A History of Doctor Who in 100 Objects...
THE DOCTOR’S GUITAR
Given its immeasurable influence on popular culture over the last half-century, the electric guitar has, until recently, been noticeably absent from Doctor Who. Sure, there’s a brief clip of the Beatles in The Chase, but it’s not until Delta and the Bannermen that the instrument actually turns up in the series – and we don’t see another until the Twelfth Doctor straps on his Yamaha in The Magician’s Apprentice. Peter Capaldi’s guitar stylings have since become one of the defining characteristics of his Doctor, as much a part of his incarnation as Patrick Troughton’s recorder or Sylvester McCoy’s spoons. And so, in keeping with this magazine’s proud if occasionally controversial tradition of ranking the Doctors in order of this and that, I find myself pondering a tremendously important question: which of our hero’s incarnations is the most musical?