There are three main ways to play Doctor Who, but all of them are improved by hitting the side ramp a few times first to increase your playfield multiplier by 0.5x at a time up to a maximum of 4x. Doctor 6 helps with this: if you have selected him, each side ramp shot advances the playfield by +1x instead of +0.5x, and it takes longer for the playfield multiplier to level down as well. The three strategies are:
There are 4 ways to collect Doctors. (What exactly each doctor does is explained in the following sections.)
When all 7 Doctors have been rescued, you are given an award equal to 20,000,000 points times the current playfield X. Once all 7 are rescued, you no longer have any decisions to make in the Off the plunge scenario, since all 7 powers are locked in for the rest of the game. If you continue to use the Transmat or Video Modes to "rescue" another set of the 7 Doctors, you can receive that 20,000,000 bonus again. At the end of the game, alongside your final ball's bonus, you receive additional scoring of 1,000,000 points times the playfield X for each Doctor rescued over the course of the entire game, including the additional "rescues" performed after the first set of 7 was already completed.
Complete the Escape targets in the lower right of the playfield to light Video Mode at the police box. To make the police box, shoot the shot in the upper left between the targets marked Repair and the Time Expander lock structure. This feeds the bumpers. If the bumpers don't kick the ball out leftward just above the side ramp, the ball will eventually fall into the police box and video mode will start if lit. If the ball enters the police box when video mode is not lit, one letter in Escape will be spotted for free. If you have Doctor 1 lit or flashing, hitting any Escape target will spot one target that you don't have in addition to whatever target is lit, and making the police box when video mode is not lit will spot you 2 letters in Escape instead of one.
During video mode, you are running from a Dalek robot. Small and large obstacles are scattered in front of you. Press a single flipper to short jump over a small obstacle. Press both flippers to long jump over a large obstacle. You can usually press the second flipper a brief moment after the first one to give yourself a tiny amount more time to react and turn a short jump into a long one. After a handful of obstacles, the Tardis appears, ending the mode. (If you jump into the Tardis instead of run into it, you get an additional 1,000,000 points.) If you fail the video mode, you receive a few hundred thousand consolation points for how far you got. If you succeed, you rescue the currently flashing Doctor and light him for good, and the Doctor to his left will start flashing; you also get much bigger points for winning, dodging obstacles, and not dying if you completed that wave on your first try. Completing a video mode typically gives between 5,000,000 and 8,000,000 points before the current playfield multiplier is considered; always try to have your playfield multiplier built up as high as possible before starting a video mode.
Waves of video modes form Sets. Complete all the Waves in a Set to receive the Last Wave Bonus, which is equal to the sum of the completion awards you received from all of the waves in that set. The first Set contains 4 Waves of video mode. The second Set contains the next 5 Waves of video mode. Each set contains one more wave than the previous one. (The game does not use the Set terminology; that is something I have added for conciseness. In-game, the video modes of Set 2 are just referred to as Wave 5-9, and text on the DMD at the start of the video mode says how many video modes are needed to complete the Set for a Last Wave Bonus.)
On default game settings, the video modes for the 4 Waves of the first Set are fixed, and will be the same every time. Starting with Set 2, or starting with Set 1 on hard game settings, all video mode obstacle layouts will be completely random. The 4 preset video modes are listed below, alongside the closest Morse code approximations I could find for them (ignoring spaces between characters) in case that should help you remember.
An extra ball is usually available from video mode. I most often see it near the end of Set 1, Wave 3, though its location can be both operator adjustable and reflexed based on game-tracked success rate.
Any time the ball rolls through the right in lane, the Hang-on target is lit for 2 seconds. The Hang-on target is the standup target at the end of the lane on the far left of the playfield. A lit Hang-on target scores 250,000 the first time it is hit, increasing by 250,000 each subsequent time up to a maximum of 2,000,000, all before the playfield multiplier is considered. (On early versions of the game code, the 2,000,000 limit did not exist, and Hang-on could be worth many more points.) If Doctor 2 is lit or flashing, the Hang-on target will be lit for twice the usual length of time, and all Hang-on values will be doubled as well. Hitting the Hang-on target when it is not lit scores a Collision, which is 1/5 of the Hang-on value and does not increase the Hang-on value itself. If no Hang-ons have been scored, the Collision just awards 20,000 points, increasing by 20,000 with each subsequent Collision.
The Hang-on target is useful in many instances, as it puts the ball on the upper left flipper with predictable speed, making it easier to hit a side ramp for playfield multiplier, Sonic Booms, etc.; it also acts as the H in a W-H-O combo.
A W-H-O combo involves right ramp -> Hang-on target on the left -> side ramp. In normal gameplay, each letter in a W-H-O combo scores 2,000,000 or 3,000,000, and completing a W-H-O combo puts the ball in the left in lane (rather than the upper flipper). Extra balls are available at 2 W-H-O combos, then 6, then 14, with the gap between extra balls increasing by 4 additional W-H-O combos each time. After collecting the W, the H and then the O are only lit for a set amount of time before the W-H-O combo chance is lost. The timer for each letter is 10 seconds for the first W-H-O combo, 8 seconds for the 2nd, 7 seconds for the 3rd, and 6 seconds for any combo after that. If Doctor 3 is lit or flashing, the time available to complete W-H-O combos is increased- somewhere between 1.5x and 2x the normal length of time. Scoring of W-H-O combos is not affected by Doctor 3. This can be a double edged sword, since if you're playing the side ramp strategy for Sonic Booms, you actively want to avoid W-H-O combos, since they put the ball in the left in lane rather than on the upper flipper where you can continue a side ramp rhythm.
After 10 side ramp shots, the ball is automatically put in the left in lane for a Sonic Boom. Now, using the per-letter W-H-O timer, you want to make a W-H-O combo- each letter scores 10,000,000 times the current playfield X, and completing the combo lets you get back into the side ramp rhythm instead of dropping the ball into the left in lane. A lit or flashing Doctor 3 also extends the time limit for the Sonic Boom letters as well. During Sonic Boom, you can avoid the W or H parts of the combo; skip one or both and collect the O at the side ramp and you will still collect your 10,000,000 and the side ramp rhythm will resume. You'll be missing out on the extra points available if you were to get all three of W, H, and O, but in return the ball is in a safer position where you are in no risk of draining as long as you keep making side ramps.
Hitting a Repair target will light it. The first Repair target scores 100,000 points and begins a timer of 10 seconds. The second target scores 250,000 points, and the timer is 9 seconds. The third target is 500,000 points, and the timer is set to 8 seconds. The fourth target gives 750,000 points and a 7 second timer. The fifth target gives 1,000,000 points and a 6 second timer. If at any point you fail to hit a flashing target before the timer runs out (and you can't see the timer, granted), the Repair targets all reset to their flashing state. If you complete the 6 targets without these timers ever running out, Super Repair begins. For 10 seconds, Repair targets start at 1,000,000 points, increasing by 50,000 each time a Repair target is hit before the timer runs out and the sequence resets. If Doctor 4 is lit or flashing, hitting a Repair target also spots another letter that you do not have yet, making it easier to complete the bank; also, all target values are doubled during Super Repair, so the target value is 2,000,000 and increases by 100,000 each time instead. Remember as well that all of these point values are before the active playfield multiplier is applied.
Each pop bumper hit adds 50,000 points to the current Transmat score. Hitting the Transmat target between the right ramp and the side ramp scores the current Transmat value and resets it to its base (50,000?). However, if the Transmat value was at least 750,000, the currently flashing Doctor is rescued. If Doctor 5 is lit or flashing, each pop bumper adds 75,000 to the Transmat instead of 50,000, making it easier to light the target for a Doctor rescue. This is easily the most useless of the Doctors, since 1) the benefit it gives you on the Transmat buildup isn't major, and 2) it's usually better to collect Doctors from video mode completions anyway.
In normal gameplay, shooting the side ramp increases the playfield multiplier by 0.5x up to a maximum of 4x, and the time it takes for the playfield multiplier to decrease by one level is: 10 seconds at 4x, 6 seconds at 3.5x, 7 seconds at 3x, 8 seconds at 2.5x, 9 seconds at 2x, and 10 seconds at 1.5x. If Doctor 6 is lit or flashing, each side ramp shot increases the playfield multiplier by 1x instead of 0,5x- meaning it takes 3 side ramps instead of 6 to reach the maximum playfield multiplier of 4x. Also, Doctor 6's power means it takes twice as long for a playfield multiplier to decrease by one level. Whether you use Doctor 6 to get to 4x playfield or not, it's undeniable that having a high playfield multiplier at all times is the most important thing to master in the game. The playfield multiplier affects everything, including all multiball jackpots, video mode scores, Super Repair target values, Hang-on scores, and more. If you're good but not great at making side ramps, Doctor 6 can help you a lot. If you're a master at the side ramp shot, Doctor 6 will be mostly redundant for you. Regardless, it is always worthwhile to practice and aim for the side ramp during a game on Doctor Who.
Multiball is one heck of a sequence in this game, and it goes a little something like this:
Doctor Who has a conventional in/out lane setup. There is no kickback on the left side, nor is there a center post in the middle. The in and out lanes can all be lit for extra ball; the flippers rotate which of the in or out lanes has the lit extra ball, similar to the Pinbot series of games. The out lanes score Master's Bonus, which is just equal to the current base bonus count: this effectively serves as +1 bonus multiplier on your way out. The right in lane lights the Hang-on target on the left above the upper left flipper.
This game has lightning flippers, which are flippers that are 2.875 inches long instead of the conventional 3 inches. That difference seems small, but is actually quite large; it can affect your shotmaking, how you catch the ball, and how you get control of multiple balls at once during multiball. Be mindful of this if you don't have a lot of experience with lightning flipper games.
The slingshot posts are quite far away from the flippers, so post transfers are much harder than usual. Most of the time, it is more consistent to use a tap pass, an alley pass, or a bailout shot of your choice to transfer the ball from one flipper to the other.
Bonus seems to just be a count of switch hits. I do not know the exact formula. On a very good ball (at least by my standards), the base bonus tends to reach about 2,000,000 points. Bonus multiplier is advanced by shooting the lane between the Repair targets and the Time Expander, or by missing the side ramp too high with an upper flipper shot so that the ball goes between the Time Expander and the side ramp into the pop bumper area. If there is a maximum bonus multiplier, it is at least 25x. Base bonus is not carried from ball to ball, but bonus multiplier is (by default anyway, this can be turned off). There is no mid-ball bonus collect.
Supposedly, a similar bug exists in this game as on Bram Stoker's Dracula, where if you get a tilt warning as the ball drains, the game will not give you your bonus, even if you did not tilt. I have not seen this myself playing a virtual version or a physical copy on location, though. This may be a myth, or the bug may have been fixed in a code update that Doctor Who got (Bram Stoker's Dracula never received any code updates after its release due to the programmer jumping ship from Williams to Data East).
The manual indicates that specials score 1,000,000 points in competition/novelty play. but that number seems so low as to be incorrect to me, and I'm not even sure where in the game an outright special would be awarded anyway. No point value substitute for extra balls is given.
The timer for W-H-O combos can be set to return to the default value between balls. Also, each W-H-O combo timer (first, second, third, and "after third") can individually be set to between 2 and 50 seconds.
The number of multiballs that follow the easy lock/qualify rules can be set to anywhere from 0 to 50. Default is 1 for both the lock rules and the 3x5 grid completion rules.
The timers for each individual stage of the Repair targets and the playfield multipliers can all be independently set from 2 to 50 seconds.
The Transmat value required to light the Doctor save at the Transmat target can be set to any multiple of 50,000 between 0 and 2,000,000, inclusive.
Video mode can be lit for free at the start of the game or the start of each ball. By default it is never lit for free.
Back to top