"I know these teeth."

The Fourteenth Doctor’s sonic was principally designed by Doctor Who designer Phil Sims and his team. When the team started thinking about design concepts for the Fourteenth Doctor’s sonic, they decided to completely immerse themselves in Doctor Who by re-watching the whole series from beginning to end, from William Hartnell through to the present day. They also got hold of all the previous sonic screwdriver toys and replicas in order to absorb the language of the sonics that had come before.

An astonishing sixty-seven initial design sketches and concepts were created to try and create a design that captured something of the essence of previous incarnations of this iconic prop, whilst remaining something fresh, new and unique itself. Sixty-seven ideas were eventually whittled down, and with tweaks and input from Phil Sims and the show’s producers, the final design was eventually locked down.

From inception to finished prop, the process took around four months to complete, beginning with initial sketches in January 2022, and ending with the very first prop screen test in April.

There were four production sonics made by the incredible in-house props department at Bad Wolf Studios run by Barry Jones. The parts for the production sonics were drawn up on CAD by Michael Van Kesteren, and the majority of the metal parts were CND’d. Made from brass, aluminium, leather, resin, stainless, nickel, with complex electronics and more than seventy individual parts, the production sonic props were a collaborative effort from head of department Barry Jones, and prop-makers Penny Howarth, Paul Mazonas, Charles Fletcher, and Stephanie Howell. 

Nick Robatto of Rubbertoe Props was also called in to work on the sonics during the latter stages of construction, as well as readying one of the production sonics for exhibition at the San Diego Comic-Con. 

* copy from rubbertoereplicas.com