Ringing in the Who Year

In prepa­ra­tion for the BBC Amer­ica pre­miere of the new sea­son of Dr. Who (9pm EST, Sat­ur­day, April 23rd), I have been doing what many Who­vians over the age of twenty-one (in the US of course!) have been doing: scour­ing the inter­net for an awe­some drink­ing game to play with my friends as we cel­e­brate the return of the floppy haired, bow-tied Matt Smith as everyone’s favorite Gal­lifreyan. After some research, I cre­ated the list you find below from var­i­ous sources. I also threw in some of my own flair, result­ing in what I can only hope will make for an awe­some night inside the TARDIS. Feel free to use this list as-is, or as a jump­ing off point to make your own. In putting my rules together, I tried to focus on three things:

1. Keep­ing it con­cise. Tipsy peo­ple don’t tend to remem­ber … well, any­thing, so keep it short and sweet.
2. Pack­ing a punch: I tried to guess which events would be most likely to crop up in the episode. I mean, we all love an appear­ance by the Judoon, but chances are you won’t be see­ing one tomor­row night.
3. Mak­ing it Eleventh Doc­tor spe­cific. The best thing about the var­i­ous incar­na­tions of Doc­tor Who are that they all have their own unique tics. McCoy was a chess fiend, Ten­nant had his chucks, and Smith has his ‘turn of the cen­tury oxford pro­fes­sor shabby-chic.’ Also, River Song! (On a related note, Alex Kingston, marry me please [Editor’s note: Get in line!]).

Now for the oblig­a­tory reminder: Games are fun, but with cock­tails, some­times less is more, so don’t overdo it. And always always remem­ber when get­ting a lit­tle “wib­bly wob­bly timey wimey” to pick a des­ig­nated TARDIS oper­a­tor in advance.

So, with­out fur­ther ado, I present to you the anno­tated Doc­tor Who drink­ing game!

Drink once when:

• The overly dra­matic bit of music that is used in every episode plays.
• Some­one says, “brilliant!”
• The Doc­tor ref­er­ences his other, pre­vi­ous selves.
• River Song men­tions spoil­ers, hand­cuffs, or makes overt sex­ual innuendo.
• There is men­tion of the Doctor’s wacky outfits.
• There’s a ref­er­ence to the crack in Amy’s bed­room wall.
• A ‘Doc­tor? Doc­tor Who?’ pun is made.
• The Doc­tor says ‘Geronimo!’
• For materialisation/dematerialisation. 2 drinks if the Doc­tor imi­tates the noise.
• The Doc­tor name-drops. 2 drinks if he adds an amus­ing com­ment about the famous his­tor­i­cal figure.

Drink 2x when:

• The Doctor’s fun is ruined.
• A dalek appears.
• Rory dies.

Drink con­tin­u­ously:

• Dur­ing the open­ing and clos­ing theme.
• When the Doc­tor is sonic-ing something.
• When­ever the Doctor/Amy/Rory are shown run­ning. Chug if it’s down a corridor.
• The length of time Doc­tor snogs/is snogged by someone.

Sources

The Eleventh Doc­tor Drink­ing Game! — The Face­book Group
The Doc­tor Who Drink­ing Game
Doc­tor Who Drinkin Game from the Escapist Mag­a­zine Forums