“Learn from yesterday, live for today, and hope for tomorrow. The important thing is to not stop questioning.” - Albert Einstein
Rick Sanchez, the alcoholic grandpa space convict from Rick and Morty.
The Doctor, the Oncoming Storm and Time Lord from Doctor Who.
When you can travel the cosmos and witness creation on the grandest scale, your perception of life can change dramatically. You can think that nothing in life matters, or you can think everything matters. Pessimism vs optimism. And DEATH BATTLE is pitting two characters that probably embody this dichotomy more than any other. Rick Sanchez, the Rickest Rick of them all, and the Doctor, the mad man with a box. Will Rick get schwifty and s%!+ all over the Time Lord’s parade? Or will Britain’s golden child show an infinite number of themselves simultaneously kicking Rick’s arse with rhyme?
Before We Start…
For Rick Sanchez or C-137, his show with Morty is the center of attention. All versions of Rick are fair in scaling as long as they don't differ too much from C-137. Commercials, video games, comics, and anime shorts will be included to sustain the show’s story. What is being excluded is Rick’s crossover events, which are Fortnite, Multiversus, and Pibby, due to those events not really lining up with the primary source. Also, ample content warning for Rick and Morty for being… Rick and Morty.
The Doctor, however, is an entirely different beast.
Doctor Who has been around for sixty years, starting as a TV show and slowly spreading to just about every media source you can think of. Some, like some Classic Doctor Who comics, have been lost in time and may never be found and there are even some episodes from the early years that we no longer have visuals for, though we do have the audio for all of them and there exist reconstructions and novelizations for those stories. Our primary sources shall be the mainline TV continuity, the classic era from 1963-1989, the 1996 TV movie, the modern era from 2005-2022, and whatever we’re calling the 2023 onwards era. All official games, novels, comics, shorts, audio dramas, spin-offs, spin-offs of spin-offs, after-shows, and exhibits from the Doctor Who Experience (yes really) will also be taken into account as Doctor Who takes more of an “everything is canon in a way” approach, like how the Eighth Doctor’s audio adventures made by Big Finish were directly reference in “Night of the Doctor”.
Also, please understand that there is simply a LOT of media for Doctor Who, hell, the total runtime for the show alone is around 30 days long. Way too much for us to cover in the two-week timeframe we have had for this blog. We've done our best to talk about the most iconic and most vital things for the debate, but we have certainly missed things.
Also, special thanks to Tommy for various Doctor Who calculations here.
Background
Rick Sanchez
How could a wholesome grandpa who thanked his daughter for delicious eggs show his gratitude? By getting drunk and taking her son into smuggling illegal alien plants, shoving them into his @$%, and failing to deliver them. And that was just the pilot. But for Rick Sanchez, it was just another quest of him against the universe. Now, with Morty and his family.
The past of this alcoholic genius has not been foretold nor confirmed with only pieces of the puzzle. How could the most brilliant man in the multiverse of Rick and Morty be an old drunk arsehole? What made him this way? Rick’s past and youth are up in the air to where it might never be shown. However, what is confirmed is that after starting a band with his friends Birdperson and Squanchy, he would marry Diane Sanchez, who would give birth to Beth. Rick’s original version of Beth was tragically killed at 35 by one of the Ricks and, sadly, Diane. Eventually, he would “disappear” and go all John Wick to start killing Ricks to find the Rick that killed his family. He failed to find the killer and killed so many versions of himself that the Council of Ricks was formed. It was then Rick decided to retire and live with one of the versions of Beth where the show’s pilot starts.
After twenty years, Rick “returned” to the Smiths and started his adventure with Morty; still, after all those years, the now-classed C-137 Rick has made a name for himself in the multiverse. Being an intergalactic terrorist, making the craziest of inventions that break the laws of reality, and giving God the middle finger is another dull day for Rick. Despite his aggression and controlling behavior, Rick does have a big heart for the Smiths, except for Jerry, and is trying to become a better person for them. Even when the danger gets severe, and the universe screws him again, Rick Sanchez will remind anyone and everyone not to f^(k with him or his family.
The Doctor
The universe is a vast and wondrous place, filled with life and experiences you could never imagine. But it is also filled with those who wish to bring harm and conquer. However, all those that try are thwarted by one person. When they hear the sound of his blue box and the whirr of their Sonic Screwdriver, evil shakes in fear of the being known only as “The Doctor”.
The Doctor has many conflicting origins, which are sometimes all simultaneously canon at once somehow. What we know for certain is that the Doctor is a Time Lord from Gallifrey, who spent their early years at the Time Lord academy, before fleeing Gallifrey in a “borrowed” TARDIS, alongside their granddaughter Susan, in order to explore time and the cosmos to experience it for themselves.
While initially not the nicest person, the Doctor grew to become an immensely caring and courageous person on their many, many, many, MANY, adventures, picking up friends and companions along the way, like Ian Chesterton, Jaime McCrimmon, Brigadier Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart, Sarah Jane Smith, Nyssa of Traken, Evelyn Smythe, Ace, Charlotte Pollard, Rose Tyler, Donna Noble, Amy Pond, Bill Potts and Yazmin Kahn. They even occasionally teamed up with themselves to defeat especially notable threats.
However, they would forever be scarred by the part they played in the worst war in the history of the universe - The Last Great Time War.
The Last Great Time War was a war between the Time Lords and the Daleks that spread throughout all of time. A mere instance of the war caused the planet Drakkis, a planet with a history of peace, to become war-torn with centuries of conflict. While initially refusing to take part in the war, the Doctor would eventually start fighting, throwing away their name, and eventually ended the war single-handedly, at least, as far as they were aware.
After the war, the Doctor went back to traveling the universe, hoping to right all the wrongs caused by the Time War they could. Over time, they overcame the trauma caused by the Last Great Time War and even managed to change the final result of the war and save Gallifrey. The Doctor is one of the greatest heroes ever put to screen, and they shall continue to save all the people they can until the end of time, and probably even beyond that.
Experience & Skill
Rick Sanchez
Rick may be over seventy years old, but he has used those years exploring his multiverse. C-137 has made a name for himself as nearly everyone, including himself, knows how threatening Rick has become. He has spent most of his life in a garage building all sorts of reality-bending machines and elixirs just for others to get off his back or make others happy. Many beings have considered Rick to be the most intelligent man in the universe, which includes other Ricks. A capable combatant can think on the fly and use his tools to fight against powerful beings such as Multiverses as an example of his potential.
The Doctor
The Doctor has been helping people for a long, long time. It's so long that it’s questionable if they even know their actual age anymore. They spent their first couple hundred years in the Time Lord academy, learning highly advanced science and other subjects. While they didn’t get the best grades and may have needed to retake a few classes and tests, they’ve proven time and time again that they’re one of the most intelligent and innovative people in the universe. They have claimed to be a doctor of just about everything, like science, engineering, medicine, music, philosophy, and hope, and has shown they can back up this claim many a time. They’re smart enough to predict everything someone is going to say, are capable of predicting Probability with just simple mathematics, can speak every language in the universe, are capable of deducing equipment to its point of origin, and can recall where he is in the universe due to the alignment of stars. They have created several pieces of equipment/weapons from nothing but junk.
The Doctor has bested other Time Lords, entire races, and beings from both higher and lower dimensions, such as when he has fought against the 4th-dimensional goddess of destruction and death, Kalirathra, in a sword fight with her complimenting the Doctor on their combat skills. The Doctor even outsmarted her later on. They even tricked the Eternals, elemental beings of immense power, into losing their powers. It has got to the point where sometimes merely saying who they are can cause their enemies to surrender. They have studied various forms of fighting, from boxing to Mercurian Kung Fu to Venusian Aikido. The 10th Doctor has numerous times disarmed others at gunpoint, even robots.
Equipment
Rick Sanchez
Space Cruiser
A flying vehicle created by Rick out of materials in a garage to aid him in space travel.
Rick’s ship has shown to like his flying machine and has put a lot of features to make anyone think of stealing it as their last mistake. For starters, the ship is solid and durable enough to smash through cities, houses, and prisons and even pull the Earth once. The vessel contains A LOT of weaponry and defensive measures with an A.I. to function when Rick is not around. It takes its job seriously. Some of the features include lots of energy weaponry, scan information on the spot to create some of the messed up solutions, drop bombs strong to destroy naval ships, laser beams, has mechanical arms, can release gas like clouds including the inside, a ray that enlarges as big as a continent, has legs to can create tunnels, has a mind scanner in the trunk, comes with space suits, scanned a whole planet of snakes including its history and culture then made an anti-venom in seconds, plays harmonica music, has a massive railgun which destroyed a building, a miniature compartment at the bottom which someone can pilot and fire lasers from, a laser drill at the bottom, and It can auto park. Rick’s ship also has a battery that powers it, which is genuinely a microverse that Rick can return and enter at ease; it’s also just slavery with extra steps. The only downside to it is that it can get flat tires. But on the bright side, it does have little robots that begin to fix it upon crashing.
Portal Gun
Rick’s best instrument and favorite use of transportation. It's a gun Rick took off another Rick, allowing Rick to open portals and travel through the universe/different dimensions by creating green portals. The weapon can fire multiple outlets simultaneously and uses combat when Rick needs to be creative. The portal gun can redirect lasers, open hostile environments, split beings in half, a self-destruction button that kills those in the blast radius and blinds others who see, somehow flood a room and drain it, minimize more than one portal for Rick to shoot targets more quickly, and once enlarged a doorway to city size.
Two major flaws to the portal gun are the gun easily breaks and can run out of charge quickly.
Fortune Cookies
In the episode ‘Final DeSmithation,’ fortune cookies were revealed to be legitimate power-ups, giving people abilities like being able to control water and fire or never miss their bullets. And if a fortune cookie tells you that an event will happen in the future, you’re immortal until that event occurs. Rick himself can make any fortune cookie he wants. These cookies can alter fate itself, but it comes from poop.
Wrist Watches
When Rick needs to ask fast, he has his wristwatches. His watches have the same abilities. Sadly, it does not turn people into snakes, but it does more than shoot particle beams. It can also create shields to protect himself or allies, more lasers, create holographic clones, scan the surroundings, reflect projectiles like bullets, shoot a cable hook, turn into Cyclops from the X-men, telekinesis, and give mecha armor with a sword.
Freeze Ray
Rick also has a weapon that can freeze a person in a Sub-Zero style. It also can be used as a gun since one of the Council of Ricks froze Jerry and unfreeze at ease.
Mind Eraser
If Rick needs to forget anything, he has this weapon that can erase memories in a flash. While we have never seen it be used in combat, it can do significant damage, such as Rick and Morty completely forgetting themselves.
Laser Guns
If there is one type of gun Rick loves to use, it would be the lasers. Rick has shown to have more than one type of laser with their abilities, yet some are the same. Here are the types of laser guns Rick has shown and used:
Laser Gun Main: The gun is shown on top, and Rick has used it the most. The weapon packs a punch by the target, resulting in three outcomes: exploding, turning to ash, or doing a standard gun. It also has a shock system to knock out targets.
Laser Gun(s): Other features similar to the main yet had ones on their own. One can make a bubble trap inspired by Wonka’s Factory, another that heals 50% of injuries, one that can penetrate armor, turn targets on fire, anti-gravity, an immobilizer, and shoot in different directions simultaneously.
Fruit Gun: Can make people turn into fruit.
Matrix-Affecting Gun: It can affect someone’s matrixes to make them lighter than air (which makes you float around) or heavier than something
Meteor Gun: Can summon meteors.
Bee Gun: It can shoot bees.
Bubble Gun: It traps the target in a giant bubble that contains no air
Barrier Gun: It creates barriers.
Gravity Gun: It can control the target’s gravity.
Internal Respawn Gun: It’s a gun that spawns a more miniature copy of Rick, which rapidly grows inside of whoever it hits
Sentient Gun: this gun can make objects sentient.
Plunger Gun: It shoots out plungers.
Anti-Matter Gun: The last of his laser guns and truly one of his most potent. As the name states, the pistol shoots antimatter so strong it can kill higher-dimensional beings immune to ordinary matter and energy. This was proven true when Morty used the gun to kill Fart.
Curse Remover
A device that Rick made within a day allows the user to analyze a curse and, well, remove it. While it is not shown that the device could be removed from a person, the tool did show that Mr. Needle’s supplies were removed no matter the power, as he was the Devil of the series.
Death Crystals
Rick has smuggled another rare item for some time: those crystals showing multiple outcomes on the user’s end. While it can not lead the step-ups to each lot, Rick has started to use them in a battle to predict actions, and Rick does it when saving Morty and shooting mercenaries.
Time Freeze
Another insane device Rick has made was using it to stop time in his universe literally. Morty had stated that it was about six months when Rick was about to unfreeze time, basically having no limit and the user’s choice. The biggest flaw is that the user can not touch anyone or destroy time itself when unfrozen. Morty and Summer were lucky in them, causing a time rift instead when both contacted each other.
Suits
Rick knows his comics, showing Iron Man might need to file a lawsuit. Rick has made many in case of the worst outcomes required. The suits being the focus of this section are the Purge Suit and the Booby Trap suit.
The Purge Suit can be summoned from Earth and travel to Rick quickly, which he can put on and go all out. The suit comes with wrist machine guns, increased strength, foot boosters to fly, another stunning feature, a wrist blade, a flamethrower, a buzzsaw, and missiles. As the name suggests, the second suit is the Booby Trap Suit which prevents any physical damage from any traps.
Crow Tech
Another suit Rick has built with a mixture of magic. The Crow Tech comes with a sword, summons up to a thousand crows, and uses metal wings as weapons.
Lab Coat
Even Doctor Strange would be impressed. His lab coat also has defense features to project Rick or act when he requires it. Not only does it allow Rick to attack and restrain a target, but it also creates the intangibility to pass through with ease. Also, it can self-destruct.
Meeseeks Boxes
Mr. Meeseeks is a reliable helper who lives only to help someone with a task, and once that task is complete, they disappear! The Meeseeks are hard to kill as regular grenades can’t kill them and are strong enough to take down this giant. They are also very durable as they can’t even kill each other; they said that Meeseeks can’t die until their task is completed. The Meeseeks can also absorb people, turn them to stone, drag them into hell, summon nukes, and cause a singularity event.
The downside to the Meeseeks is that they can quickly go insane if their task is never completed and can even turn on the person given their assignment. They can last for years, as one did that and got some jabs on Rick.
Kirkland Brand Meeseeks Boxes
A Meeseeks that doesn’t care about their work is worse, much like any other Kirkland brand product.
Morphizer-XE
The machine is built to change the appearance/structure of anything its beam hits. It can enlarge and shrink an object or creature's body parts, turn its flesh inside out, or turn it into a diamond. It also has a "normalize" function, which appears to change an object/creature to match its most prominent feature,
GoTron
Rick is a big fan of Voltron and becomes the primary pilot with the rest of the Smiths. Being Rick’s most potent weapon, GoTron has similar abilities to the old-school mech. Each pilot has their Ferrets laser cannons, which combine to form GoTron. GoTron itself can fly, even in space, rotate completely 360, and comes with a sword to take down monsters. It can also summon miniature versions of itself, create an explosion big enough to see outside the Earth, and absorb a city as energy while its primary source is a black hole. All Ferrets alone in a flashback seemed to cause the extinction of the dinosaurs.
The two errors of the GoTron are that it lacks any defense and does require all five pilots to form GoTorn. However, Jerry was the only person to be able to pilot GoTron by himself. This does not mean that Rick can do it as well, but he could find a way.
Rick Mech
A giant ultra-realistic mech of Rick that he used in an attempt to scare off an alien named Tony. Tony isn’t scared off, so Rick pulls down the mech's pants, and for some reason, the mech has an ass that he used to sit on Tony like a toilet. Yes, this is as much as Rick enters it right before confronting Tony.
Heistatron and Randotron
Rick Sanchez designed Heistotron initially to challenge Miles Knightly, a renowned heist artist known in the galaxy, to a "heist-off.” However, the machine developed its consciousness due to the sophisticated heist algorithm embedded in it by Rick, and it started to "heist" the universe, causing chaos and mayhem. Rick, Morty, and the crew of characters they assemble manage to outsmart Heistotron by exploiting its algorithm, designed to counter every plan with a more convoluted one. Rick's unpredictable plan, which turned out to be a non-plan, managed to disarm Heistotron.
Randotron’s algorithm was based on the plots of three David Lynch movies to cancel out the logic-based algorithm of the Heistotron. It can also shoot darts at people, which causes them to make random and unpredictable decisions.
Phoenix Project
Probably the most helpful weapon and most messed up thing Rick has made, Project Phoenix is a cloning process where Rick can transfer his mind into the body of a clone. What’s more important is that when Rick died, his mind moved across the other clones in the multiverse—even taking the physical form of a clone from different races. While he is stripped down nude once the transfer is complete, it can allow for him to rejoin the fight and gain allies like other Ricks.
Too bad this invention is also dog water… his first run-in with the process created Tiny Rick, a younger clone who went mad and tried to kill the original Rick, leading him to destroy his own Phoenix Project. The second time around was quite worse, getting put in bodies across dimensions. Rick himself can’t personally choose what body or universe he revives in, so it’s entirely up to chance. The Ricks in those universes also have to help him get back to his own, which is also up to pure luck due to Rick just being an uncooperative person, as well as a lot of Ricks being fascist for some reason. So unless Rick gets extremely lucky, the Phoenix Project is not a great way to get back into the fight.
Extras
This section is mostly some more equipment Rick has shown besides the show.
Dream Interceptors: Rick made these devices to travel through a target’s dream and change their behavior and thoughts. He can even work on foes like Scary Terry, but not when awake. Bitch.
Time Travel: Despite Rick hating doing this trope, he has shown in making devices capable of traveling through time. The future Rick and Morty sent their past selves the device without consequences.
Special Grappler Shoes: These shoes allow the user to walk on surfaces. You must turn them on, though.
Series 9000 Brainalyzer: A modified version of this instrument is used by Rick to switch between the bodies of various characters in his attempt to destroy the Citadel of Ricks and the Galactic Federation.
Concentrated Dark Matter: A material that allows Rick to travel faster than anyone other than the universe but creates a massive explosion when mixed poorly.
Clone: Rick always has backup clones whenever he dies, with all his memories intact.
Garage: Basically, Rick’s base is where he keeps his weapon and armor. It is very significant in defense and has artificial intelligence.
Decoys/Androids/Holograms: Rick again takes his cloning too far by making a lot of copies based on himself and his family. It's just a shame the decoys can’t handle themselves in being one.
Luck Hat: This Hat scans all possible outcomes of any situation and sends them down your nervous system so it can direct all your actions
Love Potion/Diseases: Rick’s most infamous moment was when he made a love potion to infect his world and make it worse in one night.
Magic: Even in fantasy land, Rick has made tools from scratch to wield magic. It can even amplify others to increase power.
Forcefield: Rick has used forcefields on multiple occasions.
Pokeball: Rick has a Pokeball containing a two-headed goose that can shoot out giant lasers and explosive eggs.
Wish: After playing DND, Rick was able to keep one wish.
Pain Deflecting Weapon: This device transfers all pain dealt to Rick to a tiny alien lifeform
Plumbus: A Plumbus is an all-purpose home device. Everyone in the Rick and Morty universe has one, so nobody ever explains what it does or how it works, but it is a decent bludgeoning tool.
Point-Save Device: A remote that targets the current moment in time, splits it into many other paused near-duplicate equally probable realities, or sends the user into 1 of the now unpaused conceivable dimensions and records it all.
Mind-Swap Device: It’s a gun that swaps the minds of anyone it targets.
Shrink Ray: Rick's shrink ray was a complex device that could shrink a human down to microscopic size
Enlarging Ray: Its counterpart, a growth/enlarge ray, is located inside of Ruben in the colon, and there is an additional enlarge ray on Rick's spaceship, which could enlarge Ruben to the size of the us
Lightsaber: The staple weapon of almost all Jedi and Sith, it uses a blade of pure energy to slice and dice through virtually any material imaginable.
Disease Ray: After using it on Morty, he was given every significant disease from the galaxy, which made him sick enough to burn people's faces off and was going to kill him in about 5 hours.
Fart Bomb: It’s a bomb that fires out a fart blast powerful enough to destroy a ceiling.
Demonic Alien Containment Box: It's a box that can capture the demonic spirits possessing the clones of Beth, Summer, and Jerry so that they would not keep anyone else's bodies.
Neutrino Bomb: The Neutrino Bomb is a powerful bomb invented by Rick Sanchez that could potentially wipe out all life on Earth and other planets
Lightning/Energy Absorbing Pin: It’s a pin that absorbed lightning from Reggie and transferred that energy into Rick
Leviathan Axe: We warned you about the commercials. Gifted to Kratos by his late wife (the second one), the Leviathan Axe was forged by the dwarfs Brok and Sindri millennia ago. The axe wields incredible strength, perfect for cutting through and into enemies without difficulty. It also has exceptionally potent ice powers, allowing it to freeze objects or foes, and it can be thrown long distances only for Kratos to call it back to his hand in the blink of an eye. When clashing with Mjolnir, it creates a streak of frozen lightning, which was also made years before. Faye used the Axe to fight with Thor.
Grappling Hook: It’s a grappling hook. There's not much more to say other than that.
Orbital Satellite: Rick can access an orbital satellite by pressing a button in his kitchen.
Invisibility Belt: It’s a belt that turns the wearer invisible.
Remote Control: A remote control can pause people in place if you point it at them and click.
Anti-Meta Field: It’s impervious to any “meta-energy.”
Black Hole/Explosion Box: This technology allows Rick to scan whatever and imprison them in a see-through cube. The person trapped is soon sucked into a black hole and explodes.
The Doctor
The TARDIS
The TARDIS (Time And Relative Dimension In Space) is The Doctor’s signature vehicle, a space-time machine disguised as an unassuming blue police box.
A Type-40 time capsule, capable of travelling anywhere in time and space, from the Big Bang to London in 1965. While other Time Lords regard the Doctor’s TARDIS as an out-of-date or even antique, she has proven time and time again to be an incredibly capable machine. Yes, she. The TARDIS is alive and capable of some level of autonomous control. One time, the TARDIS possessed the body of a woman named Idris and helped the Doctor escape the clutches of House and displayed that she was capable of a few abilities even when possessing Idris, like being able to perceive all of time simultaneously and sending telepathic messages. While in this body, the TARDIS claimed to always send the Doctor where they needed to go.
The TARDIS’ primary use, as mentioned, is travelling across time and space and even places manifested by the mind, thanks to her metaphysical engine. But she also has a few more tricks up her dimensionally transcendental sleeves. The TARDIS is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside, explained how by the Fourth Doctor here. While originally able to disguise herself to fit into her surroundings, the TARDIS is no longer able to do so due to the Chameleon Circuit braking when the TARDIS landed in London 1963 and disguised herself as a police box. She can, however, still changer her interior design, sometimes to the chagrin of previous Doctors. The TARDIS can translate alien languages of all species, both written and spoken, and can share this knowledge with those that travel within it, allowing others as well as the Doctor to be capable of interacting with whatever species they come across on their travels. The TARDIS Matrix has been stated to be 11th Dimensional. Two TARDISes working together can create a time cone. She also has a tractor beam that can move planets. The TARDIS can repair both her inside and out, change the weather, go out of sync with time, redistribute itself to avoid destruction but leave her forcefield where she was, create barriers that can block higher beings like the Black Guardian, send 2-dimensional beings back to their dimension, create 12-D Data maps, create controlled temporal implosions to escape paradoxes, can plug up holes in the universe and is durable to survive black holes and supernovas. But beings like The Quantum Archangel can overpower the TARDIS even with her incredible shields. See more in the Scaling section.
The Tardis also has a thing called the Temporal Grace or TG, which is the term used to describe the state in which the interior of TARDISes exist. It ensures no weapons can be used inside the TARDIS… when it’s working properly. It’s linked to the TARDIS’ telepathic circuits, and when fully functional, temporal grace negates all hostile and aggressive actions within the ship. TG has not only stopped several weapons from working, but it has also completely stopped Eldrad from using their powers. One time, nuclear warheads were fired onto an alternate earth, so the Doctor materialised the TARDIS around the whole planet so that the temporal grace would prevent the missiles from exploding. There was also the time when a being was affected by time spillage but become stabilized once inside the Tardis thanks to the TG.
The TARDIS can be powered by many types of energies, whether from a black hole, temporal radiation, stars, or even life force, like when the Doctor gave ten years of their life to her.
The TARDIS is so powerful that her destruction threatens all of reality. As quoted by The 11th Doctor, the TARDIS’ explosion will cause every sun to go supernova at every moment in history, and the whole universe will never have existed.
Stated above is mostly what she can do to her surroundings, but what might be even more impressive is what she can do within herself. Everything. The interior of the TARDIS is effectively a pocket dimension in which she has complete control over her own space, time, and reality, and is capable of altering her structure into whatever she wants to, and can even control the timestream of those within herself, like the time it looped Clara Oswald’s timestream on itself, as a joke.
It stated that if the TARDIS Matrix was destroyed, it could tear open a hole in the universe. It has also been said that if then TARDIS self-destructed, it could destroy all of reality - not just one universe but all of existence. This is backed up in the Season 5 Finale, where the TARDIS was causing the entire universe to collapse and the TARDIS was one of the factors directly responsible for the re-start of the Doctor Who Multiverse in a New Big Bang.
Sonic Screwdriver
Do not let these screwdrivers trick you, since this is the Doctor’s primary tool, which they love to use to point at people. It is a Swiss army knife that every traveller, even Rick, would die to have as it can mostly do anything. While the Sonic Screwdriver has had multiple designs, they all work the same way in their abilities. Same software, different case. Except they all cannot work on anything wooden or unsealed. (Unless the writers forget). Should they be destroyed or lost, The Doctor can also create their own with mere garage equipment.
Here are the main features that the Sonic Screwdriver has shown to do:
Hacking: Sonic Screwdriver has been shown in various stories to hack even the most advanced technology. Whether it can be doors, computers, networks, spaceships, cash machines, phones, alarms, or any technology, the Doctor can hack it. They can disable weapons, barriers/force fields, cloaking, bombs, and reverse teleportation. It has also been shown to be able to hack Robots that were made from cutting-edge technology.
Unlocking: A get-out-of-jail-free card is not needed when you have one. The Doctor’s sonic screwdriver serves as one. One of its uses is to open any door, lock, barrier, handcuffs, basically, and security systems he wants. He can also close them, fuse the materials to make them last longer, and open and close tears across space-time.
Scanning: Both a universal GPS and Pokemon Pocket Index, this two-in-one allows The Doctor to get information and find its location simultaneously. It can detect all lifeforms, gather information from nearly anything, and check for interference. The scanning can locate simple things like apples to Dimensional Lesions and even the TARDIS and could summon her. It can also be used to check the person’s health and status, including their DNA.
Energy Manipulation: The Sonic Screwdriver also has protective features where one of them can control energy. It can go as far as to use power for projection, since the War, 10th, and 11th doctors were able to reflect, resulting in killing a Dalek. When one Doctor uses it, it can create sound waves to deflect bullets, sonic cannons, and stasis beams. The 13th Doctor has also shown to be able to create force fields. In the video game Dalek Attack, it can also just shoot lasers… cause why not, really?
Magnetism: The Sonic Screwdriver has been shown to affect magnetic fields. As the 5th Doctor once reversed the magnetic field on Monopticons. It can also magnetise itself to remove bolts.
Amplification: Depending on the target, the Sonic Screwdriver can power up both itself and any other device in use. The Sonic Screwdriver alone one time created a storm and made it rain. It also was stated by the Thirteenth Doctor to be able to overload the weapons of the Judoon.
Molecule Manipulation: The Sonic Screwdriver can manipulate the molecules of what it’s used on. An example was when the 10th had the Sonic vibrate two people’s wrist molecules to disarm them. He also used it to break a sword. It can resonate with concrete by changing its vibration.
Erase: Where it has a pen, it can help to also come with a eraser. Except it can do more than just erase words - including erasing memories from people and even data from devices.
Telekinesis: The Screwdriver has been shown to be able to move objects and throw people around.
Reality Manipulation: Overall, the Sonic screwdriver has almost no limits as it has so many features to bend time and space. It can create fire and heat, repair anything even if it is as advanced as the TARDIS, ignite explosives no matter how old, can project many sounds, make teleportations, alter the density of something, change sizes, and can control matter itself. While he does not like to kill anyone with the Screwdriver, it has been shown it is possible, since it once destroyed ships and a school.
Unscrewing Screws: Wouldn’t be a very good screwdriver otherwise.
Sonic Lance
An item not dissimilar to the Sonic Screwdriver. It can cut through wires or be jammed into the chest plate of a Cyberman to “shake it up a little” and destroy it. The Doctor has also attached a Sonic Lance to their Sonic Screwdriver to cut through the lock on a door. It does have a limited power supply, however.
Signet Ring
Before the 2nd Doctor introduced the Sonic Screwdriver, the very first had his Signet Ring. He would give it away, but it was one of the oldest weapons he used. While it does have the same unlocking, energy protection, and repairing as the Sonic screwdriver, the unique feature of this device is hypnosis. It also helped increase the strength of the Doctor’s own hypnosis abilities and also allowed them to cast some magic spells.
Kontron Crystal
The Doctor obtained some Kontron crystals when they entered the Timelash (A Kontron Tunnel/Time Corridor) on Karfel. They used one of these crystals to create a ten-second time break which allows them to slip ten seconds into the future, while an image of themselves is projected where he was, giving the impression he hasn’t moved. This allows him to be invisible while their enemy is distracted by the projected image. The crystal is also capable of absorbing and then reflecting energy back at the target after ten seconds, like how The Doctor reflected the Borad’s time acceleration beam back at them, or when The Doctor used one to absorb the energies of the Borad’s time web and destroy an android as well as send it backwards in time an hour and appear in the Morlox’s cave, a different location from where it started.
Bessie
Bessie is a vehicle the Doctor owns which is second only to the TARDIS. This Edwardian roadster was the Doctor’s main mode of transport during his exile on Earth, and he still uses her from time to time when on Earth. The Doctor has modified Bessie with several features:
Anti-Theft Device - Triggered by a switch, this creates a forcefield around Bessie that pins anyone making physical contact with her, unable to escape, until it switches itself off.
Remote Control - Allows the Doctor to steer Bessie from a distance via a remote control, even when someone else is behind the wheel.
Super Drive - A hyperspeed-enabling turbo mechanism. Lets Bessie move reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeally fast.
Inertia Absorbing Breaks - Allows Bessie to go from full speed with the super drive to a complete halt without throwing her passengers through the windshield.
Gravity Stabiliser - Stated to allow Bessie to resist the pull of a tornado.
The Eleventh Doctor would later turn Bessie into a monster truck by hooking her up to the TARDIS matrix and hitting the random setting. He referred to this “regenerated” Bessie as “Bessie 2”.
TARDIS Key
The key to the TARDIS. The TARDIS key can not only open the Doctor’s TARDIS but also other TARDISes as well, like the Rani’s. The TARDIS can also home in on the key to come to the Doctor. The Doctor has several keys to the TARDIS.
TARDIS Homing Watch
After getting exiled to Earth by the Time Lords during his early days of adventure, the 2nd Doctor acquired a unique watch to locate his or any TARDIS. The Third Doctor continued to use it until it disappeared during one of his adventures.
Psychic Paper
Paper that is slightly psychic. When shown to a person, it is used to induce them to see whatever the user wished to be seen on it. Often used to gain entrance, allow the Doctor to attain some level of authority over the situation, and sometimes both. It does not work on geniuses, like William Shakespeare, those who have some level of basic psychic training or those with feeble imaginations. It also will not work if the lie is too big.
Sonic Sunglasses
Wearable sonic technology. These shades work similarly to the Sonic Screwdriver while also looking very fashionable. When the Doctor was temporarily blind, he used the Sonic Sunglasses to allow him to see by uploading a rendering of the area directly to his brain. However, it did not render out analogue text.
Dwarf Star Chains
These are “unbreakable” chains forged from the heart of a dwarf star. The Doctor wrapped these around Father of Mine and imprisoned him in an underground chamber.
Invisibility Watch
A watch used by the 12th Doctor that allows the user to turn invisible. The Doctor can also sense when the watch is being used.
Chronodyne Generator
The 12th Doctor once used these time mines to accelerate time around the Skovox Blitzer and send it billions of years into the future, however, due to Danny Pink moving the generators, it was only sent two days into the future instead.
Anti-Plastic
The Doctor also can create anti-plastic to destroy anything plastic-related. He also has Anti-Oil somehow.
The Writer’s Block
A stasis jail cell invented by the Doctor. They used it to imprison the author Charles Abbot.
The 2Dis
The 12th Doctor created a device that can turn 2-D objects back to their original 3-D state and also the reverse.
Species Matcher
The 11th Doctor, while meeting Vincent van Gogh, used this device to get information on the Krafayis. Can gather intel on any individual you show it, including The Doctor himself, and re-correct itself should intel become an error.
Sonic Earmuffs
The 10th Doctor created these earmuffs to block out any noise as well as any telepathic attacks.
Magic Box
So in the Classic Doctor Who comic series, which are very hard to find today, The 1st Doctor built an invention for Santa Claus called his “Magic Box” that changed the size of an object. The box can even change the dimensions of a living being, as the Doctor used the device on a polar bear, a squirrel, and a demonic magician. It also allows the user to create a model and has a heat ray feature.
Red Nose Day Cannon
Several Doctors team up with Dan Dare, Judge Dredd, Captain Britain, Raphael, Leonardo, Michelangelo, Donatello, Dennis the Menace, Superman, Hulk, Spider-Man, Wonder Woman, Iron Man, Doctor Strange, Captain America, RoboCop and many more in order to donate to charity. In order to do this, The Doctor made a canon filled with Red Nose that filled with the yoghourt of Human Kindness and fired at the aliens, instantly making them susceptible through the power of laughter and making them donate. (yes this was a real comic in 1991 that had big names like Mark Millar, Grant Morrison, Neil Gaiman and Garth Ennis)
Time Flow Analog
A device that can be made from various household objects that is able to mess with time-based machines, like TOMTIT, by doing the equivalent of jamming their radio signals. The Doctor and his friends used to make them during their time at the Time Lord Academy to spoil each other’s time experiments. Both the Third and Sixth have built a Time Slow Analogue in order to mess with the Master trying to do some time shenanigans.
Eyepiece
Allows the Doctor to inspect things more closely, Yeah that’s it. What? You expected more? Poppycock.
Stun Gun
A gadget the Doctor designed to temporarily neutralize a dinosaur’s brain cells, causing it to faint. It was used successfully on a Tyrannosaurus Rex.
Time Ring
Also known as Time Bracelets, these are small, compact space and time travel devices.
Psilent Songbox
During the Time War, this weapon disguised as a Gallifreyan children’s toy was discovered and used to defeat a powerful race called the Cyclor. Using the device resulted in banishing the higher dimensional race and caused a time paradox, resulting in a complete "chronal meltdown,” which collapsed all possibilities, past, future, and timelines together. It also turned one of the TARDISes into a temporal bomb, which could warp the reality and space-time of everything it touched, including the Cyclors.
Personal Reality Warp
The 6th Doctor once built a device that transports the user to a vacant parallel dimension and populates it with a world based on a person’s recent thoughts. Peri accidentally activated it and created a world based on Alice in Wonderland.
Hand of Omega
The Hand of Omega is a remote stellar manipulator, which can alter a star's life cycle and turn it into a supernova. It could also empower a baseball bat to be able to damage a Dalek. While the device disappeared and is rumoured to have been destroyed, there is more than one Hand of Omega from different dimensions.
De-mat Gun
Representing an ultimate trump card, this gun, although phallic-looking, is nothing to play around with. One of the most feared weapons in the history of Doctor Who’s universe, it acts as an “omnicalculator”, able to use its quantum computing prowess, powered by a causal nexus, to “scan its target and read the victim's complete timeline, then remodel everything else in creation without the target.” This method, although overkill, would appear from an enemy's point of view as just them being built out of molecules which the universe doesn't remember anymore. For the target, there's no gap in the air in which to stand, no spare molecules to breathe, no history to demand action and no present in which to act.
The only thing left of the victim is their conscious self-awareness, which is cut off from all causality, removing their body and their ability to interact with anything within any timeline. To simply summarise, it erases the target whole from existence, Marty McFly style. The weapon is so strong that the 8th Doctor in the comics once recreated his most powerful weapon just by using the De-mat gun. It has also been stated the gun might be able to seal off rifts in time and space like the Medusa Cascade.
However, there are two major flaws with the weapon. The first is it requires the Great Key of Rassilon because the Time Lords fear the De-mat so much they locked the gun with the key and banned it in their vault until they copied it in the Great Time War. The second is the weapon will immediately destroy itself due to the power it releases and can not hold the firepower pressure.
The Key to Time
A perfect crystalline cube separated into six parts that the Doctor had to obtain by the request of the White Guardian. The Key to Time maintains the equilibrium of time itself, exists at every point in time and extends to all 4 dimensions. With one of the pieces, you can travel through different planets and change your entire appearance to someone else. Another piece gave its holder the ability to see the future and demonstrated enough power to make a normal-sized squid grow to gigantic proportions after swallowing it. Even just 5 of the pieces can trap you into a time loop, the Doctor can change the size or length of this looped time and is capable of causing a temporal quake that could rip apart the space-time continuum.
The complete Key to Time grants the user power over every particle in the universe and over everything that has ever existed or will exist. It was said to maintain balance and equilibrium, similarly to the Eye of Harmony - with the result that disrupting the links between the segments could damage the fabric of the universe. It can rewrite matter, change the state of quanta, and start and stop the universe.
The Moment
If anyone was wondering how The Doctor ended The Last Great Time War, this was the weapon they used to do it. The Moment is one of the most powerful weapons in all of Doctor Who, capable of destroying Gallifrey, the Time Lords, the Daleks and entire galaxies in a single moment, hence the name.
The Moment has an operating system so advanced it became sentient and developed a conscience. It can read the user’s mind, including memories, and its interface can manifest as an entity. It also can summon all incarnations of the Doctor, thanks to creating time fissures in past and future. This was how the 10th, 11th, and War Doctors all met each other before rewriting the outcome of the Time War. According to one account, the Moment was created from a modified Key of Rassilon and De-mat Gun, in another, it was created by the Time Lord scientist Roppen.
Extras
This section is mostly some more equipment The Doctor has shown but lacks depth.
Axumillary Orb: One of the Master’s destructive weapons before the 3rd Doctor apprehended it, this orb that you could fit in your pocket has enough power to destroy a world down to its particles.
Armageddon Sapphire: A superweapon capable of restarting a new universe and tearing reality apart, which causes damage to the Six-Fold realm. The 6th Doctor tried to use it but was stopped last minute and returned to his universe.
Chronic Tripwire: A special tripwire used to accelerate evolution so much to the point that beings become dust. The War Doctor once used it to destroy a Dalek saucer.
Imagineum: A large mirror that can turn light into matter and create duplicates of beings. The 8th Doctor once used it to duplicate the Celestial Toymaker, though it was destroyed.
Delta Wave Generator: A machine that generates Delta Waves, which can fry the brains of all sentient life in a given radius, though they can be calibrated to be species-specific according to the brainwave frequency of the species.
De-mesmeriser: A device that nullifies the use of mind control and perception.
Space-Time Vortex Crystal: A crystal able to summon a time storm. The Space-Time Vortex once swept away the Eternals' (not the Marvel ones) powers, turning them completely human.
The Hazandra: A small red Gemstone. An onboard computer, coming from a yellow star, formed in the heart of the red hole and stabilized in pure star crystal. The Gemstone is intuitive, it knows what you want and draws energy from the nearest star to make it happen. When Grant swallowed it, he gained what he wanted and received superpowers.
Anti-Gravity Bike: A motorcycle the Eleventh Doctor used to drive up the Shard.
Military Missiles: Yeah he just has the codes to launch missiles, he only fired them on the Slitheens while they were in Downing Street, no biggie.
3D Glasses: Glasses that allowed The Doctor to see everything. He used these glasses to find out that the Daleks were hiding between two worlds, aka, the void.
His Pockets: They’re apparently larger on the inside.
Chameleon Arch: A device the doctor used to rewrite his biology and change every cell in his body and turn him into a different species. He used it once to turn himself into a human.
The Amaranth: a device created by the Time Lords to find unstable or discontinuous elements of the universe and to rebuild them along more rational lines. The first amaranth was created by maintenance engineers on Gallifrey to help counteract the warping effects caused by the black hole on the spacetime continuum. It contained an emergency function to transport its user to a more stable part of space.
Forcefield Generator: Made from a bunch of junk in a few minutes. This machine can generate force fields, these force fields can be set so that anyone who touches it will die.
The Gods of Ragnarok Amulet: An amulet with the symbol of the Gods of Ragnarok that allowed him to reflect their power against them, and then severed their connection to existence, making them no longer omnipresent like the Guardians.
Ice Cannons: Stolen from the elementals, this is a weapon that shoots ice and freezes things.
Quantum-Intrinsic Field Projector: A gadget that would bounce the unreality wave, which can erase others, back to the Morlontoa. He used it before to kill the Morlontoa’s big sister.
Vulkanite-Shielded Umbrella: An umbrella that protects The Doctor from fire blasts, acid rain, lava storms and so on.
Abilities
Rick Sanchez
4th Wall Awareness
Both Rick and Morty know they are characters and are shown numerous times to break the fourth wall like going out of metafiction, going to the real world. Hell, they presented at the Emmys in person. Even go as far as knowing being inside commercials.
High Intelligence
Even Rick knows the dangers of life, which is why he stays in the game thanks to his wits. Many of his foes have stated Rick C-137 to be the most competent man in the universe and his multiverse. And he has proven it time and time again in his adventures in outsmarting his foes. He created a microverse to use as his ship’s battery, killed a race as smart as Rick by tricking them, made a virus to switch bodies on the spot, and created a world called Froppyland for Beth.
Cybernetic Augmentations
Rick is never afraid of putting his body in the line of danger, which is why he also replaced parts of his body with cybernetic parts. He was able to replace his arm right away after being “disarmed,” make his eye aim for his grapple arm, fire laser beams while analysing DNA, employ the use of magnetism, create weird weapons, make a gas mask, extend his hands, covers organs with armour, nanofiber defence mesh to blow a shockwave for foes too close, and self destructs/creates a shield.
Hand-to-Hand Combat
Despite Rick‘s age, he can still throw a punch. People, aliens, a Zeus-like god, Rick’s experience brought him to keep up with even the most skilled like Bird Person and once fought two trained fighters at once. Should Rick need a boost, he can also absorb energy and analyse its user’s abilities; this was how he could fly and fight a Zeus-like god and this alien to counter the other Ricks.
Weapon Mastery
Rick can grab any weapon and know how to use it, even if he has to make it on the spot. Thanks to his survival skills, Rick has made the most complex of weapons and traps on the site, even while drunk. Lasers, swords, guns, beams, staff, and anything else Rick will use if he has to. Rick’s accuracy is spot on even at a distance.
Death Manipulation
So Rick might have some abilities because one of the strangest things that happened was someone instantly dying once they touched him. This was never explained and never shown again, sure thanks.
Duplication
Rick seemingly has the strange ability to create other Ricks via laying an egg himself… please don't question it.
Shapeshifting
Rick has shown mild shape-shifting abilities as he was able to go from plumbus-shaped to the shape of a regular human in moments.
Regeneration
Rick has shown many methods of healing himself. From a gun that heals injuries to using his cybernetics, Rick uses any means to regenerate from near-death wounds.
Non-Physical Interaction
In the comics, Rick has been shown to physically touch beings like ghosts. Rick has also been present in the show to kill demons and harm The Devil. He also was able to see others invisible, not seen to the eye.
Hacking
Rick is also a skilled hacker capable of passing through the defenses of machines including the living mind. The image above is an example of his hacking talents being super effective.
Transmutation
Rick can somehow turn people into objects. Like a rubber hose cartoon, Rick has presented in the Adult Swim pixel videos to turn Morty into weapons as shown above.
The Doctor
Time Lord Physiology
The race of the Time Lords is very similar to the form of humans, yet their abilities and anatomy are what make them different. Time Lords were brilliant in creating the technology of time travel and were considered angels sometimes due to their influence of seeing time. More on that later. They are an alien race who became so advanced that they made themselves Guardians of Time and were so powerful they remade creation into one without magic. The Doctor is confirmed to be a part of this race as they have two hearts of the same anatomy and have the primary abilities of a Time Lord. Some minor capabilities that the Time Lord can do include healing while in a coma or sleep state (00:36), having hindsight, learning to fly and levitate, directing electrons, and they can control their respiratory bypass system.
More specifically, the Time Lords were the first sentient race to emerge within the universe, and before their emergence, the universe was decisively magical and impossible. There existed no rhyme or reason for things occurring, no laws of physics and no underlying rationality behind what made things happen or occur. Then, Rassilon, the leader of the entire civilization of Gallifrey, decided to remake the universe into one that was consistent with itself, with laws, logic, and science. An infinity of possibility was then restricted to only the possibilities restrained by laws of nature, made into one restrained by logical proof and rationality. The Time Lords, referred to as the ‘Watchmakers’, specifically remade all creation so that all things might be made non-magical, banishing the angels and monsters back into the darkness of their innate irrationality. As one source explains it, “Through a ritual of apocalyptic proportions, known as the Anchoring of the Thread, the early Architects made the Universe “rational” — straightforward, and finite — binding it into the shape of the Spiral Politic, forged in the fiery light of the Caldera, the solar furnace at the heart of the Homeworld. In doing so, they destroyed the old world in flames, and from its bones, they wrought our universe — a reality where today is today, the past is a foreign country, and tomorrow is promised to no one. They also conveniently placed themselves in the eye of the storm, protected by ancient magicks from the change and death and entropy they had imposed on the “Lesser Species” — for they are immortal, barring accidents, able to be endlessly reincarnated into new bodies suiting their purposes.”
As a result, Time Lords seem to have an unmatched mastery of space and time. They can “defy chronology”, throwing attacks before they should have impacted, performing moves at impossible speeds, and being able to fold their appendages through space-time itself so that they make contact with a target simultaneously. Time Lords can even move through higher spatial dimensions to retrieve objects that would be otherwise obstructed, they can travel throughout space and time individually without the need of a TARDIS, they can remember each time they are temporally reset within a time loop and can protect themselves and others around them from the same temporally anomalous effects. As a result of the Rassilon Imprimatur, Time Lords have evolved from merely biological beings into beings of pure time itself. Since each of the Time Lord’s existences are “mapped” onto the Time Vortex individually, the existence of each individual Time Lord is much more stable than any other type of being in the universe. As a result, they are much harder to completely erase, not being erased by destroying their past selves or splitting their timeline, and can even survive being within the time vortex for a short time without being completely dissolved. As stated by the Doctor themselves, their status as a Time Lord allows them to withstand chronon-based-energy events, including time schisms, time eddies, time distorts, time fields, time ruptures, and time quakes, even to the point where the entire timeline of the universe (up to the Big Bang’s existence) was being wiped out of existence.
Even beyond the ability to manipulate time, Time Lords are far more… esoteric than meets the eye, at least in extended canon. According to the Time Lord Marnal, the very fact of the observation of Time Lords predetermined the flow of causality and of time itself, that if they abandoned their post on Gallifrey which was outside of time and merely entered into time, they would make the liquid of causality into a crystalline solid, never to change again. According to Marnal, the softest touch of a Time Lord could condemn a man to non-existence, bring an empire into existence, and could blot out the heavens themselves with all their stars. This existence around time regarding the Time Lords is probably related to the fact that the Homeworld of the Time Lords (Gallifrey) exists as an ‘absolute present’, the standard by which all other histories in the universe ought to be judged by, effectively existing beyond fourth-dimensional time altogether.
This existence beyond fourth-dimensional reality also likely explains why Time Lords like the Doctor are able to see all of time simultaneously, including the entirety of the past, present, and future, and not only of one universe but the entirety of “the multiverse in all its vast, beautiful, bountiful, exotically coloured aspects… the countless alternatives, the infinity of paradoxes, the billion twists of fate.” Such an ability to process information composes a Time Lord’s ability for their nervous system to be “hyperspatial”, containing alternate possibilities of tachyon-based fictional universes, and the potential to access them all.
Even beyond this, Time Lords don’t seem to actually exist as just their three-dimensional bodies. In the story Christmas on a Rational Planet, it is claimed that Time Lords’ physical forms are mere fragments of their true “multi-dimensional forms”, with their true bodies existing in meta-space. Such a body existing in meta-space could subsequently influence probability and instances happening in the three-dimensional universe to their physical body’s convenience, seemingly explaining how the Doctor (and other Time Lords) can time and time again overcome any and all odds stacked against their favour. In the novel Sky Pirates! The Doctor was put up against an individual Charon (a species whose members could individually create separate universes with different laws of physics) who was using its reality-bending abilities to erase the Doctor layer by layer, continually trying to destroy their physical form, only for the Doctor to pull mass from their other body, existing in higher dimensions, to reform their physical three-dimensional body. Every single time a layer was destroyed by the Charon, the ‘true body’ of the Doctor was getting bigger in ‘quasi-space’, getting large enough that it even dwarfed the sun. “It was as though a series of fleshy masks had been burned away, one after another, exposing the larger mass enfolded within to at last reveal the massive skull beneath the skin: the horror at the core.”
In the more niche areas of Doctor Who’s expanded universe lore, there are several key concepts discussed, mainly the enigmatic “War in Heaven”, fought by the Time Lords and the equally enigmatic “Enemy”, whose existence will be commented on later. Such a war was seen by those lowly life forms in the universe as a war of ideas, with the combatants (Gallifrey and the Enemy) being referred to as living ideas themselves, according to the novel itself, “the very currents of history are shaped by their whims, and a mere thought of them can make a civilization rise or fall. One can think of them as imprints on the reality of the eternal forms about which your Earth philosopher, Plato, wrote so eloquently. They are eternal and exist at all times and places at their own will.” That is, the ultimate expression of the Time Lords’ existences would be a comparison to the forms expressed by Plato in his ancient philosophy of universals, with this war being stated to be comparable to the concept of a triangle fighting the concept of Justice. Even beyond this, it’s said that the very Platonic forms spoken about “can take on mortal flesh”, and not only that but also can take on forms regarding books, especially ones that describe the very mathematical processes of reality themselves, so that reality would be restructured into one based on rationality rather than magic and mysticism. “Every trace of romance is slowly being leached from the world, as it creates in its stead a world which runs on mathematical rules such as those Professor Moriarty discovered. It is a world without the strange and uncanny, without the romantic or the grotesque, a world devoid of mysteries and wonders. That is, ultimately, what this Enemy wishes to create – a world in which we live and die, reproduce, eat, and excrete, but in which the Pyramids are no longer the creation of ancient alien civilisations but merely the tombs of long-dead inbred dictators, in which there are no canals on Mars and no wizards, a world in which none of our actions matter.”
Thus arrives the final question, what, exactly, is the enemy? Well, Lawrence Burton, the author of the Faction Paradox series (a spin-off of certain plot lines in Doctor Who detailing the War in Heaven) has the answer, we are, or at least, he is. He writes, “This different kind of history might just as well be one in which your empire has been reduced to a background detail – not even one born from much detailed thought – in your favourite Saturday afternoon television show, the children's own programme which adults other than myself adore. Can you imagine what that kind of history would look like? Wouldn't you be resentful if you found out that your entire existence had been written by someone more real than yourself? Wouldn't you regard that individual as your enemy?”
That’s right, apparently, the enemy that the Time Lords were fighting against during the War in Heaven was the writers themselves, or something, at least according to this interpretation, as there are others in the same anthology (including the ideas that the Enemy is actually the Doctor themselves). Although this gets a little too trippy even for our tastes, but that's what the EU is all about. Maybe give those British Sci-Fi writers a raise now and then.
Regeneration
When someone is dying, they tend to end up dead. This is not so for the Time Lords like the Doctor, thanks to a nifty ability of theirs called regeneration. Regeneration allows the Doctor to essentially cheat death by having every cell in their body undergo “a renewal”, completely changing his physical appearance as well as bringing different aspects of his personality to the forefront for each incarnation. Time Lords usually only have twelve regenerations in a cycle, allowing for thirteen incarnations, however the Doctor was given a new regenerative cycle during their final battle on Trenzalore, letting them regenerate past the normal limit. It is also possible the Doctor has an infinite number of regenerations thanks to being the Timeless Child, the being from which the Time Lords’ ability to regenerate originates from.
The Doctor can use regeneration energy to heal others, like when they used some to heal River Song’s broken wrist. Time Lords are able to delay their regeneration, refuse to do it at all, or even fake it entirely. While still within the regenerative process, Time Lords can grow back lost limbs and even survive being riddled with bullets. The sheer force of regeneration can damage the TARDIS or a Dalek saucer. However, some adverse effects like memory loss, food cravings and mental instabilities can happen in the first few hours. The biggest downside is that they can still be killed if they fatally hit in the expelling of regenerative energy phase.
Telepathy
Another central ability Time Lords use is communicating through each other’s minds. Time Lords have telepathy to speak and read minds. The Doctor once shares his telepathy with a vampire through a blood-fasting ritual, though humans can not as it would kill them. As shown above, The Doctor can make a physical contract to look into other’s minds. This can go as far as putting others to sleep, messing with memories through erasers, and altering them. Once prominent when the world’s population thinks his name simultaneously, it restores him to full strength, But not just strength, as long as someone remembers The Doctor, he will be brought back pretty quickly. The 11th Doctor once used a Memory Dump technique, which allows him to upload or download any information he wants with a headbutt Pokemon style. He dislikes the use of it but will do it if needed.
Telekinesis
Another psychic ability that Time Lords have is telekinesis. When the Tenth Doctor channelled the psychic energies of everyone on Earth, he was able to use telekinesis to levitate, and disarm the Master (he was also able to deage himself as well as create forcefields that stopped blasts from the Master’s Laser Screwdriver, thanks to channelling all that energy). After being enhanced by Lux Athenea, the doctor was capable of throwing moons.
Teleportation
Pretty self-explanatory, The 11th Doctor has shown to be capable of appearing and disappearing out of nowhere. Such as when he was pinned down by security, only to later appear at the president’s desk.
Transmigration
The Doctor learned this ability from the Hermit. It allows them to defy the logic of science and send things in and out of existence. Acts a lot like the hammerspace you see cartoon characters like Bugs Bunny use to pull objects out of nowhere.
Passive Probability/Plot Armour
Yeah, this is real. So whenever a Time Lord’s life is threatened or finds themselves in an impossible situation to solve, reality itself changes to make something happen. Weather conditions inexplicably change, distracting the enemy long enough for the Time Lord to slip away. Mysterious third parties just happen to pass by, inadvertently saving the Time Lord from their fate. Even when they are put in a place of confinement, doors which are thought to be secure are found to have been left unlocked, and competent guards look the other way at precisely the wrong moments.
It is stated that events happen in a way that gives the Doctor a chance of victory. Rescuers will turn up, weapons will jam, their companions will save the day, buildings explode immediately after they find the way out, cities will fall just as the TARDIS dematerialising, electrical currents will short-circuit, evil masterminds will make foolish errors, if the Doctor falls out of a window, there will always be something to catch them, if the Doctor is drowning, a spar will float by, they will find their way unsigned out of burning houses and so on.
It was also stated that causality loops around them and that the "odds collapse" in their presence. Essentially, it's some strong and canon Plot Armor.
High Intelligence
All Time Lords are highly intelligent. As for The Doctor, he has shown with his genius experience where his foes fear the most. Knowing every language in his universe, being able to use machines he had never seen in minutes, knowing the names of all stars, instantly identifying fine particles that haven't existed for billions of years, and outsmarting many enemies, some of whom are regarded as gods or supreme beings.
Weapon Mastery
Despite having an aversion to guns and the like, the Doctor has shown to be very capable of using weapons. They have shown to be very skilled with swords, guns, metal poles, the art of fencing, and even spoons. The Doctor was also presented to have marksmanship accuracy, as the 10th Doctor was shown to hit his target with just a racket ball and a racket, and hit a button a fair distance away with a satsuma. The 8th Doctor once shot bullets out of the air with a gun.
Venusian Aikido/Karate
As said before, even while unarmed, the Doctor can still fight hand-to-hand. Their main style of close quarters combat is Venusian Aikido/Karate. A martial art that uses joint locks, throws and kicks, as well as pressure points, completely paralyzing others while still being harmless; however, if the Doctor were to use the paralyzing technique on someone for long enough, they become permanently paralyzed.
Hacking
Even without the Sonic Screwdriver, The Doctor is a skilled hacker. They have hacked shields, ships, control systems, even Daleks. Basically, anything that can be hacked, and even some things that can’t, the Doctor can crack.
Master Escape Artist
The Doctor is very good at running away, it is because they have been taught and trained to escape impossible scenarios. They were even picked up a few tricks from escape artist Harry Houdini.
4th Wall Awareness
The Doctor has shown both awareness of the 4th wall between their fictional reality and our “Real” reality but has also traveled to it before. Here’s a list of the many times the Doctor has interacted with the 4th Wall in some manner. And as mentioned before, Time Lords are capable of fighting “The Enemy”, who are the writers of Doctor Who… sure.
Hypnosis
The final paramount ability the Time Lords can perform is the ability to control the minds of others. The Doctor, on multiple occasions, used their hypnosis to overpower others in control and can aim it at more than one target. The Doctor’s level of hypnotism can sometimes be on par with their nemesis, the Master, who once hypnotized the Earth by using the Archangel Network.
Heightened Senses
When they were questioned about fixing time, the Doctor once stated, “That’s the burden of a Time Lord.” They have shown their senses are on a whole different level than that of a human, as the Doctor can figure things out from the tiniest bit of information. With smell, he can identify the year or spot to know The Master’s scent, taste teleportation in the air, and, as shown above, can see this white crystal that is out of sync with time. Their eyesight can go as far as recognising Time Lords despite their regeneration, and even see that people like Captain Jack Harkness are a “fixed point.”
Time Sensitivity/Precognition
Time Lords can see the flow of Time itself. They have been shown to have space and time awareness that allows them to see time and detect changes in events, and the 11th Doctor’s test result was a Level 7 Evolved, which was very high and was confirmed when they once saw perception being used. The Eighth Doctor demonstrated the ability to predict the future as well as the past. The Doctor can remember events from a time loop even when those affected forgot, and the Tenth Doctor had once changed an outcome with his awareness, doing the same thing twice.
Dream Lord
The Dream Lord is a psychic manifestation of the darker aspects of the Doctor's character, brought to life by psychic pollen stuck in the TARDIS's time rotor. Created from the mind, the Dream Lord can control the dreams of others, but has no power over the real world. "Amy's Choice" features the Dream Lord trapping the Eleventh Doctor, Amy, and Rory in a collective dream state, forcing them to face deadly dangers in two worlds—one seemingly idyllic and the other in a TARDIS hurtling toward a cold star. The Doctor realises neither world is real and wakes them up by destroying the TARDIS, seemingly sacrificing himself, Amy, and Rory.
The Dream Lord draws from the dark aspects of the Doctor's subconscious, embodying self-loathing, guilt, arrogance, selfishness, and lust. He taunts the Doctor and his companions, particularly pressuring Amy to choose between a life of adventure with the Doctor or settling down with Rory. Physically, the Dream Lord appears as a short, older man parodying the Doctor's attire. The episode leaves the defeat of the Dream Lord open to interpretation, suggesting he may be hiding within the Doctor's inner darkness. The Dream Lord shares similarities with the Valeyard, another manifestation of the Doctor's dark side.
Theoretically, should the Doctor ever be trapped in a dream, they could potentially make use of this darker side of themselves, tormenting anyone who intrudes on their mind.
Resistances
As The Doctor has proven in almost all situations, they are tough to control or kill. Thanks to some of his Time Lord biology, the Doctor has shown a lot of resistance to many hax and abilities over their time-fighting.
Hypnosis/Mind Control: The Doctor has shown a strong mind as they were not affected by the Master’s, BOSS’, this plant monster shown above’s, or even the Eternals’ mind control.
Plot/Reality Manipulation: The Doctor has fought against the Writer’s influence once in the Land of Fiction, the Doctor still had control over themselves at times.
Time Stop/Time Reversal: The Doctor could resist time being frozen by Kronos and Lamprey. The Doctor could also move in when time was being reversed and stopped time in “Invasion of the Dinosaurs”.
Existence Erasure: Because the Time Lords bonded with time, it makes them harder to erase. The Doctor once put his hand in one of the Cracks of Time; the effects of the cracks were erasing things from life itself, including time and memories of their past.
Transmutation/Biology Manipulation: In the past, the Daleks have attempted to mess with a Time Lord’s DNA and failed miserably. Their DNA is also potentially connected to the time vortex. They are also immune to the nanocloud, which uses nanogenes to convert non-Dalek individuals into Dalek puppets.
Death & Madness Manipulation: All Time Lords are capable of resisting various powers of the Sisterhood of Karn, who can cause death and insanity with their psychic powers and official Time Lords are able to resist and see the Time Vortex for long periods of time without falling into madness.
Magic: The Doctor can just turn magic off, since Time Lords can do that.
Forms
Rick Sanchez
Pickle Rick
He turns into a pickle and calls himself Pickle Rick. Funniest shit I have ever seen.
Satan Form
If you thought Rick was done with insulting the Devil, then you don’t know Sanchez. After killing this version of the Devil, Rick became him and gained everything that comes with it which includes gaining horns, wings, the ability to summon fire, and the ability to create a whole planet.
The Doctor
The First Doctor
The original Doctor, the one who ran from Gallifrey, the one who stole the TARDIS. While starting out as a more cold-hearted individual who criticised those he felt were primitive compared to his own intellect, the First Doctor eventually became a stern but kind grandfather figure who travelled the universe righting any injustices he came across. This Doctor was the first to battle and defeat the Daleks and the Cybermen onscreen. Fun fact, the First Doctor said “Hmm?” 852 times during his tenure.
The Second Doctor
Everyone’s favorite cosmic hobo and arguably being when the main character traits of the Doctor were firmly established. As a stark difference from his previous incarnation, the Second Doctor was more of a bumbling kindly grandad. Don’t take this to mean he’s an idiot, quite the opposite, he tends to usually use his outward oafish appearance to lull his opponents into a false state of security before he proceeds to utterly trounce whatever plans they may have had. The Second Doctor was the first to battle enemies such as the Great Intelligence and the Dalek Emperor on screen. Due to becoming younger, this Doctor also tended to run a bit more than his predecessor, as did basically all the Doctors after him. This Doctor also had a penchant for playing the recorder and saying “Oh my word!”.
The Third Doctor
A Doctor of action, gadgets and cars. This incarnation of The Doctor was the first to demonstrate his knowledge of various martial arts. The Third Doctor spent a good majority of his time in exile on Earth, unable to leave without being brought back. Due to this, the Doctor became the scientific advisor of the United Nations Intelligence Task Force (U.N.I.T) and helped them with just about every threat the Earth faced while he was around. The Third Doctor was the first to have an onscreen battle against the Master, whose Tremas incarnation called him a worthy foe. Throughout his onscreen adventures, the Third Doctor got into fights 45 times, with his martial abilities being commended by the Sontaran Strax, a race known for its obsession with war and conflict.
The Fourth Doctor
“You may be a doctor. But I am the Doctor. The definite article, you might say!"
The bohemian. The wanderer. The scarf. The voice. The Jelly Babies. The best. The most iconic Doctor of them all with the most iconic intro of them all. Reignited with curiosity to travel the universe, the Fourth Doctor left Earth behind to enjoy his freedom once more. The Doctor with the most oddball personality, which he would use to his advantage in making enemies underestimate him. The Fourth Doctor was the first to battle Davros, the creator of the Daleks, onscreen. Beloved by all who watched him, the Fourth Doctor has the longest reign in the show at 7 years.
The Fifth Doctor
The youngest Doctor thus far, with an interest in cricket and wearing a decorative vegetable. The Fifth Doctor is good-mannered, honest, honorable, and quite possibly the least confrontational. Even the Master called him “the nice one”. He sees the small, beautiful events of life to be what it’s all about. The Fifth Doctor is also willing to make enormous self-sacrifices in order to save people, like when he postponed his own regeneration, risking dying, in order to save Peri.
The Sixth Doctor
The Doctor with clearly the best fashion sense. This Sixth Doctor was initially a man of righteous indignation and smug self-satisfaction before mellowing out into a man of zest and charm. With a savage wit backed up by a lexicon larger than his TARDIS, this Doctor tends to beat his enemies with his words rather than with his fists, though he is perfectly capable of getting physical. The Sixth Doctor is Strax’s favorite Doctor.
The Seventh Doctor
The Seventh Doctor, much like the Second Doctor, hides a far more cunning mind underneath a somewhat goofy exterior. This Doctor actively sought out evil to vanquish and used expert planning and manipulation to get his desired outcome, said planning being commended by Strax. He even defeated Fenric, one of the Great Old Ones. The Seventh Doctor was the first to have a computer-generated intro.
The Eighth Doctor
“"I've seen worlds destroyed, civilizations choked in their cradles, whole races fleeing in terror. I've seen centuries of art, of science, wiped out in an instant. I just saw a beautiful rainforest burn along with every creature in it. I didn't even know the planet's name! If you're prepared to accept that much collateral damage to the rest of the universe, then what exactly are you fighting for? I'll protect those with no choice in the matter, no voice."
The last of the classic era Doctors and a man who tried his best to be a cheerful and pacifistic adventurer even when the universe grew more and more hostile around him. The Eighth Doctor is best known for getting amnesia and having the best seven minutes in Doctor Who. This Doctor is the most human-like of them all, even falling in love multiple times. Even during the Last Great Time War, the Eighth Doctor tried his best to save as many people as he could and adamantly refused to participate in the war itself. Sadly, he couldn’t avoid it forever…
The War Doctor
All fear the man who would not call himself Doctor.
The Ninth Doctor
The first of the modern era Doctors was a man scarred from the part he played in the Last Great Time War, believing himself to be the sole survivor of his race after causing the genocide of both the Daleks and Time Lords. The Ninth Doctor tends to have a jovial personality, though he does become more broody and rude to those he does not like, with a deep hatred towards the Daleks. One of his more noble incarnations, as not even a continuity bomb could find a timeline where the Ninth Doctor was anything other than fantastic, even sacrificing himself in order to save Rose from being killed by absorbing the Time Vortex.
The Tenth Doctor
A man still in pain from his trauma though in a better place due to the actions of his predecessor, the Tenth Doctor had an outgoing personality and is the most popular of the modern era Doctors. The only Doctor to use up a regeneration to stay in their current incarnation, which his successor would chalk up to his vanity issues. This “aborted” regeneration resulted in the creation of the Meta-Crisis Doctor. While this Doctor had a friendly disposition most of the time, he could become a man fiercely protective of his friends when the situation called for it.
The Eleventh Doctor
Energetic and explosive, with a love of fezzes and the delicacy that is fish fingers and custard, the Eleventh Doctor was the final incarnation of the Doctor’s original regenerative cycle. At this point in his life, the Doctor’s reputation had preceded him, attracting all kinds of enemies, like the Silence. This Doctor managed to change the fixed point in time that was his death, something previously believed to be impossible. The Eleventh Doctor, along with all his predecessors and his successor, saved the planet Gallifrey and the Time Lords from destruction in the Last Great Time War by trapping it in a single point in time in a parallel pocket universe. After defending the planet Trenzalore for 900 years, expecting to die there, the Time Lords gifted the Doctor a whole new regenerative cycle, letting him live on and blow up a Dalek ship for good measure.
The Twelfth Doctor
While seeming ruthless on the outside at times, deep down the Twelfth Doctor was a good man, showing kindness to the universe wherever he could. The first of the Doctor’s new regenerative cycle. A man who cared deeply for his friends and companions, who could also show great fury and resolve to thwart his enemies, like when he spent four and a half billion years in a confession dial punching a wall to escape instead of telling the Time Lords what they wanted to know (Heaven Sent is such a good episode).
The Thirteenth Doctor
The first time the Doctor became a woman, the Thirteenth Doctor has an endlessly curious and caring personality. Though she was tested numerous times with questions about her own identity, she pulled through every time, typically saving a good number of people in the process. The longest serving Doctor of the modern era.
Time Vortex Doctor
After jumping into the Time Vortex, the Doctor absorbed the Vortex Energy to become a transcendent being. While in this state, he was powerful enough to instantly disintegrate the Flood Cybermen from existence and essentially became a god that could see all of reality until he decided to give up his god-hood in order to save his companion.
In the Ninth Doctor’s Final Story “The Parting of the Ways”, in order to save Rose Tyler’s life, the Doctor absorbed Vortex Energy from her into himself and then released it back into the TARDIS. While in this state, he became an extremely powerful being, its consequence on his body was too much, and he regenerated into the Tenth Doctor.
Zagreus
Zagreus sits inside your head,
And eats you when you're sleeping.
Zagreus comes when time's a maze,
And all of history is weeping.
The reward that he is reaping.
Zagreus sings when all is lost,
Zagreus takes all those he's crossed,
The hero's hearts he's keeping.
Zagreus seeks the hero's ship,
And life aside, he's sweeping.
Zagreus waits at the end of the world,
For Zagreus is the end of the world.
And his moment time's undoing.
Zagreus sets the skies ablaze.
The stars his flame a gleaming...
Zagreus is the Time Lords' shame,
The beast that I've been keeping.
During one adventure, the Eighth Doctor absorbed anti-time particles into his own body, becoming the dark being known as Zagreus, one of the most terrifying beings in the Doctor Who Universe. Zagreus is capable of destroying the entirety of the Web of Time - ending all realities in the Doctor Who verse. Anything that he infects, Zagerus can reshape it as shown with the TARDIS as he was capable of shaping the dimensions inside her to his liking and create beings such as the Jabberwock.
Zargerus was chosen to be the weapon to use against Rassilon’s Opponents. Giving him a Vorpal Blade forged made out of the body of the TARDIS that is infused with anti-time and shown to be able to cut projections out of time
Zargerus can’t die through conventional means - only be extracted from his host, as shown when the Anti-Time was extracted from the Doctor and Zagreus essentially became his own being.
Feats
Rick Sanchez
Overall
Became the smartest man in his multiverse and the Rick-est Rick
Traveled around the multiverse in his adventures
Outsmarted many of his foes on numerous occasions, including Evil Morty
Finally got his revenge on Rick Prime (Spoilers)
Helped make the Council of Ricks and built their citadel
Saved and destroyed planets on multiple occasions
Defeated The President, Zeep, Worldender, The Vindicators, Story Lord, and even alternate versions of himself and Mortys’
Damaged both The Citadel of Ricks and the Galactic Federation at the same time
Became leader and head pilot of Go Tron
Survived many of Evil Morty’s schemes, including the destruction of the Citadel of Ricks and the Genocider
Killed Tammy, who murdered his closest friend, Bird Person
Fought Phoenix Person, Bird Person as a cyborg
Created many law-breaking using science such as a car battery built out of a microverse and Froppyland
Brought back McDonald’s famous Szechuan sauce for a short time
Travel to other famous worlds such as:
The Simpsons… after killing them
My Little Pony (Don’t ask why they were there)
Gravity Falls (So that’s where the items came from)
Dungeon and Dragons
Power
As shown above, he got jacked up with Summer and beat the shit out of some people, including Mr. Needles, who is the Devil
Fought toe-to-toe against Phoenix Person
Had sex with a PLANET that gave birth to these things (Wished this one was fake) (Not actually his children tho)
Fought Ze- I mean Reggie, and threw asteroids at him.
Fought and beat Shleemypants, who was a 4th-dimensional time cop
Debatable: This does not mean that Rick can break the rules of dimensional levels since the Tesictle Monster was also caught in the time loop
Killed demons, dragons, and aliens on numerous occasions
Created a planet in his satan form
While blackout drunk, Rick soloed an entire base of aliens, one of which was stated to be able to destroy worlds
Built a neutrino bomb that could wipe out all life on Earth
Built the ship, which can drag around entire stars with numerous planets (288.1 FOE - 5.27 megaFOE), and subsequently one shot a creature that ate the star (39.74 yottatons of TNT)
Rick fought a version of Jerry which became a star
He stated he would nuke an entire universe if he wanted to
This would reach 10 octillion times universal due to the sheer size of the Rick and Morty universe (See cosmology)
His ship was about to destroy all of space and time, before it was reset and placed into a time loop
Speed
Can pilot his ship, which can travel at light speed, as shown above
Dodge a satellite laser orbiting in space (Mach 1341.5)
Travel from a planet to an asteroid belt in a short time
Maneuvered his ship around multiple lasers
Dodged a laser blast from Space-Beth (54.9% c)
Dodge lasers from Phoenix Person but did suffer a fresh wound (71.2% c)
Outpace different versions of himself
With an amp boost, dodges laser and gravity cannons from all directions (22.5% c)
Dodged lasers from a Rick robot and Gazorpazorpfield (34.73% c - 1.07 c)
Rick and Morty were able to complete an 800 Lightyear jump to the Promethean Nebula in a short timeframe (2.3 million c)
With the ship, traveled to Planet Squanch in a short time, which Rick claims is 6000 light years away (52 million c)
Rick experienced and reacted to a thousand lifetimes in 53 seconds (66 billion c)
Rick’s ship traveled to the edge of the universe (1.403 septillion c - 2.813 septillion c)
With technology sent out an omnidirectional wave that covered the entire universe in seconds (1 octillion c)
Alongside Mr. Nimbus, experienced living in an infinite amount of realities at once (Infinite) (Debatable)
Durability
As shown above, took a beatdown from Mr. Sick. Mr. Sick is a Mr. Meeseek, which regular Meeseeks could kill a giant at ease
Tank a blow inside his bubble forcefield when Mr. Sick played volleyball
Survive his fight with Reggie, who smashed an asteroid on his head (2.49 MJ)
Survived getting crushed by a giant robot fist
Fought the President who sent him through several floors of the White House
He tanked a gravity gun that slammed him through the floor
Took a beating from Phoenix Person, who wall-slid him
In his ship, he survives crashing into Earth
Also, in his ship, he survived Go Tron’s fight that could be seen in space (87.09 petatons)
Survived Evil Morty’s assassination attempt with the Genocider, which destroyed a city (90.5 megatons of TNT)
Survived a Mr. Meeseeks nuking a city
Survive from Mr. Nimbus beating the shit out of him, who is primarily horny Aquaman
The other version also seemed to survive a building exploding
The Doctor
Overall
Icon of British Media
Lit the Olympic Flame
Defeated the Daleks, the Cybermen, the Terrible Zodin, Omega…
Won the Celestial Toymaker’s game
…the Weeping Angels, the Silurians, Scratchman, the Master…
Escaped the Matrix and Land of Fiction
…Sutekh, the Zygons, the Rani, the Boneless…
Saved all of Creation numerous times
…the Sycorax, the Racnoss, the Slitheen, the Master again…
Ended the Last Great Time War
…the Sontarans, the Rutans, the Eleven, the Celestial Toymaker…
Inspired some of the works of H.G. Wells (Yes, really)
…Davros, Salamander, the Sea Devils, Tim Shaw, the Master again again…
Is canonically responsible for the word “Doctor”
…Rassilon, the Gods of Ragnarok, the Eternals, The Ma- you get the idea
With the help of their allies, stopped and destroyed the Daleks’ Reality Bomb
Bested The Black Guardian, one of the Guardians of Time
Wielded the Key to Time, the Moment, and the Glory
Became a member of the Guardians of Time
Battled and survived their encounter with the Quantum Archangel
Traveled to other famous worlds, including:
Met Matt Smith (yes, this is real)
Power
As shown above, fought the Master when The Glory amped both.
Punched down a steel door
Continuously struck and broke an Azbantium wall that was twenty feet thick and stated to be 400 times harder than the most intricate diamond
Can withstand and overpower a Cybermen. The Cybermen are strong enough to overcome humans and break doors at ease
Breakstone with one coming from a human
Once used his regeneration energy to destroy a Dalek Saucer and damaged his Tardis
Fought Robin Hood with a spoon
Fought a robotic version of himself made by the Daleks
Recreated The Moment with the use of a De-Mat gun
Absorbed the entire Time Vortex (5-D)
Before the recreation of the universe by the Time Lords, there existed no spatial or temporal dimensions, no narrative, mathematical axioms, or stories (11-D)
Speed
Juggled a football five million times (Mach 8.1)
Dodged a laser bolt
Moved in tandem with sunbeams (53.7%c)
Made a thousand calculations in 4 nanoseconds (6,254c)
Comparable calculator speed to the Dalek who can calculate a thousand billion combinations in one second flat (26,685.1c)
Piloted the TARDIS to drag the Earth from the edge of the universe back into position within 77 seconds (19 quadrillion c)
Grabbed an object moving at "super-infinite speeds" (Infinite)
Time Lords exist, to a certain extent, outside of time. (Immeasurable)
The Doctor could defy chronology and did so by landing a few punches before they have impacted, performing movies at impossible speeds, holding the tentacles through space-time (Immeasurable) (The taking of Planet 5)
Moved during time dilation (52.6 thousand c)
Comparable to Normal Humans such as Rose Tyler who can dodge sunlight (35%c)
Comparable to enhanced clones such as Jenny who dodges lasers (3.1%c)
Outran the volcanic ash that destroyed Pompei.
Reacted in using the Mirror Aliment before the Gods of Ragnarok could destroy them 1:15-1:22
Has reacted to a Dalek’s laser beam and redirected it back to kill itself
Durability
Survived a fall from space (66.7 megatons of TNT)
As shown above, he survived in his Tardis that tanked a blast from Zeus. Zeus is superior to Helius, who took out three black holes
The Doctor’s Tardis has been able to survive the following with the Doctor inside as the pilot:
Took blows from Gabby Gazelaz, who became the Vortex Butterfly
Surrounded the Toymaker’s realm and ejected The Imposter, inside his realm, into space (12th)
Blocked powerful beings like The Black Guardian and Sutekh The Destroyer from breaching the Tardis
Both The Doctor’s and The Master Tardises took blows from the Quantum Archangel
Once tanked ANTIMATTER FORMED AS TORNADOES ...wished I made that last one up
Jumped out of a ship, resulting in a long fall that shattered a glass ceiling, impacted the ground, and got back up.
He took a blow from an energy blot that was fatal to humans, but he was fine.
Grabbed a Sycorax’s whip-, which earlier electrocuted a man to the bone
Doctor’s regen should be superior to River Song, who tanked bullets
With Mirror Aliment, reflected The Gods of Ragnarok powers at them. The result was the gods killing themselves, destroying their Psychic Circus, and cutting their link to the universe. 1:15-1:22
Tank many hits from powerful electricity energy blasts that turned a human to nothingness
Shattered his bones after breaking the Azbantium wall, then crawled up a staircase for a day and a half in critical condition
Tanked a solar flare (2.39 petatons of TNT)
Survived being in the White Void in The Lost Dimension
Had his Regan energy taken away
Survives falling in Earth's upper atmosphere long enough to put on a spacesuit (371 Tons of TNT)
Absorbed the entire time vortex (5D)
Doctor Who calculations are linked here. Once again, special credit to Tommy
Scaling
Rick Sanchez
Morty/Mortys
There’s a number of impressive feats and statements featured in the Pocket Mortys mobile game, Rick would likely be able to scale/upscale from these feats as his very own Morty features and can stand up against these other Mortys:
Psychokinetic Morty, who can move entire planets with his psychokinesis
Supernova Morty, who’s described as “Half Morty, Half Collapsing Star”
Black Hole Morty, who is a black hole
Smith Family
Rick’s own family! Rick has been shown time and time again that he’s on another level compared to his family, so he should safely upscale anything his family can do.
Jerry beat up Pissmaster
Jerry was capable of holding on the the bottom of a moving airplane for a prolonged period of time
Jerry and Beth survived being near Reggie’s fall from space which parted clouds
Alternate Ricks
Considering C-137 Rick is considered the “Rickest Rick” and has directly taken down both the Council of Ricks and Rick Prime, it’s safe to say that he should be able to replicate their feats, and even go beyond them.
Rick Prime created the Omega Weapon, a device that could erase someone from every single reality (See Before The Verdict)
Evil Morty
Evil Morty is one of the biggest threats in the multiverse, and easily the smartest Morty. Him and C-137 Rick have been shown as equals many times throughout the show (including the latest episode of the show at the time of writing this, Unmortricken) so it’s safe to say Rick shouldn’t be too far off from him.
Miscellaneous
Look at this wonderful cast of characters! This is a section for the various feats that happened throughout the show.
The Story Lord is able to transcend past the narrative
Supernova’s body is stated to be a universe
The Doctor
The Master
The Doctor has many enemies and rivals over his adventures, but the Master has been the only one deemed as his equal. The Master is a Time Lord who was close friends with the Doctor during their time at the Time Lord Academy before their power hunger and dark nature led them to become a lover of chaos. Many times the Master has come closest to killing the Doctor through all interactions and has defeated them on some occasions.
Here are some of his most famous feats the Master has done:
Survived hearing the drums of the Untempered Schism as a child, and being unaffected by its Biodata.
Caused the birth of The Quantum Archangel and aided The Doctor in her defeat
Fought The Doctor in hand-to-hand combat.
Change the states of matter itself. His favorite method is to kill his victims by shrinking them to death which harms Time Lords.
“Hypnotized” the Earth with the use of a mobile phone network.
With a healing machine, turned almost every human into himself on Earth.
Controlled The Glory and The Matrix (not the movie) for a short time.
Resisted the effects of The Land of Fiction like The Doctor.
Absorbed a dying planet for power and could teleport at will, and their battle destroyed that dying planet
Was also a wielder of The Glory and defeated The Doctor.
Uses a teleporter before the Daleks beams could hit him, dodges Dalek beams ricocheting off walls, and moves faster than the eye could see.
Had his regeneration run out many times and somehow always came back.
Valeyard
Since the Valeyard is an amalgamation of the darker sides of the Doctor’s nature and/or a future incarnation, anything he can do, the Doctor should be capable of as well. In an alternate “What If” Story called “He Jests at Scars”, the Valeyard:
Blew up the Constellation of Kasterborous, annihilating Gallifrey and completely wiping out the Time Lords.
Accidentally killed the Fourth Doctor by time-ramming his TARDIS while his previous self was on his way to Logopolis, vaporizing the entire planet in the process
Traveled back in time and destroyed Logopolis and its entire star system in order to prevent himself from making that mistake.
Rassilon
One of the founders of the Time Lord Civilization, Rassilon is one of the strongest Time Lords who has been a foe for the Doctor numerous times.
Repelled the force of a Black Hole using Telekinesis. (Doctor Who Magazine Issue 47 pg 40 - Fun Fact, this story was written by a young Alan Moore)
With the Ultimate Sanction was going to rupture the Time Vortex apart, destroying all creation (End of Time Part 2)
Omega
One of the co-founders of Time Lord society and the one who created the means for the Time Lords to time travel, only for him to be forever trapped inside the black hole he created. The Doctor has fought Omega several times.
Managed to survive being trapped inside the black hole via sheer force of will.
Created the antimatter universe and controls every aspect of it with a combination of his will and singularity.
Nearly drained all the power from Gallifrey before he was stopped.
Stated that if he didn’t stop his power drain, the fabric of the universe would be ripped apart.
Converted the Doctor’s TARDIS into antimatter.
Despite his body no longer existing due to being corroded away, continued to exist via sheer force of will.
Survived the antimatter universe being destroyed in a matter-antimatter explosion while he was at ground zero.
Has engaged the Doctor in mental battles numerous times.
Rose Tyler/Bad Wolf
After absorbing Vortex Energy from the Heart of the TARDIS, this Ninth/Tenth Doctor companion became the entity known as Bad Wolf. Considering how we know the Doctor can absorb the energy of the TARDIS (at the cost of their own life eventually) and absorb energy from the Time Vortex, scaling the Doctor and their higher tier forms to Rose Tyler/Bad Wolf should be viable.
Warped the entire universe so the name “Bad Wolf” appeared throughout reality in order to warn the Doctor (Parting of the Ways/Turn Left)
Atomised the entire Dalek Fleet which consisted of around two hundred Dalek flying saucers and four thousand Daleks atoms. (thousands of Dalek Ships) (Parting of the Ways)
Created a looped ontological paradox. (Parting of the Ways)
Has been stated to be capable of destroying the entire universe (I am a Dalek)
Quantum Archangel/Lux Aeterna
Out of all of the enemies the Doctor has faced, the enemy from the novel of the same name was one of their most dangerous enemies. The Quantum Archangel is a being composed of Anjeliqua Whitefriarf, a friend of Melaine Bush, fused with the energies of the Lux Aeterna. The Lux Aeterna is one of the most powerful energy sources in Doctor Who, stated to be able to create pocket universes and shape reality however one sees fit. In terms of why she is being included - a Lux Aeterna enhanced Doctor fought her one-on-one, and it has been quoted that the Doctor and the Master’s TARDIS were shown to be a match for her, so at least the TARDIS scales to her.
Here are the main key achievements she has performed:
Lux Aeterna underpants the entire Doctor Who Multiverse.
Has been shown to be able to instantly disintegrate moons. (pg 282)
Turned the sun into a supernova. (pg 282)
Propelled a gas giant towards the Doctor at light speed. (pg 283)
Set space on fire. (pg 283)
Throwing planets into each other. (pg284)
Molded reality back to its original form. (pg 288)
There were a lot more abilities and terrors she has done that you can follow the link here to see the Quantum Archangel’s full powers.
The Guardians
The Guardians are essentially the gods of Doctor Who. All six Guardians have been symbols of the universe, and when combined become a being called the Six-Fold God. The Doctor scales to them because he has fought two of them and defeated the Black Guardian with the Key to Time.
Here are some feats the Guardians have presented:
The White Guardian can affect powerful beings like The Eternals
Black Guardian can alter the life and death of mortals without effort
The White Guardian took The Doctor and his TARDIS to his realm
The Celestial Toymaker
The Celestial Toymaker was the first Guardian the Doctor met way back during their first incarnation. The Toymaker has no true origin, but we do know they are the Crystal Guardian of dreams and fantasy who lives to see his victims play his fatal games through any means to win. The Doctor has interacted with the Toymaker more than any of the other Guardians and has survived all the games he has put them through. The Toymaker is set to return in the 60th anniversary specials.
Here’s are some of the things the Toymaker has done:
In his Character Encyclopedia, lives outside of reality and can change people into toys
Maintains the Toyroom which has been stated to be its own separate dimension
Has brought his toys to life and turned people invisible
Stated by the Doctor themselves that he is immortal and can survive his realm being destroyed
Use his mind to do anything he wants, even redirect actions
The Toymaker's powers are strong enough to erase the Doctor and the TARDIS from existence
Getting Neil Patrick Harris to portray himself
Cosmology
Rick Sanchez
Oh boy here we go
Universes
How Large is Each Rick and Morty Universe?
In issue 55 of the Rick and Morty Comic, Tammy implies that the planet they are on is so far into space that it is a hundred quintillion light years away from the nearest star.
“Dying on a nameless planet - a hundred quintillion light years from the next star over.”
This means that as a lowball, a universe in Rick and Morty is at least a hundred quintillion light-years across. However, Tammy says it’s to the nearest star - not galaxy or solar system, the nearest star, meaning that it’s likely far greater than that. The current size of our universe is about 14.26 gigaparsecs (46.5 billion light-years or 4.40×1026 m). Considering that a quintillion is much greater than a billion:
Even if we lowball this feat and say that somehow, this is the maximum size of our universe, the Rick and Morty universe would be thousands of times greater than our own at the bare minimum, making it so that anyone scaling to a universal feat would be many times universal as a result.
Multiverses
In the Rick and Morty multiverse, it is established that there are an infinite amount of universes. Later on, C-137 and the fledgling Council of Ricks created what became known as "The Central Finite Curve". Using portal-gun technology, they prevented access to any universe where Rick Sanchez is not the smartest person in the universe.
“President Morty: Jack shit. I’m leaving. Do you know what the Central Finite Curve is? They built a wall around infinity, separated all the infinite universes from all the infinite universes where he’s the smartest man in the universe. Every version of us has spent every version of all of our lives in one infinite crib, built around an infinite fucking baby.”( Rick and Morty - Season 5 Episode 10 Rickmurai Jack)
While Morty does say in this episode that the universes where Rick is the smartest man in the universe are infinite, he doesn’t actually know this for sure, and the name of the Central Finite Curve itself indicates that the amount of universes where Rick is the smartest man is finite - and Rick and his technology have not shown any evidence of being able to do anything to universes outside of the Central Finite Curve. Rick should scale to anything within the Central Finite Curve, as we address below, but he should not scale to anything above that.
Disrupting the Central Finite Curve
There has been tech created by certain Ricks and Morty that have affected the stability of the “Central Finite Curve" as made evident through Evil Morty being able to overcharge the Dimensional Drive and used it to punch a hole in the Central Finite Curve without actually destroying it, thus escaping into the larger multiverse outside of the Central Finite Curve
The second main instance of a being disrupting the Central Finite Curve of this is when Rick and Morty is merging dimensions in order to find every decoy Rick Prime in order to find the real one:
This is very much stated in the episode to be disrupting the Central Finite Curve (though not destroying it completely), with Evil Morty comparing it to “fracking” (taking oil out of the ground.
Showcasing that Rick’s tech can affect the Finite Curve which consists of a finite multiverse. Now the question becomes “Can Rick’s tech affect the Infinite Multiverse beyond the Finite Curve?” Evidence in the episode leans towards no - while Rick’s actions definitely can lead to shockwaves in the Infinite as made evident with this line:
"You’re right, I don’t live here, which is why it’s insane that you’re still bugging me.
The shockwaves have more range than I thought.”
We don’t think Rick’s tech would be able to affect the Infinite Multiverse outside of the Finite Curve. It should be noted that so far - both Rick and Evil Morty can simply disrupt the “Central Finite Curve” for their own various reasons - not destroy it in its entirety (if Evil Morty was capable of destroying the “Central Finite Curve” for good rather than simply disrupt it, he would have done so.)
There is little evidence to suggest that Rick Sanchez would be able to affect the Infinite Multiverse outside of the “Central Finite Curve”. As such Rick Sanchez would not scale to Infinite Multiversal or anything higher than that but his tech would scale up to the “Central Finite Curve'' which is Multiversal.
TLDR: Rick Sanchez would scale to the “Central Finite Curve” but not to the rest of his multiverse outside of it.
Special Dimensions
Higher spatial dimensions have been shown to exist in the world of Rick and Morty, as evidenced by the 4D time cops, Multi Morty being stuck in a 5th dimensional multiplication loop, as well as Rick’s own comments as seen above. The thing is though, there’s no reason to assume Rick would scale or pose a threat to these higher dimensions.
The 4th Dimensional time cop was in the same time loop as Rick was, so Rick wasn’t really breaking any dimensional rules by beating his ass.
Multi Morty isn’t in the 5th dimension, he’s being affected by tech from the 5th dimension that he has no control over.
The crystal as seen above is fake, Rick doesn’t have it and has no way to interact with higher dimensions.
So while, yes, higher dimensions do exist in Rick and Morty, Rick has no solid way of scaling to that level of power.
The Doctor
Before we get this started, there is one thing that must be kept in mind before reading this section and that is that due to being over 60 years old and being a heavily lore/story-focused series - Doctor Who as a series has contradicted itself throughout the years with different writers bringing in their own personal take in the mythos ala Chris Chibnall and the Timeless Children.
As such, there may be elements of this Cosmology Explantation that may be a bit strange as well. As such, there may end up being contradictory statements in the cosmology section, so keep that in mind while reading.
For this blog, we are going to start at the very top - the highest level in the Doctor Who Universe - the Omniverse.
The Omniverse/The Glory
Let's start at the very top. The Omniverse described by the Doctor Who DW Comic Strip The Glorious Dead has been described as the totality of all of existence - every Multiverse that has ever existed is a part of the Doctor Who Omniverse. During the comic, The Time Vortex of the Doctor's own multiverse merged with the omniversal spectrum at the Glory, a device at the spectrum's focal point that is responsible for maintaining the structure of the omniverse (basically acting at the heart of the Omniverse):
During the comic, the Doctor battled the Master to prevent him from taking full control over the Glory and remaking it, eventually fighting back using the power of the Glory and his soul (though he eventually lost”). Someone else was able to become the wielder of the Glory and won.
Later stories would go into more detail concerning the Omniverse.
From Short Story: The Hunting of Slook
“A dark shape crouches amongst the roots of a great tree. Is it a bush of black roses? Many people would think so. Its flowers have petals as thin as paper after a fire. They have a lingering perfume like burnt sugar. The slightest breath of wind might crumble them to ash.
The tree is Time, old as itself, gnarled and spreading wide, blotting out the clear sky with infinite possibilities. High amongst its branches clings something like an orchid. Its flame-white petals flicker and change into infinite shapes. A ragged saucer, a trumpet, a tulip cup.
A song resonates forever here, whispering its music to the leaves. It is Time moving through Space, lighting stars, turning spheres. The shapes we imagine as the rose and the orchid hear the music playing on the strings of the Omniverse. The music nourishes them. They reach deep to touch it. They think of it as theirs. They are very proprietorial about it. It is a perfect harmonic sequence, no variations allowed, that must be kept perfect, that no one should hear.
The Thief Who Stole Time:
To start to the start, time is running raw, rich and unchecked. Nothing slows it down yet. No scenery, no players, no plot, no wishes or broken legs, just a tale told by an idiot full of sound and fury signifying what.Time split in the first cell of the omniverse, time dividing time and time again,
In Spiral Scratch, it went into more detail. Backing up the whole Doctor Who Omniverse being Infinite and certain beings can devour entire Multiverses:
Spiral Scratch
.” Whilst there, he discovered three new atomic elements that, when combined, opened the causality loops, enabled unfettered access to the space-time vortex and unleashed the Lampreys previously imprisoned in the Spiral at the apex of the Vortex. As a result of his discoveries, the Lampreys gained unlimited access to all of time and space across the multiverses, reaching back to the creation, or forward to the destruction, of each universe, plus every interstitial point in between, wherein they wreaked havoc and unravelled reality whilst feeding on the chaos energies released as each divergent universe self-destructed. As such, to the few trillion survivors within the eighteen known surviving universes (out of the unrecordable amount that existed previously), he is known as the Architect of Chaos. Many attempts have been made by surviving time-sensitives to go back through time and assassinate Tungard prior to his ascent to maturity but all have failed, his timeline is fiercely guarded by the multitudinous Lampreys.”
Both of these texts back up the idea that the Doctor Who Omniverse is made up of Infinite Universes. This is important for later as there have been several points where the Doctor Who Omniverse has been threatened, which we discussed later.
Time Vortex
For those who aren’t in the know, the Time Vortex is the main thing that the TARDIS travels through in order to reach its destination. In the Doctor Who Universe, Time is considered to be the 5th Dimension (which is considered to be time) and exists outside of Space and Time - essentially being a never-ending corridor. It underlines all of creation, and it could potentially take at least a billion light years to travel it.
(Doctor Who Novelization - The Chase Pg 10)
In the Doctor Who Novel - a Spiral Scratch, it is stated that the Time Vortex is made up of Infinite Levels, as the Time Vortex has no bottom and is essentially Infinite. Essentially, there are infinite levels which stack upon each other - connecting the Multiverse.
(Spiral Scratch - Chapter 9: Nostalgia)
It is responsible for holding together the fabric of space and time and keeps infinite universes in check. Should it collapse, then it would destroy the multiverse.
Anyone who absorbs the energy of the Time Vortex essentially becomes a transcending being who can see all potential what-ifs, as shown by what happened to Gabby Gonzales, Rose Tyler and the Doctor. (Doctor Who - The Vortex Butterfly.)
11-D
In the Doctor Who Universe, 1-4D are your standard dimensions. 5D is Time, aka the Time Vortex, but 5-D is not where it ends. Rather, 6 other planes of existence were previously not known about aka 6-11, that being the Six-Fold Realm:
The Quantum Archangel pg 73.
However, there is evidence to suggest that the number of dimensions in the Doctor Who Universe is a lot higher than that. In an 11th Doctor Story, it is stated by the 11th Doctor that there might be 43 Dimensions existing in the Doctor Who Multiverse and the novel Spiral Scratch implies that the universe in the DW Verse is Infinite and that there are an infinite amount of universes out there.
”infinite universes like sleekly in roses, and clusters regaling with dreams of sums. Moves, and move. Arching and running to fill the deep of space with starlight.” - The Thief Who Stole Time.
This is further backed up with stories such as “The Taking of Planet 5” and “Professor Bernice Summerfield and the Infernal Nexus”.
“Beyond that could be seen eternity, endless space and an infinity of colours. Colours wild and impossible: colours out of space.”
“Assuming that the Doctor never found what had happened to her – which, considering the infinite possibilities in an infinite universe, was highly likely.”
“Isolation prison terms for the infinite duration of the universe.”
(Taking of Planet 5)
Essentially, there are Infinite Universes with Infinite Dimensions.
How does this factor into the Doctor?
Well, as mentioned earlier, the TARDIS has been directly stated to be capable of destroying all of reality if it self-destructed. It would not just take out one reality but the entire Doctor Who Cosmology, as such, the TARDIS can scale to the infinite multiverse of the Glory. The TARDIS has also been shown to be capable of giving the Quantum Archangel some trouble.
As for the Doctor themselves, they have shown to be capable of absorbing the Time Vortex and weaponizing it against their enemies as well as make use of all of the time vortex energy within the TARDIS in order to stop the Flux Wave, the Doctor also scales to other Time lords whom ‘rationalized’ the primordial chaos and made a consistent narrative, defined by an infinite set of spatial and temporal dimensions, with sub-sets of universes for each collection of possible spatial and temporal dimensions within this set, as such,it is viable to scale him to the cosmology.
Oh, and within the universe of an atom there are pin galaxies that exist for only an attosecond. Because what’s a cosmology without having something exist on the micro level as well as the macro?
Weaknesses
Rick Sanchez
Rick is a complicated person, to say the least, and because of that, his biggest weakness is himself. Rick has gotten himself into trouble multiple times due to his god-complex, thinking that he’s invincible has left him unprepared for the times when he’s not. Rick relies a lot on his weaponry and his intelligence to get out of the most dangerous situation which makes him exposed and results in it either being taken away from him or dying in the most gory deaths. Rick is suicidal because of his depression, broken so badly in not caring about life through he tries to care for his loved ones.
Rick is also just genuinely insane, and that goes to show in his inventions where a lot of them come with caveats that really hurt him and are impractical for a Death Battle like this.
Also, he’s scared of pirates.
The Doctor
While regeneration is an incredible thing, it is not foolproof. The Doctor has been killed hard enough to not be able to regenerate before, like when they were in a spaceship crash while trying to save Cass, or when, in an alternate timeline, they died when defeating the Rancoss empress. And there are weapons that can kill the Doctor and not let them regenerate, such as a Dalek gunstick.
And while his compassion is one of the Doctor’s finest traits, it has been used against them before. They’ve been lured by distress signals and even refused to use a weapon to kill the last remaining Daleks due to the loss of innocent life that would occur if they did so.
And even with all their power, not even the Doctor could stop Michael Grade from cancelling Doctor Who in 1989.
Before The Verdict
What about the Omega Device?
For those who are not in the know - in the latest episode of Rick and Morty “Unmortricken”, Rick Prime created a device capable of erasing anyone from existence (including their alternate versions). People have debated on if this could erase the Doctor from existence and kill for good and the answer we come to was basically..no
Firstly - The 11th has come back from being completely erased from existence at the end of “The Big Bang" due to the memories of Amy Pond and River Song so we know that the Doctor can survive existence erasure.
Also, there’s the fact that the Omega Weapon wasn’t built by the Rick that we follow in the series - rather his archenemy, Rick Prime. While Rick could build an Omega Device to try to erase The Doctor from existence, it would require both creating a weapon he has never created before (and can’t due to Evil Morty stealing the schematics for it) and tricking the Doctor into the Omega Device - which is a very unlikely scenario.
All in all, we felt that due to it being Rick Prime’s creation, not the main Rick - we felt it was not fair to give to him and even if we did - the Doctor’s resistance would likely mean that the device would not work on him.
What is the Timeless Child?
Right, so, this thing. During series 12, episode 10 “The Timeless Children”, it is revealed that the Doctor is the Timeless Child, a being from another dimension which the Shobogan Tecteun extracted the power of regeneration from. This revelation introduced/reinstated incarnations predating the first Doctor, including the “Fugitive” Doctor and the “Morbius Doctors”. While this doesn’t increase the Doctor’s experience due to having their memories of these incarnations erased, the Timeless Child revelation revealed that the Doctor essentially has infinite regenerations.
Now, while this reveal is hated by the large majority of the fandom, as well as some of the people who have worked on this blog, it is, as of this blog’s publication, the current canon for the Doctor.
What about “insert other Doctor here”?
There are several Doctors we didn’t really talk about in the blog for one reason or another, so here’s a rapid-fire of some of the other Doctors:
Fourteenth Doctor - The current Doctor as of this blog’s publication. The Fourteenth Doctor’s specials haven’t yet aired and though he has some stories thanks to comics and Children in Need, we thought there wasn’t really enough material to give him a dedicated section.
Fifteenth Doctor - Has a single line of dialogue in a trailer as of this blog’s publication. Though due to being Ncuti Gatwa, this creates an automatic advantage that no Rick can ever match.
The “Fugitive Doctor” - We know very little about this pre-First Doctor incarnation. She is strong enough to flip a Judoon over her shoulder, so that’s cool.
The “Morbius Doctors” - We know their faces but not much else. They may be the Doctor, they may be leftover memories of the Other, who knows? It keeps changing and probably will again.
“Muldwych” - A ginger Doctor that may be his last incarnation. Spent some of his time as Merlin. Yes, that Merlin.
“The Relic” - The supposed last incarnation of the Doctor who sacrificed himself Celestis, and they were given his corpse.
The Curator - A later incarnation of the Doctor with a face similar to that of his Fourth incarnation. This Doctor had effectively retired and became the curator of the Under Gallery.
Dr. Who - An eccentric human scientist portrayed by Peter Cushing in “Dr. Who and the Daleks” and “Daleks’ Invasion of Earth 2150 A.D.” He is sometimes said to be an incarnation of the Doctor, sometimes an alternate version of the Doctor, and sometimes a fictional character based on the Doctor.
“The Shalka Doctor” - A version of the Ninth Doctor that starred in the Flash-animated serial “Scream of the Shalka” and was portrayed by Richard E Grant.
“The Curse of Fatal Death” Doctors - Versions of Doctors nine through thirteen that starred in the comic relief sketch “The Curse of Fatal Death”. Played by Rowan Atkinson, Richard E Grant, Jim Broadbent, Hugh Grant and Joanna Lumbley respectively.
Verdict
Stats
To start with, in terms of stats, these two time travelers hold quite a few impressive feats under their belts, however, one of them clearly has much greater feats than the other. Both Rick and the Doctor have done things such as laser dodging, fighting humans or beings slightly greater than them in hand-to-hand and the like - however, in terms of measurable stats, Rick definitely should take a good edge in most categories.
For speed, the Doctor’s greatest measurable feat by themselves would have to be moving within time dilation during the events of “Hide” - S7 E9, which should get upwards of 52 thousand times faster than light - no slouch of a number. In addition to that, being able to pilot the TARDIS within Journey’s End to drag the Earth from the edge of the universe back into place within 77 seconds. If we assume the Doctor Who universe is the same size as our own, this would get upwards of 19 quadrillion times faster than light (Thanks Nem)!
However, Rick’s routinely done feats far greater than this, such as reacting to a thousand lifetimes in under a minute, which would get 66 billion times the speed of light, or his various ship piloting feats, which get anywhere from the millions range to the septillions range, giving Rick a clear edge within measurable speed, and that’s not even accounting for his feat of his omnidirectional wave covering the universe in seconds. Due to the size of the Rick and Morty universe compared to our own, this would get Rick a speed of approximately 1 octillion times the speed of light, well above any measurable feat the Doctor has, by contrast.
A similar case could be shown for power and durability - as the Doctor has had several feats regarding the destruction of the universe, whether tanking it themselves or the like, Rick has been able to destroy his universe, which, unlike the Doctor Who universe, which is the size of our own, is several times that - this would get Rick at least 10 octillion times universal in terms of sheer power, and his feat of disrupting the Central Finite Curve could put him even higher into the Multiversal range.
… However, that’s only when using measurable feats for both, as when you factor in feats within the infinite range, the Doctor easily shows their superiority to Rick in almost every regard. In terms of speed, the Doctor has had far more speed feats within the infinite or immeasurable range compared to Rick - whether it is grabbing an object moving at super-infinite speeds, or being able to defy time itself by landing punches before they even impacted - a clear showing of Immeasurable speed. And these feats are standard for Time Lords, who exist outside of time itself, due to their physiology.
By contrast, Rick’s only potential infinite speed feat, Rick “reacting” to infinite timelines, is …questionable, to say the least. He doesn’t actually noticeably react to anything during the scene in question, or even move, much less react to it, meaning that it’s questionable to grant him this feat at all. Even if we did give him this feat, it wouldn’t change anything, due to the Doctor’s frequent immeasurable feats being above Rick in terms of sheer speed regardless, meaning that the Doctor could blitz Rick without him ever even noticing.
For power, it gets even worse. While Rick notably has never been able to affect his infinite multiverse besides questionably with shockwaves on one occasion, the Doctor has been able to do this multiple times, including being able to absorb the Time Vortex, which is an infinite corridor of time connected to all of time at once, within all universes in the Doctor Who multiverse. Time in Doctor Who is the 5th dimension, meaning that this feat alone would put the Doctor multiple infinities greater than Rick in sheer power.
The Doctor has far greater showings as well - namely, being able to scale to the other Time Lords who recreated the multiverse to begin with, which has been established within Doctor Who to be at least 11th Dimensional in nature, possibly even greater in dimensionality, which would put the Doctor even more sets of infinity greater than Rick in power and durability. On top of all of that, the TARDIS itself has been stated to be able to destroy all of reality within Doctor Who if it self-destructed, further proving the point that the Doctor should with their equipment definitely be on a far greater level than Rick.
The Doctor takes all stats due to their abundance of infinite feats in contrast to the incredibly powerful, but not infinite Rick.
Arsenal & Abilities
What is everyone’s main attention for the fight? Who has the better weapons, armor, and skills out of the two one-man army sci-fi travelers of course! Rick holds no punches, starting with his iconic Portal gun which is useful in combat. Able to shoot portals any which way and however many he needs to jump across locations instantly. He also got gadgets to break the laws of physics like his wristwatches, time freeze, mind eraser, force fields, and Point-Save device. He also has Death Crystals to see his deaths, many mecha suits, endless Mr. Meeseeks with their box, and Go Tron. His Space Cruiser is durable and can obliterate all of time and space.
As for Rick’s abilities, his high cleverness alone has shown more times to do nearly anything he puts his mind to a goal. Rick himself has cybernetics in his body to fly or use weapons for combat, methods to regenerate like healing rays or use cyber parts, hack machinery, duplicate, absorb energy, and make people die by touching him. And with the powers of cartoons, Rick has some limited toon force powers as he can transmute targets into weapons, has physically interacted with ghosts, and can gain weapons such as Kratos’s frost axe through his fourth wall breaking.
Now the Doctor isn’t fooling around either as his weapons and vehicles are household names. The TARDIS itself is an entity the Doctor uses to travel, which has the potential to destroy all of reality. Then there is the Sonic Screwdriver, which they use to hack, scan, unlock, amplify, and do almost anything the screwdriver needs to do. It’s not the only Sonic device the Doctor has either, as there’s also their Sonic Lance and Sonic Sunglasses. There is also their Signet Ring, Physic Paper, Bessie, Kontron crystals, time ring, stun gun, and key and watches to the TARDIS. The Doctor too bends reality with the Hand of Omega, Songbox, Magicbox, and their Personal Reality device.
But, their trump cards without a doubt are the De-mat gun, the Key to Time, and the Moment, which can erase targets from existence. Now to their abilities, the Doctor themselves is a Time Lord, whose biology alone make them immensely powerful. Time Lords can see time and space itself flow in all planes, interact with previous and future versions of themselves, regenerate, control minds, use telepathy, telekinesis, and teleport. The Doctor is highly intelligent, a master hacker, an expert fighter, is capable of using just about any weapon, is a historical escape artist, knows just about everything in the universe, and can even go into dreams.
And of course, the Doctor also has toon force-esque powers like breaking the fourth wall, using what is basically hammerspace, and has the closest anyone can get to literal plot armor. God, it's Archie Sonic all over again.
To compare each other, both have a lot of stalemates in both categories. Both have a lot of gadgets and vehicles that break reality, both have methods to heal themselves, both are experts of fighting and machinery, both travel similarly everywhere from space to dreams, and both maintain toon-like powers. On Rick’s side, he does have advantages in his favor. Rick has better usage of gadgets, he can instantly pop on to use in combat without any delay. Rick also has an infinite army he can summon like Meeseeks, decoys, or alternative Ricks to keep The Doctor busy. His trump cards like the Portal Gun, Death Crystals, and mechs like Crow and Go Tron help Rick keep the Doctor on their toes to plan ahead. There are ways that Rick would get an opening and deliver a fatal blow.
But that will sadly never happen, as the Doctor will always be one step ahead. The Doctor's arsenal is far more versatile and dangerous than most equivalent gadgets Rick possesses. The TARDIS makes Rick’s Space Cruiser look like a mere toy. The Sonic Screwdriver alone can pass through everything Rick's weapons can defend, even his cyber parts are not safe. There is also the factor that the powers inherent to Time Lords counter almost all law-breaking rules like freezing time, limiting Rick’s gadgets from working.
And while Rick can see his death with his crystals, the Doctor will see everything Rick could throw at them and could even get the help of their other incarnations. The biggest factor for the Doctor is that they have many methods of winning the fight over Rick, like using their existence erasure weapons, using hypnosis to mind control Rick, erasing Rick’s memories, or simply touching him to erase him from existence.
To add insult to injury, thanks to the temporal grace of the TARDIS, all of Rick's offensive options become completely useless, as it completely shuts off any harmful weapons, negates any of Rick's powers and stabilizes any bad effect the Doctor has on him. Meaning that if Rick, for whatever, reason ends up inside the TARDIS, it's basically game over.
That’s not to forget the Doctor's Plot armor, making it so that any dangerous situation that they’re in would instantly get resolved, which includes many deadly situations the Doctor could be put in, such as jamming Rick's weapons or forcing him to make a dumb mistake. This means it would be nearly impossible for Rick to land a fatal blow in the first place. And even if Rick could land said fatal blow, the Doctor’s regeneration would heal them and probably kill Rick with the force of the energy expulsion.
Rick’s tools and abilities may be impressive, but the Doctor is basically an all-seeing God whose accomplishments are far better than Rick’s.
Tertiary Factors
While Rick may be one of the smartest men in his universe, with years upon years of experience dealing with insane threats, the Doctor massively outclasses him in every way. Due to the Doctor’s thousands upon thousands of years of experience in dealing with beings on par with many of the threats Rick faces, if not surpassing them, he has a huge experience advantage.
In addition to that, while the Doctor is not known for being a fighter, his mastery of several forms of combat, from aikido to boxing and many more, means he far surpasses Rick in fighting ability. As for intelligence, the Doctor spent hundreds of years studying the sciences and has generally been able to come up with ingenious plans to solve his issues many times over, including dealing with threats such as the Celestial Toymaker, one of the gods of his universe.
Rick, while the smartest man in his universe, just can’t compete with the Doctor’s much greater academic experience in this regard. The Doctor takes all tertiary factors.
Conclusion
“The universe is basically an animal. It grazes on the ordinary. It creates infinite idiots just to eat them. Smart people get a chance to climb on top, take reality for a ride, but it will never stop trying to throw you, and eventually, it will, there’s no other way off.”
Advantages:
Takes stats at finite ends…
Better battle methods, going between offense and defense
Outnumbers the Doctor with Meeseeks, Decoys, Crows, and other Ricks
Has weapons like Go Tron, the Portal Gun, and Death Crystals to prolong the fight
Can steal The Doctor’s regeneration for himself
Could potentially jam or hack the doctor’s weapons
Turned himself into a fucking pickle
Has a pretty good intro
Is aware of The Doctor…
Doc Brown
Disadvantages:
…But his opponent has much more concrete infinite ends and outdoes him in them, and most of Rick’s tech doesn't get that high anyway
No true answer to the Time Lord powers and counters
Not even close to The Doctor in experience, smarts and skills
Gets the middle finger from the Sonic Screwdriver
Space Cruiser and equipment is inferior to the Doctor’s
Not very good at working with other versions of himself
Limited on ways to permanently kill The Doctor
Temporal Grace and plot armor makes it nearly impossible for Rick to kill the Doctor
…though he called himself “Doctor Who” so it’s questionable how much he knows about him
Advantages:
Much more concrete and better infinite ends than his opponent physically and with equipment
Time Lord abilities give complete battlefield control and counter nearly all time related hax
Destroys in experience, smarts, and skills
Sonic Screwdriver alone renders Rick’s weapons useless, including Rick himself
Temporal Grace and plot armor make it nearly impossible to kill him
TARDIS and weapons are more versatile and deadly
Superior support and teamwork with his incarnations
Several better methods of winning the fight like erasing from existence via the De-Mat Gun
Has one of the best theme songs of all time
Ate a Pickle
Disadvantages:
Lacking finite stats
Can't both use offensive and defensive options at once, unlike his opponent
Does not have an army like Rick
Has to struggle with Rick’s weapons keeping him alive like Portal gun, Death Crystals, and Go Tron
Rick still has ways to jam and hack some of The Doctor’s weapons
Regeneration can be used against him
Michael Grade
There is a reason why the Doctor is nicknamed the godfather of pop culture, and it's because of sixty years of continuous stories and adventures, he has inspired countless others since the start of his adventures, including Rick and Morty. To be fair to Rick, he puts up a tremendous fight, and it’s not entirely impossible for him to win as he has the tools and agility. However, the Doctor has the better weapons and abilities to counter almost everything Rick fires at him. We knew from the start that Rick and the Doctor's lores and capabilities were going to be insane to analyze, yet they still surprised us. The difference between them can be summarized by the cruisers they travel. Rick’s may be impressive looking on the outside, but inside, The Doctor’s was far more impressive.
Rick had the moves and was indeed the better singer. But the Time Lord’s biology, experienced intelligence, and devastating weaponry were all the Doctor needed to finish the battle and bring to an end this Rickle in time. There was “Sanchez” beating this timey wimey mad man with a box. The winner is The Doctor.
Final Tally
Team Rick (1) - koolguy (pity vote)
Team Doctor (14) - door-kun, Pasbro, Gamer, TheNukeBrother, Micl, CEWinick, greymerlion2, Retro, Why am I here, Dick with a “D”, Gun, Garf, SneedFormerlyChuck, Asura
