Kill it if you have to. Good Grief it's gone out of control. All the Doctor does now is wave it around like a magic wand saids some gibberish and then waves it again to solve the problem. This week she defeated two powerful being with her sonic screwdriver. The Doctor never seems to need to figure thing out anymore or come up with an actual plan to deal with the threat. Before you can say it can't be done, well Big Finish manages to do it all the time with DIALOGUE **shudder**
She's never going to be without it again. Not unless she chooses to. Either she'll make one herself, or the TARDIS will make a new one for her.
I don't disagree with how ridiculous the abilities the screwdriver has have become, but would balk at eliminating it altogether. Just downgrade it a bit. it almost seems like the various Doctors all try to outdo their previous incarnation with upgrades to the device and he / she / they are still calling it a "screwdriver" out of habit. Just like how so many people call the miniature computers that they carry in their pockets all day "phones" even though phone calls are the least of what they use it for.
This is why JNT got rid of it during the Fifth Doctor's time. The Doc started to rely on it far too heavily as a plot device, and so it was destroyed. And it stayed destroyed until the reboot, I believe. Or did the Eighth have on in the Fox movie? I forget.
If there was no sonic screwdriver the Doctor would just conveniently be carrying around a device that goes ding that is somehow relevant to the objectives at hand in the episode in question. We saw this quite frequently in the JNT era where the screwdriver was gone. With that in mind, it makes much more sense to have a catch-all device that can do essentially everything than it does to just be conveniently carrying something handy for this particular scenario. Besides, the sonic screwdriver was gone during Capaldi's second season, and everyone here bitched about its absence and demanded it be brought back. Both the Seventh and Eighth used the sonic screwdriver in the TV movie.
It's far too enticing a revenue generating merchandising motif for the BBC to just "chuck". It's a bit of a challenge for the kids to lug around a TARDIS playset, even one made from a fridge delivery box, but a sonic they can easily tuck into their pocket and then retrieve with dramatic flair.
Yes, all arguments against the sonic boil down to "the Doctor would build a clever device to do X... oh, they already did." Very rarely is the sonic the actual solution, just the way in which it is facilitated. Even this week, the abiitity of Tahira to overcome her fears is the true solution. The sonic just helps seal the door on the baddies after she scares them and the Doctor makes them focus on Rakaya's fears i.e. the prison.
Exactly, I haven’t seen a single episode where the sonic itself is the solution. It’s generally a scanner, way to open doors or activates some device that helps. The actual solution is always character based, either through one of the companions or guest character overcoming something and growing. At most it will help with something extra, like in River’s first appearance. She sacrifices herself to save the Doctor and all the people trapped in the computer and that’s the solution. The sonic screwdriver just gives her a continued existence so her death wasn’t permanent. It’s a writing tool so the Doctor doesn’t spend half an episode trying to unlock a door or escape a trap.
With luck, Jo is the real Doctor and the magic wand waver is a lie or figment of the Doctor's imagination. I miss the days when the thing was about the use of directed sound waves and not a skeleton key or any other get-out-of-plot-free device. As well as the days when the Doctor had gadgets... and wits.
Some of us have. Wasn't any less grade-F cringe back then either. An interesting inversion - exposing people to Doctors 1 or 2 prior to "Fury from the Deep" or 5 from "The Visitation" onward up until the end of the classic show's run would be a hoot, for any number of reasons, albeit some are less good than others (e.g. they don't look as polished because television wasn't seen as something that got millions in currency units being pumped into each individual episodes back then... ) Pretty much. It was given a new lease on life, with new expanded and a near-infinite number of capabilities, in 2005. And people complained back then too. The original was borderline fantasy but at least they tried, for a while, in setting it up with some principles and actual limitations and with a spedcific purpose (forced direction of sound waves, to pick lock doors or cause a localized fire like a blowtorch or detonate mines... not one wave and entire regimens of Cybermen turn and clomp clomp waddle in another direction like cheapened hacks.) The way it was over- and misused in RTD's era, the time it's not needed (Tennant's finale) is the time it's written for the worst and nobody could suspend disbelief over it. By series 15, the show will be about only the screwdriver, raving egoist that it is - this one created from the remnants of a microwave - and with infinite capabilities. Hey, if Sheffield steel and bits of an alien spacecraft can allow for so much in one malformed magic wand...
Ah, yes, the three-pronged strategy to boil a Doctor Who story from a five-episode serial to a one-hour episode: the sonic screwdriver, the psychic paper, and constant running. And if you do actually want the Doctor to be stymied, we have an equally useful bit of dramatic sleight-of-hand, the Deadlock Seal.
Indeed, back in the day RTD's rule was the sonic screwdriver can do anything except solve the plot. Then they later decided it couldn't do wood either.
I agree with TurtleTrekker, it has become the "Tri-corder" plot device mechanism. Like Trek, just wave it, look at it and boom, you get the answer you need. Keep Jodie and the companions, but get some new writers because this season hasn't been the best.
Do you remember the toy version from the 80s? It was at least twice the size of the Doctor's sonic. No pocket tucking with that one. I think it took C batteries just so you could get that grinding sound it made. It was horrible, but older me now wishes I had had one. LOL.