Despite them trying to keep it quiet from the Doctor, he was well aware of the project by his seventh incarnation. As there was no TARDIS around to fire out a replacement, she had to take matters into her own hands.

The Eighth Doctor Adventures novel, Father Time, features an amnesiac Doctor attempting to recreate the sonic screwdriver with 1980s technology, eventually producing a bulky device nicknamed the "sonic suitcase". Sophisticated and elegant this Doctor was more of a pure scientist than his predecessors, surrounded by gadgets and vehicles. The More Short Trips short story "Special Weapons", set late in season 24, indicates that the Seventh Doctor has a sonic screwdriver. The War Doctor also used a modified version of this sonic during the Time War, but had swapped the emitter head for a more simple light-up one.This section may contain an excessive amount of intricate detail that may interest only a particular audience. After crash-landing in Sheffield with no TARDIS, a body that was still cooking, and two alien mysteries to solve, the Doctor realised she was missing something – her sonic screwdriver. When some parasitic seaweed went on the rampage, the Second Doctor used the sonic to amplify his friend Victoria’s screams, and the laser wave it created saw off the mutant menace. And she quickly put it to work, using it to defuse the DNA bombs that had been implanted into her and her new mates, scan the alien gathering coils, and trigger a teleport device rescued from the abandoned Stenza pod. Not all iterations of the Doctor have used the sonic screwdriver on screen; the Fifth Doctor in fact opted not to replace his after it was destroyed in " The Visitation".

TV: Frontier in Space) However, the Doctor had a spare aboard the TARDIS, which he made use of in the Dalek base on Spiridon. The sonic screwdriver's inability to work on wood is clarified in " In the Forest of the Night" (2014), when the Doctor states that the sonic screwdriver works by manipulating the moving parts in various machinery: since plant tissue lacks said moving parts, it is unaffected by the sonic screwdriver. The upper half is a rectangular light grid that, when switched on, has four different functions: green light with low-pitched sound, blue light with high-pitched sound, green lights that pulse with a pulsing sound, and a blue light chasing pattern with a pulsing sound.

The sonic screwdriver was introduced in 1968 in the story Fury from the Deep, and used twice more ( The Dominators and The War Games) during the Second Doctor's tenure. For a while, it looked like he really meant it – he even got into the wearable tech trend by creating a pair of sonic sunglasses with similar functions as a replacement. In the final story of season 15, The Invasion of Time, the Fourth Doctor conceded, "Not even the sonic screwdriver can get me out of this one. Aside from being a tool, the sonic screwdriver can be used and considered as a defensive weapon, which is effective for a few types of assault weapons, but not designed to kill or injure living things as the only way it can really hurt or incapacitate an organism is by emitting painful bursts of sound, or, as of " Day of the Moon" (2011) by blasting a green wave of energy to incapacitate a target, though only the Eleventh and Twelfth's sonic has been shown to do the latter. The Virgin Missing Adventures novel Venusian Lullaby established that the First Doctor had a sonic screwdriver.

Eventually, the TARDIS presented the Doctor with another revamped model – a slick, metallic blue version with loads of extras attached. The glasses appear to be more susceptible to damage than the screwdriver; in " The Girl Who Died", a Viking warrior takes the glasses off the Doctor's face and easily breaks them in half. Anakin has an interest thread for this in the junkyard and yes it is a solid metal version of what was seen in the Thunderbirds episode. The playable characters form this premium pack represented almost every model of sonic screwdriver encountered in the DWU. The 2014 Third Doctor's Sonic Screwdriver (Version 2) features new sound effects and a revised paint application (deeper red and thicker black spiral line) as compared to the original 2010 release 3rd Doctor Sonic.Later, in " The Witch's Familiar", he unveils that the sunglasses are actually a wearable version of the screwdriver, claiming that he is "over" screwdrivers: "They spoil the line of your jacket. It does`nt sound the same is in the show which is sort of annoying but its retroness makes up for it! A redesigned sonic screwdriver appears in the new series, with a blue light in addition to the sound effect. However, it did have much more extensive scanning, diagnostic and medical capabilities and could act as a remote control for some TARDIS functions.