The Doctor calling Rose from the TARDIS. (TV: World War Three [+]Russell T Davies, Doctor Who series 1 (BBC One, 2005).)
"Superphone" was the nickname Rose Tyler gave to her mobile phone after it was altered by the Ninth Doctor, giving it the ability to communicate through time and space. (TV: World War Three [+]Russell T Davies, Doctor Who series 1 (BBC One, 2005).)
The Tenth Doctor once referred to the superphone and the TARDIS key as the "frequent flyer's privilege" of his companions. (TV: 42 [+]Chris Chibnall, Doctor Who series 3 (BBC One, 2007).) The Ninth, Tenth, Eleventh, Twelfth, Thirteenth and Fifteenth Doctors were known to give their companions the superphone upgrade, although it was rarer during the Twelfth and Thirteenth Doctors lives and more common during the Tenth Doctor's who issued the upgrade on several different occasions.
The Doctor sometimes had one of their own rather than using the TARDIS telephone.
Overview[]
The Doctor uses a superphone on San Helios, stranded where a normal phone cannot work. (TV: Planet of the Dead)
A superphone could be used to make telephone calls through time and space. It locked onto the user's relative time. (TV: The End of the World [+]Russell T Davies, Doctor Who series 1 (BBC One, 2005).) It could also work in places where there was no phone service as proven when the Ninth Doctor, Rose, and Harriet Jones used Rose's superphone to communicate with Jackie Tyler and Mickey Smith while trapped in the Cabinet Room, which should have been impossible. (TV: World War Three [+]Russell T Davies, Doctor Who series 1 (BBC One, 2005).) The Tenth Doctor called this upgrade a companion's "frequent flyer's privilege" along with their TARDIS key. (TV: 42 [+]Chris Chibnall, Doctor Who series 3 (BBC One, 2007).)
The Ninth Doctor altered Rose's mobile phone into a superphone by adding a chip into it, enabling Rose to call her mother Jackie while on her adventures with the Doctor. Rose had experienced distress at the thought of going to a time period where her mother would quite likely be long dead by then, which prompted the Doctor to modify her mobile to contact Jackie in real time elapsed from the point she entered the TARDIS. (TV: The End of the World [+]Russell T Davies, Doctor Who series 1 (BBC One, 2005).) Later incarnations of the Doctor accomplished this by activating "Universal Roaming" instead with their sonic screwdrivers. (TV: 42 [+]Chris Chibnall, Doctor Who series 3 (BBC One, 2007)., The Doctor's Daughter [+]Stephen Greenhorn, Doctor Who series 4 (BBC One, 2008)., Planet of the Dead [+]Russell T Davies and Gareth Roberts, Doctor Who Easter Special 2009 (BBC One, 2009)., Legend of the Sea Devils [+]Ella Road and Chris Chibnall, Doctor Who Easter Special 2022 (BBC One, 2022)., Space Babies [+]Russell T Davies, Doctor Who series 14 (BBC One and Disney+, 2024).)
According to the Ninth Doctor, the TARDIS itself also boosted mobile signals significantly. (PROSE: Rose [+]Russell T Davies, adapted from Rose (Russell T Davies), Target novelisations (Target Books, 2018).)
The superphones were capable of working in parallel universes such as Pete's World. (TV: Rise of the Cybermen [+]Tom MacRae, adapted from Spare Parts (Marc Platt), Doctor Who series 2 (BBC One, 2006). / The Age of Steel [+]Tom MacRae, Doctor Who series 2 (BBC One, 2006).)
The superphone could be used to call or be called from regular phones even while on planets where there was no cell service. On Messaline, the Doctor upgraded Donna's phone so that he could call Martha. Having left her superphone on the TARDIS when she had originally left the Doctor, Martha had since acquired a new phone that did not possess the superphone upgrade which was what Martha had with her at the time of the call. (TV: The Doctor's Daughter [+]Stephen Greenhorn, Doctor Who series 4 (BBC One, 2008).) Similarly, the passengers on the 200 used Nathan's mobile phone to call the Doctor while they were stranded on San Helios. While the Doctor had Barclay's phone with him which the Doctor had given the upgrade in order to call UNIT for help, Nathan's phone did not receive the upgrade from him and was a regular mobile phone. (TV: Planet of the Dead [+]Russell T Davies and Gareth Roberts, Doctor Who Easter Special 2009 (BBC One, 2009).)
In an abuse of the technology, Adam Mitchell was able to use Rose's superphone to transmit all of the knowledge of the future that he got on Satellite Five to his mother's voicemail. (TV: The Long Game [+]Russell T Davies, Doctor Who series 1 (BBC One, 2005).)
The more advanced the phone given the upgrade, the more advanced the abilities of the superphone. Clara Oswald's smart phone -- which was from a later era than Rose, Martha and Donna's phones and was thus more advanced -- was capable of video calling through time rather than just regular phone calls. (TV: Before the Flood [+]Toby Whithouse, Doctor Who series 9 (BBC One, 2015).) Courtney Woods was able to use her superphone to update her Tumblr page from the Moon in the future, meaning that the upgrade also extended to the superphone's Internet access. (TV: Kill the Moon [+]Peter Harness, Doctor Who series 8 (BBC One, 2014).) The upgrade that Gabby Gonzalez received could send messages to the sonic screwdriver or the psychic paper. In this particular upgrade, Gabby received a "Doctor" app on her phone through which the messages could be sent. (COMIC: The Fountains of Forever [+]Nick Abadzis, Doctor Who: The Tenth Doctor (Titan Comics, 2015).) The Thirteenth Doctor also possessed an old flip phone that could be used to call her sonic screwdriver which then rang like a regular telephone. (TV: Spyfall [+]Chris Chibnall, Doctor Who series 12 (BBC One, 2020).)
However, Rose's superphone didn't work on Krop Tor which was likely due to either the black hole or the Beast. (TV: The Impossible Planet [+]Matt Jones, Doctor Who series 2 (BBC One, 2006). / The Satan Pit [+]Matt Jones, Doctor Who series 2 (BBC One, 2006).) None of the superphones were working during the Planetary Relocation Incident which was attributed by Martha to the New Dalek Empire jamming all interstellar communications. It took the Sub-Wave Network and the power of the Cardiff rift just to send a signal to Martha's phone which the Doctor was then able to trace back to its source. (TV: The Stolen Earth [+]Russell T Davies, Doctor Who series 4 (BBC One, 2008).) Despite being able to communicate across time and space, according to the Doctor Clara Oswald's phone would be unable to get a signal when taken inside the Faraday cage at the Drum, a mining facility in Scotland. (TV: Before the Flood [+]Toby Whithouse, Doctor Who series 9 (BBC One, 2015).) Superphones also didn't work inside of a Passenger form. (TV: The Vanquishers [+]Chris Chibnall, Doctor Who series 13 (BBC One and BBC America, 2021).)
Rory Williams once found a superphone on the TARDIS and used it to access the Internet. However, Rory's dabbling resulted in the TARDIS being flooded by holographic spam because the TARDIS had no firewalls (COMIC: Spam Filtered [+]Tony Lee, Doctor Who (2011) (IDW Publishing, 2011).)
Examples of use[]
During Rose Tyler's first trip as a companion where she witnessed Earth Death with the Ninth Doctor, he gave her the superphone modification after Rose noted that her phone had no signal and thought about her mother was now long dead. Rose was then able to call her mother in 2005 from the year 5,000,000,000, much to Rose's amazement. (TV: The End of the World [+]Russell T Davies, Doctor Who series 1 (BBC One, 2005).)
During the Slitheen crisis, Jackie Tyler called her daughter. Rose's superphone was the only phone working in the sealed Cabinet Room. It provided an outside line for the Ninth Doctor to communicate with Mickey Smith and Jackie and coordinate efforts against the Slitheen with the Doctor plugging the phone into the room's speaker so that they could hold the conversation hands-free. Using the connection, the two groups figured out the Slitheen's weakness. The Doctor talked Mickey through shooting a Harpoon missile at 10 Downing Street, destroying the Slitheen. Later, Rose received a call on it from the Doctor in the TARDIS. (TV: World War Three [+]Russell T Davies, Doctor Who series 1 (BBC One, 2005).)
In an abuse of the technology, Adam Mitchell used Rose's superphone to phone his mother in his own time to send knowledge of the future back to his time for his own gain. Knowing the potential damage he could do to the natural course of history, coupled with an experience where Adam's underhanded behaviour during a journey to Satellite Five nearly got everyone killed, the Doctor expelled him from the TARDIS. Furthermore, he used the sonic screwdriver to overload and obliterate the phone in his mother's house to ensure the messages he left on its answering machine would be irrecoverable. (TV: The Long Game [+]Russell T Davies, Doctor Who series 1 (BBC One, 2005).)
After the Lady Cassandra took possession of Rose's body on New Earth, she received a call from the Tenth Doctor on Rose's superphone and initially believed the ringtone was coming from her posterior. Encouraged by her servant Chip, who described the phone as a "primitive communications device", Cassandra answered the call with an attempt at "Old Earth Cockney" rhyming slang to pass herself off as Rose and assured the Doctor she would be on her way. (TV: New Earth [+]Russell T Davies, Doctor Who series 2 (BBC One, 2006).)
While stuck on Pete's World, Rose's superphone still worked. She used it to find out about that world. During the invasion of the Battersea Power Station, the Tenth Doctor had Mickey find a much needed code. He transmitted it to Rose's phone via text. The Doctor plugged the phone into a nearby console and the code shut down the Cybermen's inhibitors, defeating them. The Doctor had Mickey keep Rose's superphone, as it had the code he needed programmed into it. (TV: The Age of Steel [+]Tom MacRae, Doctor Who series 2 (BBC One, 2006).)
Rose received another superphone by the time she was stranded on Krop Tor. This phone had no signal there, after the TARDIS was briefly lost, but was intercepted by the Beast, who sent a message saying "he is awake." (TV: The Impossible Planet [+]Matt Jones, Doctor Who series 2 (BBC One, 2006).)
The Tenth Doctor altered Martha Jones' phone into a superphone, this time using only his sonic screwdriver rather than a technological addition to the phone, imparting it with "Universal Roaming" service. Along with the TARDIS key that he later gave her, the Doctor referred to the superphone as the "frequent flyer's privilege" of a companion. When she needed to answer a trivia question, Martha called her mother Francine to look it up on the Internet. However, Martha was unaware that agents of Harold Saxon had begun monitoring her calls with Francine's help for information on the Doctor. (TV: 42 [+]Chris Chibnall, Doctor Who series 3 (BBC One, 2007).)
Following her ordeal during "the Year That Never Was", Martha gave her phone to the Doctor to contact him should he ever be needed. (TV: Last of the Time Lords [+]Russell T Davies, Doctor Who series 3 (BBC One, 2007).) Martha called him, bringing him back to Earth to assist with UNIT's investigation of the ATMOS facility. The Doctor then used it to call Donna Noble to give her instructions and by Donna to call her family. (TV: The Sontaran Stratagem [+]Helen Raynor, Doctor Who series 4 (BBC One, 2008). / The Poison Sky [+]Helen Raynor, Doctor Who series 4 (BBC One, 2008).)
The Doctor modified Donna's phone to call Martha while they were on Messaline. In this case, Martha only possessed a regular phone as her superphone was still in the TARDIS and Martha's new phone had not received the upgrade. (TV: The Doctor's Daughter [+]Stephen Greenhorn, Doctor Who series 4 (BBC One, 2008).)
Donna called her grandfather Wilf while she was vacationing on Midnight, something that Wilf later mentioned to Rose and Sylvia. (TV: Midnight [+]Russell T Davies, Doctor Who series 4 (BBC One, 2008)., The Stolen Earth [+]Russell T Davies, Doctor Who series 4 (BBC One, 2008).)
Martha's phone was also used by Torchwood, Mr Smith and Harriet Jones, all using the Cardiff rift to contact the Doctor when Earth was teleported to the Medusa Cascade by Davros during the Planetary Relocation Incident. Previously, it was stated that Donna's family couldn't reach her nor was Rose's superphone working which was attributed to the Daleks jamming communications. The Doctor was able to lock onto the signal from the call and use it to find the missing planets. (TV: The Stolen Earth [+]Russell T Davies, Doctor Who series 4 (BBC One, 2008).)
Although not stated, the Doctor presumably removed the superphone upgrade from Donna's phone before returning her home as noticing it could threaten her memories having been buried in order to save Donna's life after she became the DoctorDonna. (TV: Journey's End [+]Russell T Davies, Doctor Who series 4 (BBC One, 2008).)
The Doctor uses a superphone on San Helios, stranded where a normal phone cannot work. (TV: Planet of the Dead [+]Russell T Davies and Gareth Roberts, Doctor Who Easter Special 2009 (BBC One, 2009).
When he was stuck on San Helios, the Doctor modified Barclay's phone into a superphone to communicate with UNIT on Earth. The Doctor used it to communicate with Doctor Malcolm Taylor and Captain Erisa Magambo to find a way back and deal with the threat of the stingrays. Even though his phone was unmodified, Nathan called the Doctor on the superphone, showing that any phone could call a superphone, no matter where it was, siilar to how the Doctor called Martha on Messaline. The Doctor brought the people on the 200 home. He used the phone to tell Malcom to close the wormhole despite being hung up on twice. What happened to it afterwards is unknown. (TV: Planet of the Dead [+]Russell T Davies and Gareth Roberts, Doctor Who Easter Special 2009 (BBC One, 2009).)
Apparently Lady Christina de Souza either learned of the Doctor's superphone number or obtained Barclay's phone, as at one point the Doctor answered his superphone in the TARDIS thinking it was Christina calling him. It was actually Martha seeking the Doctor's help with an urgent new problem. (COMIC: Tesseract [+]Tony Lee, Doctor Who (2009) (IDW Publishing, 2010).)
The "Doctor" superphone app on Gabby Gonzalez's smartphone. (COMIC: The Fountains of Forever [+]Nick Abadzis, Doctor Who: The Tenth Doctor (Titan Comics, 2015).)
The Doctor also added Universal Roaming to Gabby Gonzalez's phone using the sonic screwdriver. He told her messages could be sent to the screwdriver or the psychic paper. In this particular upgrade, Gabby received a "Doctor" app on her phone through which the messages could be sent. When the Doctor briefly suffered a retro-regeneration, his psychic paper sent a telepathic feedback to Gabby's superphone, allowing her to access the messages on it and locate the Doctor. (COMIC: The Fountains of Forever [+]Nick Abadzis, Doctor Who: The Tenth Doctor (Titan Comics, 2015).)
After having her brand new smart phone wrecked by the Wire, the Tenth Doctor made it up to Alice Wu by upgrading her old mobile phone giving it a direct line to the TARDIS. (PROSE: Loose Wire [+]Richard Dungworth, Twelve Doctors of Christmas (2016).)
Following the Tenth Doctor's regeneration into the Eleventh Doctor, Martha's superphone was no longer present in the console room. It was presumably either destroyed in the explosive regeneration which forced the TARDIS itself to undergo a regeneration, changing the console room completely, or it was integrated into the TARDIS telephone which also had the ability to call through time and space. (TV: The Eleventh Hour [+]Steven Moffat, Doctor Who series 5 (BBC One, 2010).)
Canton Everett Delaware III used Amy Pond's mobile phone to receive a call from the Eleventh Doctor's flip phone in 1969, before cell networks existed, indicating that both phones must have been upgraded by the Doctor at some point. (TV: Day of the Moon [+]Steven Moffat, Doctor Who series 6 (BBC One, 2011).)
The Doctor used Amy's phone to keep in touch with her when she and Rory were trapped in the TARDIS. (TV: The Doctor's Wife [+]Neil Gaiman, Doctor Who series 6 (BBC One, 2011).)
Rory once found a superphone on the TARDIS and used it to access the Internet. Because the TARDIS had no firewalls, Rory's dabbling resulted in the TARDIS being flooded by holographic spam. (COMIC: Spam Filtered [+]Tony Lee, Doctor Who (2011) (IDW Publishing, 2011).)
Rory later possessed a superphone of his own which Amy called him while they were on the Silurian Ark. (TV: Dinosaurs on a Spaceship [+]Chris Chibnall, Doctor Who series 7 (BBC One, 2012).)
At some point, the Twelfth Doctor upgraded Clara Oswald's mobile phone into a superphone and evidently turned Courtney Woods' phone into a superphone as well before her brief adventure with him. Courtney was able to post pictures her adventure on the Moon to her Tumblr page in the 21st century from the Moon in the future, meaning that the superphone upgrade also worked on a phone's Internet access. After the TARDIS fell into a crevasse on the Moon, the Doctor attempted to call her from Clara's phone, but Clara didn't know her phone number. However, Courtney's Tumblr post allowed the Doctor to connect to her phone through a nearby viewscreen and ultimately direct her how to bring the TARDIS to him. (TV: Kill the Moon [+]Peter Harness, Doctor Who series 8 (BBC One, 2014).)
Clara called Danny Pink while on the Orient Express on what was supposed to be her and the Doctor's last trip together. (TV: Mummy on the Orient Express [+]Jamie Mathieson, Doctor Who series 8 (BBC One, 2014).)
Clara's phone was capable of video calling to and from the TARDIS which Clara used during the battle with the Fisher King, warning the Doctor that his ghost had appeared, even using her phone's video calling to show the Doctor the ghost who attempted to talk to it. However, the Drum's Faraday cage blocked even the signal from a superphone, forcing Clara to leave her phone outside of it when she and the scientists took cover inside. The phone was stolen by the ghosts, but Tim Lunn, who was immune as he hadn't seen the writing inside of the Arcateenian hearse, was able to leave to get it which turned out to be a trap by the ghosts. (TV: Before the Flood [+]Toby Whithouse, Doctor Who series 9 (BBC One, 2015).)
The Thirteenth Doctor possessed a flip phone which she used to leave a group message for Team TARDIS. The Doctor later left the phone with Ada Gordon and Noor Inayat Khan in 1943 to signal her once they found the Master's TARDIS. After finding it, the two women used the phone's speed dial which caused the Doctor's sonic screwdriver to ring. As she was talking to the Spy Master, the Doctor sent the call to voicemail. (TV: Spyfall [+]Chris Chibnall, Doctor Who series 12 (BBC One, 2020).)
The Thirteenth Doctor gave Inston-Vee Vinder a superphone to call her in case he needed the Doctor's help, directing him to dial 0 to reach the TARDIS directly. Unlike ordinary superphones, this one had two small metallic circles attached to the front which were connected to a larger round device affixed to the back. Unaware of what a phone was, Vinder referred to it as a communicator. (TV: Once, Upon Time [+]Chris Chibnall, Doctor Who series 13 (BBC One, 2021)., The Vanquishers [+]Chris Chibnall, Doctor Who series 13 (BBC One and BBC America, 2021)., The Power of the Doctor [+]Chris Chibnall, Doctor Who Centenary Special 2022 (BBC One, 2022).)
After getting trapped in a Passenger form, Vinder tried to call the Doctor without success as the phone didn't work inside of a Passenger form. Following his escape with Diane, Vinder was able to call the TARDIS, allowing Bel to trace the signal with Tigmi's help, enabling the Doctor to find and rescue Vinder and Diane who had gotten sucked back into the Passenger form. (TV: The Vanquishers [+]Chris Chibnall, Doctor Who series 13 (BBC One and BBC America, 2021).)
After finding the Spy Master's TARDIS on the cyber-conversion planet looking identical to the Doctor's TARDIS, Vinder used his superphone -- which he'd continued carrying ever since the Doctor first gave it to him -- to reach out to her for help. While the Doctor was a prisoner of the Master, Yaz got the message before it was interrupted by the Master. (TV: The Power of the Doctor [+]Chris Chibnall, Doctor Who Centenary Special 2022 (BBC One, 2022).)
At some point after joining Thirteenth Doctor and Yaz, Dan Lewis' phone was given the universal roaming upgrade, enabling Dan to phone his friend Diane in 21st century Liverpool whilst he was on a beach in 19th century China. (TV: Legend of the Sea Devils [+]Ella Road and Chris Chibnall, Doctor Who Easter Special 2022 (BBC One, 2022).)
The Fifteenth Doctor modified Ruby Sunday's smart phone with his sonic screwdriver so that she could call home from the year 21506. Ruby reached her mother just moments after her departure in the TARDIS which for Ruby was 10 minutes before. Impressed, Ruby called it "the best signal ever" and asked the Doctor how much it cost, but he didn't answer, too distracted with the mystery of where they had landed. (TV: Space Babies [+]Russell T Davies, Doctor Who series 14 (BBC One and Disney+, 2024).)
Precursors[]
The Second Doctor modified Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart's mobile radio, boosting it through the TARDIS communication systems to function through the TARDIS' forcefield, though it lacked the range to work after the TARDIS and the surrounding laboratory had been taken to the anti-matter universe. (TV: The Three Doctors)
The Fifth Doctor and Nyssa created an experimental device called a temporal interocitor to communicate across spacetime. This device was implied[by whom?] to be a prototype for the superphone. (AUDIO: Renaissance of the Daleks)
Behind the scenes[]
The Doctor has to date been shown four times on screen turning their companion's mobile into a "superphone": Rose Tyler's in TV: The End of the World, Martha Jones' quite late in her first season, in TV: 42, Donna Noble in TV: The Doctor's Daughter, and Ruby Sunday in TV: Space Babies [+]Russell T Davies, Doctor Who series 14 (BBC One and Disney+, 2024).. With Amy Pond and Clara Oswald, phone upgrades were simply taken as a given, with Clara seen using two distinctly different models of phone during her time.
In series 11, Yasmin Khan explicitly regains mobile reception only upon returning to 21st century Earth in TV: Arachnids in the UK. However, Dan Lewis is shown to have a superphone in TV: Legend of the Sea Devils [+]Ella Road and Chris Chibnall, Doctor Who Easter Special 2022 (BBC One, 2022)..
