Title Drop / Doctor Who

Mickey: But who's he? Where's the Doctor?
Rose: That's him. Right in front of you.
Jackie: What do you mean that's the Doctor? Doctor who?

— Doctor Who, "The Christmas Invasion"

Examples of Title Drop in Doctor Who.

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Series Title (“Doctor Who”)

• Used fairly straight the first time in "An Unearthly Child":
  • Ian addresses the Doctor as "Dr. Foreman" (as the grandfather of his student, Susan Foreman). The Doctor responds, "Eh? Doctor who?"invoked With that, a half-century Running Gag heard its starting gun.
  • Then, later, Ian to Barbara: "Who is he? Doctor who? Perhaps if we knew his name, we might have a clue to all this."
• After a while the Doctor starts invoking the trope himself. In "The Gunfighters", he introduced himself with a very long, muttered name, provoking the response "Doctor who?"
  The Doctor: Yes, quite right.
• Because the title can be used as a question, the title can be dropped every time the Doctor meets someone new and doesn't use an alias. Subverted in "Rose":
  The Doctor: I'm the Doctor.
  Rose: Doctor what?
• Even the abortive spin-off K-9 and Company got in on it:
  Brendan: Who is the Doctor?
  K9: Affirmative.
• "The Empty Child":
  Rose: Don't you ever get tired of "Doctor"? Doctor who?
  The Doctor: Nine centuries in, I'm coping.
• "Boom Town": The Doctor goes to see an enemy of his who's not expecting him, and asks her secretary to announce him.
  The Doctor: Just go in there, and tell her the Doctor would like to see her.
  Secretary: Doctor who?
  The Doctor: Just the Doctor. Tell her exactly that. The Doctor.
• "The Christmas Invasion": For context, the Doctor's just regenerated and Jackie and Mickey don't recognize him after he passed out due to regeneration sickness.
  Mickey: But who's he? Where's the Doctor?
  Rose: That's him. Right in front of you.
  Jackie: What do you mean that's the Doctor? Doctor who?
• Elevated to more than just a Running Gag and in-joke after "The Wedding of River Song". "Doctor who?" is now the oldest question in the universe, which must never be answered.
• In "Asylum of the Daleks", all the Daleks repeat "Doctor Who?" over and over after they all get Laser-Guided Amnesia.
• "The Snowmen" has the phrase "Doctor who?" used no less than three times, mostly by new companion Clara. As the Doctor is questioning who he is in this story, it's especially apt.
• Played with in “Dark Water” when Missy gets the Doctor to say it.
  Missy: My heart is maintained by the doctor.
  The Doctor: Doctor Who?
  Missy: (Extended Beat) DOCTOR CHANG!

Series Title and Story Title

• "The Next Doctor":
  • First the series title:
    Rosita: Who are you, anyway?
    The Doctor: I'm the Doctor.
    Rosita: Doctor who?
    The Doctor: Just the Doctor.
  • Then the story title:
    The Doctor: You're the next Doctor. Or the next but one...
• "The Bells of Saint John":
  • First the episode title …
    Monk: Wake the abbot! The bells of Saint John are ringing!
  • And then the show's title: when the Doctor meets Clara properly, he introduces himself, and she asks "Doctor who?" He then realizes he likes having people ask him that, and asks her to say it twice more.

Story Title

• "The Krotons". 77 times. Just hope that you aren't doing a drinking game.

• Inverted for "The Claws of Axos": the final story title was originally just a line of dialog from part 4, but it replaced the somewhat misleading working title, "The Vampire From Space", very late production—late enough that the graphic visualization of the previous story in the Radio Times trailed "The Vampire from Space" as the next story to be aired.
• "The Talons of Weng-Chiang":
  Magnus Greel: Let the Talons of Weng-Chiang SHRED your FLESH! [Evil Laugh]
• The Fourth Doctor namedrops the title of "The Armageddon Factor" after realizing that whoever is behind the war between Atrios and Zeos intends to allow both to be destroyed.
  The Doctor: There'll be a rather large bang, big enough to blow up Zeos, take Atrios with it, and make sure the whole thing ends in a sort of draw. That's the way these military minds work. The armageddon factor.
• Happens two stories in a row during the E-Space trilogy, in "Full Circle" and "State of Decay".
  Decider Draith: (dying) Tell Dexeter we've come full circle!
  The Doctor: Yes, I've never seen such a state of decay.
• In "The Mark of the Rani", it's shoehorned in by the Master almost every other scene.
• "The End of the World":
  The Doctor: It's the year 5.5/apple/26, five billion years in your future, and this is – hold on [checks watch] – this is the day the Sun expands. Welcome to the end of the world.
• "World War Three":
  The Doctor: World War Three: the Earth gets nuked.
• "The Long Game" has a belated Title Drop; it ends without any reference to what the title meant at all. Not until the Doctor returns to the same location 100 years later, in "Bad Wolf", does he realise "Someone's been playing a long game." (The title of "Bad Wolf" had, of course already been dropped all over the series.) And of course, not mentioning the "Long Game" of the title until a later episode is itself a reference to the concept of the long game.
  The Doctor: Someone's been playing a long game, controlling Earth from behind the scenes for generations.
• "The Doctor Dances":
  Rose: The world doesn't end 'cause the Doctor dances.
• "Bad Wolf": Besides the belated "The Long Game" drop mentioned above, there's this particularly significant dropping of the titular Arc Words, when Rose discovers who runs the killer game show she's wound up on.
  Rodrick: When it comes to the final, I want to be up against you, so that you get disintregrated, and I get a stackload of credits — courtesy of the Bad Wolf Corporation.
• "The Age of Steel":
  Cyber!Lumic: This is the age of steel and I am its creator.
• "Army of Ghosts": From Rose's opening narration:
  "Then came the army of ghosts. Then came Torchwood and the war."
• "The Family of Blood": This is also the first time in the two-part story that the Family's name had been mentioned in full.
  Rocastle: You speak with someone else's voice, Baines. Who might that be?
  Son of Mine: We are the Family of Blood.
• And obviously, there were a few blink-and-you-miss-it Title Drops in "Blink".
• "Partners in Crime":
  The Doctor: Hello, I'm the Doctor.
  Donna: And I'm Donna.
  Miss Foster: Partners in crime. And evidently offworlders, judging by your sonic technology.
• "The Unicorn and the Wasp":
  The Doctor: [opening the leather case Agatha found] Ooh! Someone came here tooled up — the sort of stuff a thief would use.
  Agatha Christie: The Unicorn! He's here!
  The Doctor: The Unicorn and the Wasp.
• "Silence in the Library":
  The Doctor: A million million lifeforms … and silence in the Library.
• "Turn Left" has the title dropped several times when Donna is told what decision of hers created the crapsack timeline she's now in, and that she has to prevent her past self from turning right in order to fix things.
• "The End of Time":
  • First from the Ood:
    "Something vast is stirring in the darkness, and the darkness heralds only one thing: The end of time itself."
  • Then we learn who's trying to bring it about:
    Rassilon: For the end of time itself!
• "The Beast Below": Twice, at the beginning and end.
  Creepy Girl: Though the man above may say hello, expect no love from the beast below.
  Amy: [voiceover] This dream must end, this world must know — we all depend on the beast below.
• "The Time of Angels": River reads this from the book on Weeping Angels she has in her possession.
  "What if we had ideas that could think for themselves? What if one day our dreams no longer needed us? When these things occur and are held to be true, the time will be upon us — the time of Angels."
• "The Vampires of Venice": Almost. Amy says "They're vampires", and the Doctor replies "In Venice!" ("Vampires in Venice" was actually the episode's Working Title.)
• "Amy's Choice":
  • Dropped by the Dream Lord himself.
    Dream Lord: Pick a world, and this nightmare will all be over. They'll listen to you. It's you they're waiting for. Amy's men. Amy's choice.
  • After the Doctor "defeats" the Dream Lord, Rory title-drops the episode when asked where he wants to go:
    Rory: I'm fine with anywhere. It's Amy's choice.
• "The Pandorica Opens":
  • River shows the Doctor Vincent van Gogh's painting, left as a message.
    The Doctor: Does it have a title?
    River: The Pandorica Opens.
  • Amy does it too, while accidentally serving River some spoilers from her future.
    "No, but you said you'd see the Doctor again when the Pandorica opens."
• "A Good Man Goes to War": A few times.
  • First, when Dorium gets a visit from Madame Kovarian, and decides to enlighten her on the origin of her base's name.
    Dorium: That asteroid, that you've made your base. Do you know why they call it "Demon's Run"?
    Manton: How do you know the location of our base?
    Dorium: You're with the Headless Monks. They're old customers of mine.
    Kovarian: It's just some old saying.
    Dorium: A very old saying. The oldest: "Demons run when a good man goes to war."
  • The poem River reads in voiceover at the climax, as Kovarian's scheme is uncovered, has the phrase as a refrain.
    "Night will fall, and drown the sun, when a good man goes to war."
• "Let's Kill Hitler":
  Mels: Well, let's see: you've got a time machine, I've got a gun. What the hell — let's kill Hitler.
• "The God Complex".
  Rita: Why is it up to you to save us? That's quite a god complex you've got there.
• "Dinosaurs on a Spaceship":
  The Doctor: I know! Dinosaurs! On a spaceship!
• "The Power of Three": Amy delivers this voiceover at the end, which also manages to drop the episode's Working Title, "Cubed".
  "It was also when we realized something the Shakri never understood: what 'cubed' really means — the power of three."
• "The Angels Take Manhattan":
  The Doctor: River, how many Angels in New York?
  River: It's like they've taken over every statue in the city.
  The Doctor: Yeah. The Angels take Manhattan because they can. Because they've never had a food source like this one.
• "The Rings of Akhaten": The Doctor introduces Clara to her first offworld destination.
  "Welcome to the rings of Akhaten."
• "The Crimson Horror": The locals of a Yorkshire town with mysterious red corpses turning up in the canal have dubbed the cause of death the "Crimson Horror", because they don't know what it is.
  Coroner: 'E's not the first I've 'ad in 'ere, lookin' like that. "The Crimson 'Orror" — that's what they're callin' it.
• Exploited perfectly in "The Name of the Doctor", and best of all, not in a way the audience would expect.
  War Doctor: What I did, I did without choice.
  Eleventh Doctor: I know.
  War Doctor: In the name of peace, and sanity.
  Eleventh Doctor: But not in the name of the Doctor!
• Close in "Time Heist". "It's not a bank heist; it's a time travel heist."
• "Dark Water": The titular substance is introduced.
  Dr. Chang: We call it "dark water". Only organic matter can be seen through it.
• "Last Christmas":
  Clara: Every Christmas is last Christmas.
• "Sleep No More" is a Literary Allusion Title taken from Macbeth, and the Doctor quotes the passage in question at one point in the episode.
• "Face the Raven":
  Clara: We all face the raven in the end.
• "The Ghost Monument" is a location on the planet Desolation so named because, every thousand years, a ghost-like object briefly appears there. It's also the finish line in the final Galactic Relay. It's actually the TARDIS caught in a materialization loop.
• "It Takes You Away" is all young Hanne can say when she hides under the table from the monster that lurks in the woods outside her cottage.
• "Can You Hear Me?" begins with a woman's voice asking that exact question.

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