktown, Thickania. And so’s your dad.”
[The Doctor sways in, carrying a goblet and wearing his tie around his head.]
DOCTOR: And still have begged for more. I could’ve spread my wings and done a thou. Have you met the French? My god, they know how to party.
ROSE: Oh, look at what the cat dragged in. The Oncoming Storm.
DOCTOR: Oh, you sound just like your mother.
ROSE: What’ve you been doing? Where’ve you been?
DOCTOR: Well, among other things, I think just invented the banana daiquiri a few centuries early. Do you know, they’ve never even seen a banana before. Always take a banana to a party, Rose. Bananas are good. Oh ho, ho, ho, ho, brilliant. It’s you. You’re my favourite, you are. You are the best! Do you know why? Because you’re so thick. You’re Mister Thick Thick Thickity Thick Face from Thicktown, Thickania. And so’s your dad. Do you know what they were scanning Reinette’s brain for? Her milometer. They want to know how old she is. Know why? Because this ship is thirty seven years old, and they think that when Reinette is thirty seven, when she’s complete, then her brain will be compatible. So, that’s what you’re missing, isn’t it, hmm? Command circuit. Your computer. Your ship needs a brain. And for some reason, God knows what, only the brain of Madame de Pompadour will do.
DROID: The brain is compatible.
DOCTOR: Compatible? If you believe that, you probably believe this is a glass of wine.
(The Doctor removes the android’s mask and pours the contents of the goblet into its head. The clockwork seizes up.)
DOCTOR: Multigrain anti-oil. If it moves, it doesn’t.
This should be sub-text for every situation in the show.
The Doctor: Alright. Many things about this are not good.
Episode 5: “Rise of the Cybermen” (Tom MacRae)
Mickey correcting the Doctor; when it happens, it’s magic.
The Doctor: She’s dead. The TARDIS is dead.
Rose: You can fix it?
The Doctor: There’s nothing to fix. She’s perished. The last TARDIS in the Universe, extinct.
Rose: We can get help, yeah?
The Doctor: Where from?
Rose: Well, we’ve landed. We’ve got to be somewhere.
The Doctor: We fell out of the Vortex. Through the Void into nothingness. We’re in some sort of noplace. A silent realm. A lost dimension.
Mickey [looking outside]: Otherwise known as London.
Men do stupid things sometimes, and the Doctor is no exception.
The Doctor: If I could just get this thing to— [The Doctor kicks the TARDIS]
Mickey: Did that help?
The Doctor: Yes.
Mickey: Did that hurt?
The Doctor: Yes.
Tom MacRae waxes a bit sentimental about the multiverse.
Mickey: I’ve seen it in comics. People are popping from one alternative world to another. It’s easy.
The Doctor: Not in the real world. Used to be easy. When the Time Lords kept their eye on everything. You could pop between realities, home in time for tea. Then they died and took it all with them. The walls of reality closed. The worlds were sealed. And everything became a bit less kind.
Episode 6: “The Age of Steel” (Tom MacRae)
Fight the power! With… parking tickets?
Ricky: I’m London’s most wanted for parking tickets.
Pete: Oh great.
Ricky: Yeah, they were deliberate. I was fighting the system. Park anywhere, that’s me.
The Doctor: Good policy. I do much the same.
Humans falling under alien control is a major theme in the reboot, but that doesn’t make it beyond the Doctor’s commentary.
The Doctor: The human race. For such an intelligent lot you aren’t half susceptible. Give anyone a chance to take control and you submit. Sometimes I think you like it. Easy life.
Brilliantly making it up as he goes along–the Doctor in a nutshell.
The Doctor: The whole of London’s been sealed off and the entire population’s been taken inside that place. To be converted.
Rose: We’ve got to get in there and shut it down.
Mickey: How do we do that?
The Doctor: Oh, I’ll think of something.
Mickey: You’re just making this up as you go along.
The Doctor: Yep. But I do it brilliantly.
And a little bit of the Doctor’s classic modesty.
The Doctor: Oh Lumic. You’re a clever man. I’d call you a genius except I’m in the room.
Episode 7: “The Idiot’s Lantern” (Mark Gatiss)
Shutting down a blow-hard the Doctor way.
Eddie Connolly: I am talking!
The Doctor: And I’m not listening! Now you, Mr. Connolly, you are staring into a deep, dark pit of trouble if you don’t let me help. So I’m ordering you, sir, tell me what’s going on!
The Doctor gets clever.
Detective Inspector Bishop standing over The Doctor: Start from the beginning. Tell me everything you know.
The Doctor: Well. For starters, I know you can’t wrap your hand around your elbow and make your fingers meet.
Detective Inspector Bishop: Don’t get clever with me!
Aliens trapped on Betamax. The thought alone is clever.
The Doctor: What have I missed?
Tommy: Doctor! What happened?
The Doctor: Sorted. Electrical creature. TV technology. Clever alien life form. That’s me, by the way. I turned the transceiver back into a transmitter and I trapped The Wire in here. I just made the home video thirty years early. Betamax. Oh look! God save the Queen, eh?
Too bad using “transtemporal extirpation methods to neutralize the residual electronic pattern” never caught on as a phrase. Now the tech has moved on.
Rose: Will it… that thing, is it trapped for good on video?
The Doctor: That’s right. Just to be on the safe side though, I’ll use my unrivaled knowledge of transtemporal extirpation methods to neutralize the residual electronic pattern.
Rose: You what?
The Doctor: I’m gonna tape over it.
Rose: Just leave it to me. I’m always doing that.
Episode 8: “The Impossible Planet” (Matt Jones)
This should have been the first sign of what we’re dealing with, but the Doctor is too busy being modest.
The Doctor: There we go. D’you see? To generate that gravity field and the funnel you’d need a power source with an inverted self-extrapolating reflex of six to the power of six every six seconds.
Rose: That’s a lot of sixes.
The Doctor: And it’s impossible.
Zach: It took us two years to work that out.
The Doctor: I’m very good.
This tension between the Doctor loving humans and thinking we’re completely mad is also a theme of the reboot.
The Doctor: Excuse me, Zach, wasn’t it?
Zach: That’s me.
The Doctor: Just stand there. ‘Cause I’m going to hug you. Is that all right?
Zach: ‘Spose so.
The Doctor: Here we go. Comin’ in! Human Beings. You are amazing. Ha! Thank you.
Zach: Not at all.
The Doctor: But apart from that you’re completely mad. You should pack your bags, get back in that ship and fly for your lives.
She had to say it.
Ida: Well, we’ve come this far. There’s no turning back.
The Doctor: Oh, did you have to? “No turning back.” That’s almost as bad as, “nothing can possibly go wrong” or “This is going to be the best Christmas Walford’s ever had.”
What dungeon crawler has met a trap door they like?
The Doctor: We’ve found something. Looks like metal, like some sort of seal. I’ve got a nasty feeling the word might be “trap door.” Not a good word, “trap door”. Never met a trap door I liked.
Episode 9: “The Satan Pit” (Matt Jones)
The Doctor waxing philosophical, in the vein of Kenneth Burke.
Ida: What do you think?
The Doctor: He gave an order.
Ida: Yeah but. What do you think?
The Doctor: It said “I am the temptation.”
Ida: But if there’s something in there, why is it still hiding?
The Doctor: Maybe we opened the prison but not the cell.
Ida: We should go down. I’d go. What about you?
The Doctor: Oh! Oh, in a second. But then again… that is so human. “Where angels fear to tread.” Even now, standing on the edge. It’s that feeling you get, hm? Right on the back of your head. That impulse. That strange little impulse. That mad little voice saying, “Go on! Go on. Go on. Go over, go on!” Maybe it’s relying on that. For once in my life, Officer Scott, I’m going to say… retreat.
I really don’t like the premise of this episode, but yet I love it when the Doctor gets called out, and here it’s by the devil.
The Doctor: If you really are the Beast then answer me this: which one? Hm? ’Cause the Universe has been busy since you’ve been gone. There’s more religions than there are planets in the sky. The Arkiphets. Quoldonity. Christianity. Pash Pash. Neo-Judaism. Sanklaar. The Church of the Tin Vagabond. Which devil are you?
The Beast (through the Ood): All of them.
The Doctor: What then, you’re the truth behind the myth?
The Beast (through the Ood): This one knows me and I know him. The killer of his own kind.
The second part of the earlier philosophical discussion.
The Doctor: There it is again. That itch. “Go down go down go down go down.”
Ida: The urge to jump. Do you know where it comes from, that sensation? Genetic heritage. Ever since we were primates in the trees. It’s our body’s way of testing us. Calculating whether or not we can reach the next branch.
The Doctor: No, that’s not it. That’s too kind. It’s not the urge to jump, it’s deeper than that. It’s the urge to fall!
I like “the devil as idea” living in “the things that men do.” And being open to being proved wrong is just basic science
The Doctor: Neo-classics. Have they got a Devil?
Ida: No, not as such. Just, um… “the things that men do.”
The Doctor: Same thing in the end.
Ida: What about you?
The Doctor: I… believe. I believe I haven’t seen everything, I don’t know. It’s funny, isn’t it? The things you make up—the rules. If that thing had said it came from beyond the universe I’d believe it, but before the universe… that’s impossible. It doesn’t fit in my rules. Still, that’s why I keep travelling. To be proved wrong. Thank you Ida.
Ida: Don’t go!
The Doctor: If they get back in touch… if you talk to Rose, just tell her… tell her… Oh, she knows.
Episode 10: “Love & Monsters” (Russell T. Davies)
Only one from this episode. Another moment when the Doctor clarifies his nature.
Abzorbaloff: You see I’ve read about you, Doctor. I’ve studied you. So passionate, so sweet. You wouldn’t let an innocent man die. And I’ll absorb him. Unless you give yourself to me.
The Doctor: Sweet, maybe. Passionate, I suppose. But don’t ever mistake that for nice. Do what you want.
Abzorbaloff: He’ll die, Doctor!
The Doctor: I know.
Abzorbaloff: So be it.
The Doctor: Mind you, the others might having something to say.
Episode 11: “Fear Her” (Matthew Graham)
Olympics, Club Med, what’s the difference?
The Doctor: It only seems like yesterday a few naked Greek blokes were tossing a discus about, wrestling with each other in the sand and the crowds stood about— No wait a minute. That was Club Med.
What did you say?!? Foreshadowing.
Rose: I’ve got cousins. Kids can’t have it all their own way. That’s part of being a family.
The Doctor: What about trying to understand them?
Rose: Easy for you to say. You don’t have kids.
The Doctor: I was a dad once.
Rose: What did you say?
The things he gets hung up on.
The Doctor: I cannot stress this enough. Ballbearings you can eat—masterpiece!
Episode 12: “Army of Ghosts” (Russell T. Davies)
Too true.
Jackie: But you can see them. They look human.
Rose: She’s got a point. They are sort of blurred, but they’re definitely people.
The Doctor: Maybe not. They’re pressing themselves into the surface of the world. But a footprint doesn’t look like a boot.
If Obi wan Kenobi taught us anything, it’s “always seize the high ground.”
The Doctor: Hm. There goes the advantage of surprise. Still, cuts to the chase. Stay here, look after Jackie.
Rose: I’m not looking after my mum.
The Doctor: Well you brought her.
Jackie: I was kidnapped!
Rose: Doctor, they’ve got guns.
The Doctor: And I haven’t. Which makes me the better person, don’t you think? They can shoot me dead but the moral high ground is mine.
Hmph. Humans!
The Doctor: So you find the breach, probe it, the sphere comes through. Six hundred feet above London. Bam! It leaves a hole in the fabric of reality. And that hole, you think, “Oh, should we leave it alone? Should we back off? Should we play it safe? Nah!” you think, “Let’s make it bigger!”
Episode 13: “Doomsday” (Russell T. Davies)
Maybe belief is all you need.
Pete: Doctor, help us.
The Doctor: What? Close the breach? Stop the Cybermen? Defeat the Daleks? Do you believe I can do that?
Pete: Yes.
The Doctor: Maybe that’s all I need. Off we go then!
So those are the top for me. True, there are others that didn’t make the list, but I had to make some cuts.
Did I miss any? Which are your favorites? Comment and I’ll respond. Stay tuned for my Top 10 rankings.
