Superphone

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The superphone was the nickname Rose Tyler gave to her mobile phone after it was altered by the the Ninth Doctor, giving it the ability to communicate through time and space. Similar "superphones" were created by the Doctor for many of his companions after Rose, and the Doctor had one of his own.

Overview

Abilities

The superphone had the ability to make telephone calls through time and space. It could also work in places where there should have been no service for phones, either because telephones had not been invented, were outdated, or simply unavailable in a location.

The 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. (DW: The End of the World) Adam Mitchell used it to phone his mother in his own relative time, in an attempt to bring knowledge of the future back to his own time, for his own gain. This led to him being expelled from the TARDIS by the Doctor. (DW: The Long Game)

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. (DW: 42)

Donna Noble's phone was enhanced by the Doctor as well. (DW: The Doctor's Daughter)

Due to the danger at hand, the Doctor altered Barclay's phone in order to get in contact with UNIT. (DW: Planet of the Dead)

There were at least two superphones available for use in the Eleventh Doctor's TARDIS, Amy's phone and a flip phone occasionally used by the Doctor.

Examples of use

During the Slitheen crisis, Jackie Tyler called her daughter on her superphone and it worked even in the sealed cabinet room. Rose's superphone was the only working phone in that room and it provided an outside line for the Ninth Doctor to communicate with Mickey Smith and Jackie and coordinate efforts against the Slitheen. Using the connection, the two groups figured out the Slitheen's weakness and the Doctor managed to talk Mickey through shooting a missile at 10 Downing Street, destroying the Slitheen. Later Rose received a call on it from the Doctor on the TARDIS. (DW: World War Three)

While stuck on Pete's World, Rose's superphone still worked and she used it to find out about that world. During the invasion of the Battersea powerstation, the Tenth Doctor had Mickey find a much needed code and 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. (DW: The Age of Steel)

While stuck on a ship falling out of orbit of a sun, Martha's phone was modified by the Tenth Doctor to call her mother. During her travels with the Doctor, she did this a lot, unaware that her calls were being monitored. When she needed an answer to a trivia question, Martha called her mother to look it up on the Internet. (DW: 42)

Following her ordeal during the "Year That Never Was", Martha Jones gave her phone to the Doctor, in order to contact him should he ever be needed; he kept it with him and was called (by Martha), bringing him back to Earth to assist with UNIT's investigation of the ATMOS facility. (DW: Last of the Time Lords, The Sontaran Stratagem)

The Doctor later modified Donna Noble's phone in order to call Martha Jones while seperated from her. (DW: The Doctor's Daughter)

Martha's phone was also used by Torchwood, Mr Smith, and Harriet Jones, all utilising the Cardiff rift to contact the Doctor when Earth was teleported by Davros to the Medusa Cascade. (DW: The Stolen Earth)

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 Malcom Taylor and Captain Erisa Magambo to try to find a way back and deal with the possible threat. Even though his phone was unmodified, Nathan was able to call the Doctor on the superphone with it, showing that any phone could call a superphone no matter where it was. The Doctor was successfully able to bring the people on Bus 200 home, and used the phone to tell Malcom to close the wormhole despite being hung up on twice (something that surprised him). What happened to it afterwards was left unclear. (DW: Planet of the Dead)

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 momentarily that it was Christina calling him (it was actually Martha). (IDW: Tesseract)

Canton Delaware used Amy Pond's cell 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.

The Doctor used Amy's phone to keep in touch with her when she and Rory were trapped in the TARDIS. DW: The Doctor's Wife

Strengths and weaknesses

The superphone had the ability to call the person the caller was looking for no matter where in time or space they are, refered to as "free roaming", and even lock onto the the user's relative time (if you would normally have been in 2004, the phone would call that time); the only exception to this last rule was the Doctor himself. It even worked in areas of no 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, something that should have been impossible. (DW: World War Three)

However, Rose could not get any reception on Krop Tor, implying that the process was somehow related to the TARDIS, that the black hole was running interference or because of the Beast on the planet, which caused a lot of "impossible" incidents and coincidences. (DW: The Impossible Planet) Martha also had trouble contacting the Doctor when the Earth was forced out of sync with the rest of the universe, as she found that her phone couldn't contact the superphone but, as Martha herself said, this was probably because the Daleks were blocking all interstellar transmissions. Wilf and Sylvia could not contact Donna's superphone with their normal phone and Rose Tyler's superphone was also non-functional. (DW: The Stolen Earth)

When the Doctor modified Donna's phone, he was able to call Martha on it despite her being on a planet other than Earth and the phone she was using being an ordinary cell phone. When he used Barclay's modified phone, Nathan was able to call him despite being on the same planet as he was. This indicates that any phone could call the superphone or can be called by it no matter if it has service or not.

Rory Williams once found a superphone on the TARDIS and used it to access the internet. Because the TARDIS had no firewalls, however, Rory's dabbling resulted in the TARDIS being flooded by holographic spam. (IDW: Untitled story)

Amy Pond's phone was used by Canton Delaware (with an additional plug in device) to upload video footage of one of the Silence.

Precursors

The Second Doctor once modified Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart's mobile radio, boosting it through the TARDIS communication systems so that it would function through the TARDIS' forcefield, though it lacked the range to continue working after the TARDIS and the surrounding laboratory had been taken to the anti-matter universe. (DW: The Three Doctors)

The Fifth Doctor and Nyssa created an experimental device called the "Temporal Interocitor" to communicate across spacetime. This device was strongly suggested to be the prototype for the superphone. (BFA: Renaissance of the Daleks)