Shout Out / Doctor Who

WARNING! THERE MAY BE UNMARKED SPOILERS!

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Classic Series

• "The Edge of Destruction": The First Doctor comments that he got his cloak from Gilbert and Sullivan.
• "Inferno": The Doctor complains about the Mirror Universe UNIT's scepticism about his TARDIS by asking them if they expected "Batman at the controls". Also a Take That! as, at the time, Batman was what ITV was running against Doctor Who.
• "Terror of the Autons": The Time Lord who comes to warn the Doctor about the Master appears dressed in a conventional English suit with a bowler hat and floating in a blue sky with no apparent means of support. The visual reference here is to Magritte.
• "Robot": Harry's disguise is a Whole Costume Reference to Steed in The Avengers (1960s). Sarah Jane intentionally mixes up her pop culture when she sees him and compares him to... James Bond.
• "The Robots of Death": "Grimwade's Syndrome", a fear of robots, was named after production assistant (later to be both director and writer) Peter Grimwade, who hated to do robot stories. The story also had characters named Ander Poul^note His first name is revealed in the sequel novel Corpse Marker, after Speculative Fiction writer Poul Anderson, Uvanov (Isaac Asimov), and Taren Capel (Karel Capek).
• "The Talons of Weng-Chiang":
  • To The Importance of Being Earnest ("A hatbox?").
  • Jago's alliterative speeches are a shout out to Leonard Sachs's turn as the compere in the BBC's music-hall revival show The Good Old Days.
  • And, of course, the idea of a disfigured maniac hiding under a theatre.
  • Li H'Sen Chang is a villainous fictional version of the real-world (fake) Chinese conjurer Chung Ling Soo.
  • Litefoot's landlady is named Mrs. Hudson.
  • The Doctor enjoys messing around in boats.
  • The giant rat is also reminiscent of animals grown to enormous size in Food Of The Gods.
  • Jack the Ripper is mentioned.
  • Litefoot quotes from The Pilgrim's Progress and attributes it to John Bunyan.
  • The Doctor quotes from the monologue The Green Eye Of The Yellow God, incorrectly attributing it to Henry Champion.
• "Destiny of the Daleks" shows the Doctor amusing himself by mocking a book by Oolon Colluphid.
• "Dragonfire":
  • In this 1987 serial, the Doctor and a philosophically-minded guard debate the concept that "the semiotic thickness of a performed text varies according to the redundancy of its auxiliary performance codes." This is a direct quote from an academic media studies book entitled Doctor Who: The Unfolding Text, and roughly translates into layman's terms as "the less relevant an in-joke is to the plot, the more cultural significance it has."
  • Almost every character in that story was named after someone famous to film history.
• To Norse Mythology: During the Sylvester McCoy era, the Doctor battled the Gods of Ragnarok and the Wolves of Fenric.
• "Ghost Light": The Doctor asks "Who was it who said Earthmen never invited their ancestors to dinner?"

Expanded Universe

• The title of the Doctor Who Expanded Universe novel The Taking of Chelsea 426 is a triple reference: first (and most obviously) to the movie The Taking of Pelham 123, and second to the planet LV-426. Thirdly, the Saturnian city is the new location of the Chelsea Flower Show.
  • Eighth Doctor Adventures novel The Taking of Planet 5 also homages Pelham 123.
• The 2003 webcast "Shada", based on a script by Douglas Adams, included a Nutrimat drinks machine and a Ford Prefect car (neither appearing in the original script), both references to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. The 2012 novelisation contains several more references, such as a reiteration of the famous digital watches joke, Chronotis switching out the book for "an Earth classic about space and thumbing lifts..." and a scene where the Doctor attempts to communicate with a man in ragged clothes and long hair whose first word is, for no apparent reason, "It's..."

New Series

In General

• The Running Gag of the Doctor replacing enemies' guns with bananas is a reference to the Buster Keaton film The High Sign, where Keaton does the same thing to a policeman.
• River's relationship with the Doctor, a woman who falls in love with a time traveller and meets him in the wrong order throughout her life is a pretty obvious shout out to The Time Traveler's Wife.
  • There's also a suspicion that Van Morrison is getting a namecheck here: reference his ballad Crazy Love (and what sort of love could be crazier?)
    Yet I'm running to her, like a river's song
    She gives me love, love, love, love - crazy love!

Series 1

• "The End of the World": Before becoming a major part of the show's mythology, the Face of Boe was just a throwaway reference to an obscure narrative poem by Rudyard Kipling, The Ballad of Boh Da Thone. It's about a bandit/warlord who consistently avoids the British Army's attempts to capture and/or kill him only to be crushed to death when a fat ox driver he's trying to rob falls down off his cart on top of him. Said ox driver then decapitates Boh's corpse and sends his head by parcel post as a gift to an acquaintance who was one of the aforementioned soldiers who'd tried to catch him.
• "Dalek": The Bill... Bill... Junk... Bill... sequence where the Doctor goes through the uncatalogued alien weapons and dismisses one as being a hairdryer references Buck Rogers in the 25th Century.
• "Father's Day": The Lamb and Flag pub from Bottom is mentioned.
• "The Empty Child"/"The Doctor Dances":
  • There seems to be a reference to The Importance of Being Earnest with Jack shagging Algy since Jack and Algy (short for Algernon) are main characters in that play.
  • Not to mention Rose asking the Doctor "I think you should scan for alien tech. Give me some Spock. For once, would it kill you?" Then, later on, she tells Jack that the Doctor is named "Mr. Spock", which Jack falls for since he's from the future and unfamiliar with 20th-century science fiction.
  • Rose is dressed similarly to Jenny Sparks of The Authority.

Series 2

• "The Christmas Invasion":
  • The Doctor entreats the Sycorax to leave the humans alone. He makes a heartwarming speech about how from the day they arrive on the planet and blinking, step into the sun, there is more to be seen than can ever be seen... whereupon he remarks, "Sorry, that's The Lion King."
    • He seems to still have the movie on his brain when he tells the defeated Sycorax leader to "Leave this planet, and never return."
  • A couple to Star Wars:
    • The Doctor, while duelling the Sycorax leader, ends up at one point partly hanging over the edge of the spaceship, with a very long fall below him, after getting his hand cut off.
    • Just to double the amputation jokes, he then gets up in the exact same pose from the poster/cover of Army of Darkness, minus shotgun and woman clinging to his leg.
    • Torchwood's Converging-Stream Weapon, which is used to destroy the Sycorax ship.
  • A reference to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: "Not bad for a man in his jim-jams. Very Arthur Dent. Now, there was a nice man."
• "Tooth and Claw":
  • The Doctor, while passing himself off as "Dr. James McCrimmon", says that he studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh under Dr. Bell. Bell was one of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's teachers and a likely inspiration for Sherlock Holmes.
  • The Doctor refers to Rose as a "tim'rous beastie", a quote from a poem by Robert Burns - who famously wrote in Scottish dialect. Seems fitting, as he's adopted one himself.
• "School Reunion": Anthony Head (who played Giles in Buffy the Vampire Slayer), in clear Buffy Speak, calls K9 (a robot dog with a laser cannon) a "Shooty Dog-thing".
• "The Girl in the Fireplace":
  • The episode was explicitly inspired by The Time Traveler's Wife, to the point where the author later included a reference to Doctor Who in her sequel.
  • When the Doctor is Playing Drunk, he enters the room singing "I Could Have Danced All Night" from My Fair Lady.
• "Rise of the Cybermen": Jake compares the Cybus personnel gathering up homeless people for conversion to the Child-Catcher, the intensely creepy villain from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.
• "The Age of Steel": Pete compares the Preachers to the main characters of Scooby-Doo, saying "They even got the van!"
• "The Idiot's Lantern":
  • The Wire yells "FEED ME!"
  • "Goodnight children... everywhere."
• "The Impossible Planet"/"The Satan Pit":
  • There's a lot of use of Doom Doors. Given that it involves a gigantic demon possessing people and an archeology dig digging up said demon, this is most likely intentional.
  • The idea of being kept in orbit around a black hole by a powerful artificial energy source is reminiscent of The Black Hole.
  • The Doctor compares an instance of Ida Tempting Fate to saying "This is gonna be the best Christmas Walford's ever had."
• "Fear Her": The episode is set on a street named after British Olympic champion Dame Kelly Holmes.
• "Army of Ghosts":
  • The Tenth Doctor dons a "triangulation kit" consisting of a power-pack and three TARDIS roundels; the finished getup resembles the Ghostbusters' infamous Proton Pack. Cue a brief rendition of Ray Parker, Jr's classic theme tune.
    The Doctor: Who ya' gonna call?
    Rose: [laughing] Ghostbusters!
    The Doctor: I ain't 'fraid of no ghosts!
  • The news show documenting the behaviour of the "ghosts" is called Ghostwatch.
• "Doomsday": A method of interdimensional travel that destabilizes the universe with each use? Remind you of anything?

Series 3

• "The Runaway Bride":
  • The Racnoss Empress' Webstar bears a striking resemblance to the Cylon Basestar from Battlestar Galactica (2003). In addition to the similarity of the names, both ships are made with Y shapes stacked atop one another.
  • The Empress herself is a Drider.
  • Donna makes a comment about having seen a movie where there were dinosaurs at the centre of the Earth, probably Journey to the Center of the Earth (1959).
  • The way the Doctor kills the Racnoss children is very reminiscent of the nursery rhyme "The Itsy-Bitsy Spider".
• "Smith and Jones":
  • The plasmavore uses a bendy straw to drink peoples' blood, much like how the Yugopotamians use straws to eat human brains.
  • Martha compares the slab drones to the motorcycle guy from the then-current Zovirax ads.
  • The Doctor faking illness to investigate a hospital is similar to what Sherlock Holmes does in "The Dying Detective".
• "The Shakespeare Code":
  • New companion Martha remarks that the apparent witchcraft being done "all sounds a bit Harry Potter", the Doctor enjoins her to wait till she reads the 7th book (which hadn't come out when the episode aired). Later, they and Shakespeare have to, on the fly, say the right words to banish the Carrionites:
    Shakespeare: Banished like a tinker's cuss, I say to thee... [looks to the Doctor]
    The Doctor: Uhh... [looks to Martha]
    Martha: Expelliarmus!
    The Doctor: Expelliarmus!
    Shakespeare: Expelliarmus! [it works]
    The Doctor: Good old J.K.!
    • This also doubles as an Actor Allusion (or perhaps Celebrity Paradox) since the Tenth Doctor, David Tennant, played Barty Crouch Jr. in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.
  • Martha comments how Shakespeare doesn't look much like his portraits. His actor, Dean Lennox Kelly, instead looks strikingly like Kenneth Branagh.
  • The Doctor tells Shakespeare that Martha is from Freedonia.
  • The Doctor explains the situation to Martha by comparing it to Back to the Future.
• "Gridlock":
  • By Word of God, the concept of an endless traffic jam in a dystopian city is a nod to Mega-City One in Judge Dredd. The man with the bowler hat is based on Max Normal, a supporting character in the comic.
  • Sally Calypso is a homage to Swifty Frisko.
  • Ma and Pa, the American Gothic Couple at the beginning.
  • Apparently, the Doctor's Badass Longcoat was a gift from Janis Joplin.
  • Brannigan's appearance was based on "Ratz", the CGI disembodied cat's head that was a virtual presenter on CBBC's Live and Kicking in the early '90s.
• "The Lazarus Experiment": The climax in the cathedral is an acknowledged reference to the climax of The Quatermass Experiment.
• "42":
  • This 2007 episode plays out in real time, à la 24.
  • The title, of course, is another The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy reference.
  • After Martha asks the Doctor about Elvis and the Beatles, he namedrops "Here Comes the Sun" by the latter.
• "Human Nature":
  • The Doctor's human alter-ego gives his parents' names as Sydney and Verity. Sydney Newman was one of the original creators of the show, and Verity Lambert was its first producer... they could very well be considered the "mother and father" of Doctor Who! This is reprised in "The End of Time", the 2009 Christmas special, with a cameo appearance by one of Joan Redfern's descendants, who has written a book based on John Smith's journal under the name "Verity Newman".
  • During the fast-forwarded part of the Doctor's instructions to Martha, David Tennant notes that he now has to talk for about a minute "without hesitation, deviation, or whatever the other thing is".
  • Daughter of Mine's red balloon is a reference to Rover.
  • The green "meteor" and the searchlight sweeping across the common reference The War of the Worlds, set in roughly the same time period.
• "Blink":
  • Someone gets stuck in the past and arranges for a message to be delivered to a friend at the place and time when they disappeared. Gary Sparrow did it in Goodnight Sweetheart.
  • "How did I get here?" "Same way we did! Touch of an angel!"
  • "You live in Scooby-Doo's house."^note "For god's sake, I don't live here!"
• "Utopia": Jack labels the Futurekind the Beastie Boys.
• "The Sound of Drums":
  • Repeatedly opening and closing a soundproof door with someone screaming on the other side.
  • Some Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons fans were quick to note that the Valiant looked a lot like Cloudbase. Or the S.H.I.E.L.D. helicarrier from Marvel Comics.
  • The Master feels like a Shout Out to Caligula in I, Claudius. He has a constant sound of drums in his head like Caligula has a sound of galloping in his head. Also, the aged Doctor seems similar to Claudius who is mocked by Caligula. Suitable as in "Last of the Time Lords" the Master is The Caligula. If you watch the two characters you really feel the similarity between the John Simm Master and Caligula. John Simm had already played Caligula and claims he partially based his performance on this.
    • Although, ironically, the Master's previous incarnation was played by Claudius.
  • The Toclafane saying "Master is our friend!" when they find themselves dealing with President Winters instead of the Master.
• "Last of the Time Lords":
  • "Say hello, Gandalf."
  • The Toclafane bear an uncanny resemblance to the spheres from Phantasm, right down to being powered by the brains of the creator's human victims.
  • The scene where the Doctor burns the Master on a funeral pyre is reminiscent of Luke doing the same with Darth Vader's armour at the end of Return of the Jedi.
  • A woman with bright red fingernails picking up the Master's ring as his laughter is heard in the background nods to the end of the 1980 Flash Gordon movie.

Series 4

• "Time Crash": The collision between the Fifth and Tenth Doctors' TARDISes nearly results in a hole being torn into the space-time continuum the exact size of... Belgium.
• "Voyage of the Damned":
  • The episode is set on the Starship Titanic.
  • Information: The penultimate security protocol the Doctor tries on the Host before using 1 and getting a result is 42.
• "Partners in Crime":
  • In closeups of Miss Foster during her press conference, all that can be seen of "ADIPOSE INDUSTRIES" behind her is "DUST", the catchphrase of Fat Fighter's Marjorie on Little Britain.
  • The Adipose nursery ship looks very similar to the spaceships at Devil's Tower in Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
• "The Fires of Pompeii":
  • The Roman characters are named after the Romans from the Cambridge Latin Course textbooks. (Lampshaded in The Vault tie-in book, where a fake cover from the Cambridge Latin Course books and identical chapter intro images show the Doctor and the characters from both the real coursebook and the show.)
  • The Doctor explains away Donna's ignorance of what an augur does by saying "She's from Barcelona."
  • The Punny Name Running Gag nods to Asterix.
• "Planet of the Ood": When Solana Mercurio talks about the Ood's voice modifications, one of them says "D'oh!" in a way that sounds like Homer Simpson.
• "The Poison Sky":
  • Donna shouts an Alan Partridge-style "Back of the neck!" when knocking out a Sontaran.
  • The Valiant has been outfitted with a Death Star-style laser.
• "The Unicorn and the Wasp":
  • "I've gathered you all here in the Accusing Parlour..."
  • To say nothing of the number of Agatha Christie titles dropped into the dialogue ("Well, that's put the Cat Among the Pigeons", "It's a trick, an illusion, They Do It With Mirrors", "The Moving Finger points to...", "Why Didn't They Ask — Heavens!").
  • Word of God is that the episode was inspired by the board game Clue ("Cluedo" in the UK).
    Professor Peach: [in the library] I say! What are you doing with that lead piping?
• "Forest of the Dead": In the computer system, Miss Evangelista's glitched face is distorted in a manner reminiscent of a Picasso painting.
• "Midnight":
  • Dee Dee quotes "Goblin Market" at one point, which does nothing to lessen the creepiness of the situation.
  • Professor Hobbes appears in a story where Humans Are Bastards (including him).
• "Turn Left": At one point, Donna and her family gather with their housemates and sing "Bohemian Rhapsody".
• "The Stolen Earth":
  • Their position's correct, but... no Earth.
  • The first to leave Planet Earth ahead of a crisis are the bees.
  • "It's like an outer-space Facebook!"
• "Journey's End": Captain Jack makes a Mickey Mouse crack upon being reunited with Mickey Smith.
• "Planet of the Dead":
  • Almost all of the episode is a shout out to The Langoliers by Stephen King. From the vehicle falling through a wormhole into a strange and empty world, to the ominous but vague something lurking on the horizon that turns out to be a horde of creatures that devour everything in their path, to the psychic sensing their approach.
  • The world on which the bus lands is San Helios, which orbits three suns, similar to the Elite homeworld of Sanghelios, which also orbits three suns. And both stories begin when a human vehicle crash-lands on a strange world.
• "The Waters of Mars":
  • To David Bowie:
    • The episode is set in Bowie Base One on Mars. He did have a song called "Life on Mars?", after all.
    • "Space Oddity" features the line "Planet Earth is blue, and there's nothing I can do", which the Flood's intent echoes. The song also involves someone dying in space for reasons that will never be known back on Earth.
  • The horrific zombie alien virus is called the Flood.
  • An Eldritch Abomination taking the form of a watery liquid that turns people into zombies who want to bring about The End of the World as We Know It sounds a lot like the modus operandi of the Prince of Darkness.
  • A man is shocked by his male lover buying him a car as a birthday present. Now where have we seen that before?
  • The idea of one drop of water contaminating the global supply seems to come from Cat's Cradle and ice-nine.
  • The sound the computer makes when it tracks crew members is from 2001: A Space Odyssey.
  • The door to the com room where Adelaide contacts the Doctor makes Doom door noises.
  • A character is infected by a single drop falling onto his eye. Remind you of anything?
  • When the Doctor changes history, he sees changing newspaper headlines. There's also flaming tire tracks.
• "The End of Time":
  • The Doctor refers to the Master as Skeletor.
  • The Master wears a hoodie, makes high super-jumps, has super-strength and eats people. Haven't we seen this before?
  • And he shoots lightning from his hands and uses it to fly around. Sound familiar? Some found it reminiscent of something else... because "yeah, he can fly".
  • The Master's resurrection scene, with loyal followers sacrificing their bodies and the mortal enemy being brought in for a forcibly taken biological sample, is uncannily reminiscent of that of Lord Voldemort from Harry Potter.
  • The scene with Captain Jack is reminiscent of the cantina from Star Wars: A New Hope.
  • So's the turret gunner scene (down to some shots being exactly the same!) with Slow Lasers, and the Lord President of the Time Lords getting his comeuppance by the Master, with electricity...
  • Some viewers think the Vinvocci spaceship looks like the Heart of Gold. Or Starbug, or Serenity.
  • The Doctor's death, a Heroic Sacrifice via massive radiation poisoning whilst sealed in a glass chamber, is rather appropriately reminiscent of the death scene at the end of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.
  • Ood Sigma's last words to the Doctor.
    Ood Sigma: This song is ending, but the story never ends.

Series 5

• "The Eleventh Hour":
  • The Doctor's rejection of one food after another is reminiscent of the scene in Winnie the Pooh in which Tigger says "Tiggers like honey/yuck, Tiggers don't like honey." It even sounds similar: "Oh, I love apples" [chomp] "Yech! I hate apples." It seems to fit the Doctor's personality as a bumbling, manic, impulsive genius.
  • The guy who's surfing porn on his laptop and needs to get a girlfriend is named Jeff.
  • The Doctor's Badass Boast near the end brings to mind Inigo Montoya.
• "The Beast Below":
  • Amy runs around in her nightie and a dressing gown the whole time, a bit like a female version of Arthur Dent. Or a reference to Wendy from Peter Pan; a girl who runs off with the mysterious boy to another land in her nightgown the night before she has to "grow up".
  • Liz 10 says "Help us, Doctor, you're our only hope." And later, the main characters wind up in a dump where they realize a) there's something alive down there, and b) they're IN the mouth of the Beast.
• "Victory of the Daleks":
  • A Robotic Reveal through the loss of a hand, later replaced with a classic Red Right Hand.
  • The Doctor explains that Bracewell's memories and personality were uploaded to a positronic brain.
  • "Broadsword calling Danny Boy..."
  • The space Spitfires sequence is more than a little reminiscent of Star Wars: Episode IV A New Hope, specifically a sequence inspired by WWII movie The Dam Busters.
  • A lone human aircraft takes on a huge saucer-shaped alien flagship.
  • Bracewell being a bomb echoes the Philip K. Dick short story "Imposter".
  • At the end, Bracewell's new right hand has a black glove.
• "The Time of Angels":
  • River throws herself out of the Byzantium to get into the TARDIS.
  • The sequence with the Weeping Angel slowly emerging from the television screen is quite possibly a reference to The Ring.
  • The Angels use the voices of their victims to lure in more victims.
  • "Hello, Angels."
• "Flesh and Stone":
  • The Doctor gets the Angels to say "comfy chairs".
  • In the "Meanwhile in the TARDIS" scene, the Eleventh Doctor tells Amy he's like, "I dunno, Gandalf! A space Gandalf. Or the little green one in Star Wars. [lightsaber noise]"
• "The Vampires of Venice":
  • The look of the vampire girls is a deliberate homage to the Hammer Horror era. They also look a bit like the girls of Castle Anthrax.
  • The Doctor's UV light wand looks and sounds a bit like a lightsaber. And later, Rory makes lightsaber noises while wildly swinging a broom around when accosted by Francesco.
  • Isabella's demise is very similar to the first death in Jaws.
  • Rory's use of crossed candlesticks as a makeshift cross mirrors Van Helsing doing the same in the 1958 Dracula.
  • Rory calls Francesco "SpongeBob".
  • The Doctor climbs a stone edifice in a storm in order to do something to a mechanical device.
  • To stop the doomsday machine, the Doctor only has to flick a small switch.
• "Amy's Choice":
  • Elders in a rural village killing residents to keep up their façade, and the heroes facing them off?
  • The Dream Lord appears in the camper van holding a white racing helmet with a dark blue stripe.
• "The Hungry Earth": The night-vision sunglasses the Doctor uses bring to mind similar-looking glasses from They Live!.
• "Vincent and the Doctor":
  • "If you paint it, he will come."
  • The Doctor fights a monster by looking at its reflection, just like Perseus fighting Medusa. Even better, there's a statue of Perseus with Medusa's head in the museum that the Doctor passes by.
  • Richard Curtis sneaks in a nod to his own series with the Doctor mentioning the TARDIS' "friction contrafibulator", referencing Blackadder wishing Samuel Johnson his "most enthusiastic contrafibularities".
• "The Lodger": The Doctor tells the ship's autopilot that he's from International Rescue.
• "The Pandorica Opens":
  • The "oldest text in the universe" that River uses to communicate with the Doctor near the beginning sounds very similar in the Doctor's description to God's Final Message to His Creation from So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish^note although in the book they're only 30 feet high. Especially since, thanks to Douglas Adams being a Doctor Who writer and script editor, there's already been a fair amount of crossover and cross-pollination.
    • It could also be a shout-out to the spin-off novel Set Piece, where one of the Doctor's companions uses the same trick to arrange a rescue after being stranded in Ancient Egypt.
  • The Cyberman head crawling along on tentacles is straight out of The Thing (1982) or the facehuggers in Alien.
  • The knockout dart the Cyberman head fires at Amy looks familiar...
  • Of course, the Cybermen and Borg have obvious similarities, but they made it even more obvious when a Cyberman said "YOU WILL BE ASSIMILATED!"
  • The Cyberman re-attaching its head is very similar to a scene in The Faculty or a certain death-scene from the game Dead Space.
  • The idea of agents/replicants who do not know their true nature and, on a signal, activate their attack goes back to The Manchurian Candidate (hence the Manchurian Agent trope) and Battlestar Galactica (2003) (Rory's shock as he activates and tries to march off is similar to the Tomato in the Mirror Cylons).
  • The various ships zoom around Stonehenge like the alien ships around Devil's Tower in Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
• "The Big Bang":
  • The Doctor's Only Mostly Dead quote is a clear homage to The Princess Bride.
  • The universe is saved using the principle behind the Total Perspective Vortex.

Series 6

• "The Impossible Astronaut" features FBI agent Canton Everett Delaware III, played by Mark Sheppard. Previously, Sheppard had played the Space-British crime lord Badger on Firefly, a series whose fandom will pretty much burst into song at the mention of the word “Canton” due to the episode "Jaynestown" and the in-universe bar song celebrating “The Hero of Canton”, Jayne Cobb.
• "The Doctor's Wife": Word of God has confirmed that the scenes of Amy and Rory running through the TARDIS while it is possessed by House are a "very intentional" reference to Harlan Ellison's "I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream". [1]
• "The God Complex":
  • The Doctor explains the configuration of a prison, with multiple rooms changing shape and form and new threats to face each time. Then he flicks up a Rubik's cube and comments "Well that's just rude."
  • Foreshadowing the hotel rooms, one character says "Here comes a candle to light you to bed; here comes a chopper to chop off your head". It's more likely an allusion to a traditional nursery rhyme, "Oranges and Lemons", which predates Nineteen Eighty-Four by quite a few years.

Series 7

• "Asylum of the Daleks" has a possible reference to Coupling when Rory asks, "What colour?" because all the good questions were gone. Similarly, in "The Man with Two Legs", Patrick asks Jeff — who has fallen in love with a girl's leg — "Left or right?" When Steve stares at him, he protests "It's a leg! What else is there to ask?" The others look shocked at him when he queries about the colour. It's also possibly a reference to the backlash against the brightly coloured Paradigm Daleks in "Victory of the Daleks".
• "The Bells of Saint John": When the Doctor and Clara find themselves on a crashing plane, the conversation about how neither of them knows how to fly it, ending with the Doctor saying "Fine, we'll do it together" is a reference to a conversation in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy where Zaphod establishes that neither he, Ford nor Trillian know how to pilot the Heart of Gold manually.
• "The Rings of Akhaten": Neil Cross was apparently having a lot of fun with references.
  • The episode contains an array of new species. One of these seems to be a reference to CHIKARA, as not only are they called the Ultramanti (meaning the singular is Ultramantis), but there is a resemblance between them and one UltraMantis Black.
  • There's also the Doctor's mention of a species named the Hooloovoo. An eponymous species in a certain book series is referred to as "an intelligent shade of blue".
  • Clara, being a newbie on the TARDIS team, refers to the Doctor's signature gadget at one point as a "spanner". He politely corrects her with "screwdriver".
  • There are homages to works like the Indiana Jones film series (the Doctor's Indy Hat Roll moment with the screwdriver, Malevolent Architecture and traps in an ancient temple, Ravenwood being the maiden name of Clara's mum, even the poster for the episode) and Blade Runner (the shot of Clara's eyes reflecting a stylised scenery, the Doctor's and Clara's speech in the finale having similarities to Roy Batty's famous final monologue). Interestingly enough, an interview with Jenna Coleman at the time had her mentioning that Matt Smith recommended she watch Raiders of the Lost Ark before filming Series 7.
• "Hide": Another episode written by Cross, with references such as:
  • The setup of the episode, with a group of ghost hunters in the 1970s using period technology to detect paranormal activities, is a nod to British horror films like The Stone Tape.
  • Clara asks where they're going with the TARDIS and the Doctor insinuates that the question isn't where, but when.
  • The Doctor quotes some lines from a Cole Porter song in the epilogue.
  • The cold spot and the music room being "the heart of the house" are direct references to The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson (it was the nursery in the book).
• "Nightmare in Silver":
  • There's a galaxy-spanning human empire, with an emperor that they revere as a god, who is engaged in a Robot War and destroys entire planets if it means stopping the enemy.
  • To store their knowledge, the Cybermen also have an artificial shared consciousness at their disposal — called The Cyberiad.

50ᵗʰ Anniversary Specials

• "The Day of the Doctor": As the Doctors enter the TARDIS to return to the present day from the 1500s, the 11th Doctor says "Right then, Back to the Future."
• "The Time of the Doctor": The climax was also extremely reminiscent of that of Back to the Future, with the Doctor on a clock tower and everything.

Series 8

• "Deep Breath"'s restaurant scene is similar to the one in Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows: In Victorian London, a highly intelligent, gorgeously-costumed girl meets an eccentric genius in a restaurant who proceeds to insult her (they make up later). Then, it turns out all the patrons were in on the bad guy's plot; they get up simultaneously and leave the girl to her fate (though Clara fares better than Irene).
• "Into the Dalek" features a dark Shout-Out to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and/or Crying Freeman when Clara suggests that Danny Pink "shoots people and then cries about it".
• "Robot of Sherwood": The Robin of Sherwood theme carries an unmistakable riff from the theme of Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, likely intended to underline just how ridiculously stereotypical Robin is.
• "Time Heist":
  • In the "Making Of" featurette, Jenna mentions that this episode was inspired, at least in part, by Ocean's Eleven.
  • The Doctor says that the Architect must be a time traveller because he could find out exactly when a rare solar storm would hit.
  • The hacker opens all the locks to the vault except one, which is opened when an outside event cuts the juice.
  • Psi seems like a fusion of several '90s cyberpunk tropes: His memory powers recall Johnny Mnemonic, and his stuttering is very reminiscent of Max Headroom.
  • In an episode that heavily features psychic abilities and the threat of fire, the main antagonist is named Delphox.
  • You've got an "Architect", someone who can change their face, a conversation about how impossible it is to not think about something, and the phrase "You'll be old and full of regret". Sound familiar?
  • Saibra is a mutant, whose powers allow her to assume another's personality and likeness via touch. However, this also dooms her to never being able to touch another living being as she can't shut the powers off. Tweak the powers a smidge, and give her a skunk stripe, and you have Rogue of the X-Men.
  • Clara's outfit. It's a simple black and white suit with a thin black tie. Being worn for a bank heist. Still haven't put it together? She was wearing it for her date with a man called... Mr. Pink.
• "Flatline": The registration on the train that's going to crush the TARDIS is A113. (That one is definitely deliberate, as correct headcodes start with a digit, not a letter.)
  • The Doctor's hand dragging the miniaturized Tardis along the tracks was done as a visual shoutout to The Addams Family 's the Thing, a disembodied hand that lived in a box.
• "In the Forest of the Night":
  • Although it isn't seen that way in the episode, the angle from which the Trafalgar Square lion's head is seen in the episode's main publicity shot (see above) makes it look a lot like the face of Swamp Thing. Which is appropriate given the resemblance between the fairy-dust entities and "the Green" in Swamp Thing.
  • The Grimm's Fairy Tales of Little Red Riding Hood and Hansel and Gretel get explicitly referenced with Maebh's red coat, the wolves wandering around the woods, and Maebh dropping items to make navigation around the forest easier. The Doctor even namechecks both fairy tales.
• "Dark Water":
  • The Doctor owns a copy of The Time Traveler's Wife, one of Steven Moffat's favourite books.
  • When the Doctor shows his psychic paper to Dr. Chang, Chang sees the ID of a government inspector who uses a lot of... colourful language...
    Dr. Chang: Why is there all this swearing?
    The Doctor: Oh, I've got a lot of internalised anger.
• "Death in Heaven": One character directly compare the Valiant to Cloudbase (though he initially misidentifies it as being from Thunderbirds), leading to a follow-up shout out to Sylvia Anderson.
• "Last Christmas":
  • The Twelfth Doctor learns there's a horror movie called Alien, and thinks that's "really offensive". The War Doctor may have thought otherwise, however. Likewise with the Eighth Doctor.
  • When Shona wakes up, she looks at her Christmas Day itinerary, which includes watching Alien, The Thing from Another World, Miracle on 34th Street, and a Thrones marathon. Faye Marsay went on to play the Waif on Game of Thrones in season 6.

Series 9

• "The Magician's Apprentice": The Tenth Doctor got his trademark trenchcoat from Janis Joplin, and while it's not officially canon, Peter Capaldi's suggested that Twelve's guitar may be a gift from Jimi Hendrix (his personal headcanon is that the Doctor at least helped Jimi figure out some problems with feedback, and Jimi, in turn, helped the Doctor work out some licks he was having trouble with).
• "Sleep No More" is an homage to the "found footage" genre of horror film popularized by The Blair Witch Project.
• "Hell Bent": Clara and Ashildr's TARDIS, like how the Doctor's is stuck as a Police Box, is permanently stuck as a Route 66 diner. As they're both immortal, they decide to go to Gallifrey by going "the long way around", i.e. travel around the Universe until enough time has passed that they arrive physically on Gallifrey at the moment they left. Since Gallifrey is now situated near the end of the Universe, this means that their TARDIS will eventually be a diner at the end of the Universe.

Series 10

• "The Return of Doctor Mysterio" is one big shout-out to the Superman Film Series, with several scenes basically reenactments of sequences from Superman: The Movie.
• The opening line of "Oxygen" is "Space. The final frontier."
• "Empress of Mars": Bill is surprised to discover that the Doctor is unfamiliar with The Terminator, The Thing (1982) or The Vikings. Later on the Doctor directly references Frozen.

Series 11

• For various fans, the Thirteenth Doctor's outfit makes her look like Mork from Mork & Mindy... and Radio Times noticed it.
• "The Woman Who Fell to Earth"'s title is a reference to the Walter Tevis novel The Man Who Fell to Earth, and the David Bowie film adaptation of the same name.
• "The Ghost Monument":
  • The episode begins with the main characters flung into the vacuum of space, and getting picked up by spaceships that arrived just in time. Later, the Doctor says "Don't panic."
  • Upon learning that Epzo's ship has "manual stabilizers", the Doctor quips that it's so old it could be on Antiques Roadshow.
  • Ryan believes that his expertise playing Call of Duty (in the Brazilian dub, it's changed to GoldenEye) gives him the skills to take on the SniperBots with one of their own guns. The next shot even features a mock-up of the first-person view typically seen in FPS games.
• "Rosa":
  • A time traveller currently in November 1955 uses a newspaper to cite the date.
  • Graham's excuse for staying in a motel in Montgomery? He's there to pitch an invention which is a phone which also takes pictures, displays the date, plays music, and sends messages. His name? Steve Jobs.
• "Arachnids in the UK":
  • The episode is named after the Sex Pistols song "Anarchy in the UK".
  • After saying "the spider mother in the ballroom", the Doctor comments that the phrase sounds like "the best novel Edith Wharton never wrote."
• "The Tsuranga Conundrum":
  • When everyone gathers in the diagnostics room, the Doctor says that they must be wondering why she's gathered them all here, and then wonders if the statement is too Poirot.
  • The Doctor mentions having seen all 900 casts of Hamilton.
  • Graham is a big fan of Call the Midwife.
• "Kerblam!": When the group splits up to go to their new jobs, the Doctor asks Ryan if she's "ever told [him] about a man [she] met called Roger Wilco". This is immediately before Graham learns that his new job is as, essentially, a space janitor — Wilco's original employment in the Space Quest series.
• "The Witchfinders": At the end, just before leaving in the TARDIS, Graham quotes Pulp Fiction (although King James assumes he's quoting The Bible), and the Doctor recites Arthur C. Clarke's famous Third Law about Sufficiently Advanced Technology.
• "The Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos": Graham quips "Yippie ki yay, sniperbots!" while blowing up robots with a bomb.

Series 12

• "Spyfall":
  • This spy-themed story has a title that fittingly nods to the James Bond movie Skyfall. The Doctor later introduces herself as "Doctor, the Doctor", and a Bond-style version of her leitmotif from "Resolution" plays during the car chase.
  • Upon being given the cover name "Logan", Ryan worries that he doesn't look like Hugh Jackman.
  • The Master describes his TARDIS, disguised as a house, flying alongside the plane as "a bit Wicked Witch of the West".
  • The Master now carries his miniaturized victim around with him, much like his parody Doctor Klench in Nebulous.
  • The "use the whole human race as computer hardware" plan was apparently the original plan for what the Machines would be using humanity for in The Matrix, but which was dropped due to Executive Meddling that thought it would be too complicated an idea for a mainstream audience.
  • The Master sums up his plan as "Maximum Carnage", before acknowledging that of course the Doctor wasn't going to get it.
• "Orphan 55":
  • Hyph3n, the Cat Folk greeter at Tranquillity Spa, strongly resembles Barf from Spaceballs.
  • Ryan swatting away imaginary bats nods to a scene from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
  • The twin reveals that the Dregs breathe CO₂ and exhale oxygen, and that Orphan 55 is a post-nuclear war Earth with Tranquillity Spa as an engineered haven from the toxic outer world, echo Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, in which the heroine learns that the creatures inhabiting the polluted outer world have adapted not only to survive and thrive in it, but are actually cleaning up the mess humans made. Sadly, the conflict here does not come to such a hopeful point.
  • The setup is also quite reminiscent of The Time Machine, in which the upper class barricade themselves away from radiation sweeping the planet while the lower class are left to mutate into the monstrous Morlocks, who then take their revenge by luring the humans outside and eating them.
• "Nikola Tesla's Night of Terror":
  • Initially mostly unfamiliar with Nikola Tesla, Ryan mentions the electric car company named after him.
  • Graham calls Tesla and Thomas Edison "AC/DC" when telling them to stop arguing given the current situation. (Pun not intended.)
• "Fugitive of the Judoon": In order to impress a tourist outside Gloucester Cathedral, Ruth mentions that the Harry Potter movies were filmed there.
• "Praxeus": Victims developing crusts on their skin and exploding into dust is similar to the time-delayed death of an apparent survivor of an alien attack in the final Quatermass series.

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