Annoying Catchphrases

The Doctor has had a catch phrase or recurring idiosyncrasy off and on throughout the entire run, such as Two's recorder, Four's constant offer of jelly babies, or Three's scientifically impossible recurring suggestion to reverse the polarity of the neutron flow. I suspect this is a way of giving fans something else to differentiate the Doctors. In much the same way as Roger Moore's first outing as James Bond in Live and Let Die saw concerted efforts to distance him from Connery, such as different clothing and swapping the Vodka Martini for a bourbon, each Doctor has his own unique costume, Sonic and sometimes catchphrase. This gives the fans something to discuss when comparing these Doctors, and conveniently opens the door to merchandise licencing for sonic screwdriver toys and official bow-tie / fez combos.

This is a thing that exists.

It seems to me that recent seasons have made a big point of ensuring The Doctor has a catchphrase. "Allons-y" seemed particularly forced from the mouth of Ten. Its introduction in Army of Ghosts was awkward, and the fact that The Doctor made such a big deal about it and how he should say it more often speaks volumes. "Geronimo" for Eleven was slightly more tolerable, perhaps because, for me at least, it was a more familiar term that worked in the context it kept appearing.

Of all the recent Doctors though, Nine had the best "catchphrase" with Fantastic! When I say best here, I mean the most flexible. It is able to be worked into conversation relatively easily especially as most of the stuff The Doctor deals with can be described as fantastic. Allons-y and Geronimo on the other hand are limited by their rather contextually specific natures. Just check out this video:

Season 7 not shown

Nine uses "Fantastic" in a variety of situations and delivers it in a variety of different ways.  Some of them I would hesitate to include as examples of catchphrase use because they fit so naturally. You can also see that relative to the number of episodes they appeared in, Ten and Eleven pulled out their catch phrase far less than Nine did. I'm not sure if they actively eased off this or just found it difficult to work it in. They even gave Eleven a second catch phrase of "[Nouns] are cool." This one was far more annoying than Alons-y and Geronimo combined, requiring a lot of work to jamb into the script. But it sure gave the fandom something to work with.

A catch phrase is all well and good, but it's best if it is used sparingly and can be worked in naturally. As shown above, a general or flexible exclamation is best. Something like "Great Gallifrey!" could work well, as it would fit equally for shock, frustration, awe and numerous other emotions. Rather pessimistically though I expect Twelve to be spouting "Whoopty-doodle" or some other meme-friendly sound bite at semi-regular intervals.