My love for the Second Doctor is no secret. A lot of what we think of as quintessential Doctor traits in the new series began with him, and for a madcap little cosmic hobo that the bad guys would tend to underestimate, it was fun to look back at some of my favorite moments of him being awesome (spoilers.)
Getting Past the Sonic Lock (Series 4, Episode 13 – “The Power of the Daleks: Episode 5”)
This moment, from Two’s very first serial and now only available as an animated reconstruction (obligatory fist-shake at the BBC,) is the Second Doctor all over: coming across as foolish and a little annoying, but in actual fact, sneakily getting the job done. He’s imprisoned in a cell with a “sonic lock,” with the guards’ key emitting a certain frequency to open the door. Now, this episode predates the sonic screwdriver, but our intrepid new Doctor manages another way. He first tries to match the frequency by running his finger along the lip of a water glass, and when that doesn’t work, he turns to his trusty recorder. No wonder Two is the one who later goes on to invent the sonic screwdriver – he knows from experience how handy it is!
Reversing the Gravitron (Series 4, Episode 26 – “The Moonbase: Episode 4”)
With the Cybermen inexorably marching forward toward the Moonbase, the Doctor gets the idea to use the base’s Gravitron against them, aiming it toward the surface of the moon in the Cybermen’s direction. When the base’s controls can’t get the device pointed as low as they need it to be, the Doctor also gets the idea to move it the rest of the way manually, and it pays off: with the Gravitron aimed down, both the Cybermen and their ships start to float away from the surface of the Moon!
Preventing the Reactor Explosion (Series 5, Episode 11 – “The Ice Warriors: Episode 1”)
The classic Doctor M.O. Walk into the middle of a disaster like he owns the place, then fix everything in the nick of time. The Doctor doesn’t even need to be in the base’s control room to realize there’s a problem with the reactor – he can tell something’s wrong just by listening to its pitch. He then sidles into the control room, tags along after Clent noting all the readings he’s taking, and does all the calculations in his head, diagnosing the issue before Clent even has time to input the data into his computer. Naturally, Clent wants to throw him out as a woolly-coated intruder who wandered in from the cold, but the Doctor quickly takes over. He mans the various stations, adjusting on the fly when the instruments can’t do what he wants them to, and he averts disaster with seconds to spare. Then, just to be extra BAMF, he tells Clent to go ahead and run the now-redundant computer calculations anyway, proving his own accuracy.
Homing in on the Moonbase (Series 6, Episode 25 – “The Seeds of Death: Episode 3”)
This episode finds our heroes in even more of a jam than usual – with the T-mat teleportation stations between Earth and the moon nonfunctional, the Doctor, Jamie, and Zoe make a daring dash for the moon on a rocket that’s literally a museum piece, and equipment malfunctions leave them without any way to contact Earth or reach Moonbase. Luckily, they intercept Phipps’s cobbled-together radio distress call, and the Doctor manages to home in on that in lieu of the beacon that failed on them. He reconfigures the equipment and, with Zoe’s help, gets the rocket back on course, landing them safely (if not smoothly) on the moon.
Learning to Deprocess (Series 6, Episode 39 – “The War Games: Episode 4”)
On the War Lord base, the Doctor and Zoe sit on a demonstration of how the War Lord scientists use their machine to “process” their human captives, reconfiguring their minds for the purpose of the experiment. The scientists uses Carstairs as a model, since his processing has failed, and the Doctor manages to trick the scientists into revealing vital information. First, he argues that Carstairs can’t be effectively reprocessed without deprocessing him beforehand (fully restoring his mind,) and then he plays the skeptic to get the scientist to show how the machine can be altered to deprocess captives. This plants the seed for the scientists to deprocess Carstairs in the next episode, giving team TARDIS a crucial ally back, and it also primes the Doctor for using the machine himself to restore others.
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