"Reverse The Polarity"
The catchphrase most associated with the Third Doctor's era is probably "reverse the polarity of the neutron flow". The phrase was Pertwee's way of dealing with the technobabble that he was required to speak as the Doctor. Terrance Dicks recalls that he had used the line in a script, and Pertwee approached him about the line. Dicks had feared that he would have to remove it, but Pertwee stated that he liked it, and wanted to see it more often. Dicks obliged.
The Third Doctor only said the full phrase "reverse the polarity of the neutron flow" twice on screen – in The Sea Devils (1972) and the 20th Anniversary special The Five Doctors (1983). Pertwee used the phrase when he acted in the stage play Doctor Who - The Ultimate Adventure in 1989; When Colin Baker took over the role in the play he amended the line to "Reverse the linearity of the proton flow." In the radio play The Paradise of Death the Brigadier asks "Reverse the polarity of the neutron flow?" and the Doctor proceeds to explain that the phrase is meaningless. On other occasions on screen, the Third Doctor "reversed the polarity" but not of neutrons.
The full phrase was used in several Target novelisations. It was subsequently used by the Fourth Doctor (in City of Death) and the Fifth Doctor (in Castrovalva and Mawdryn Undead). Together with The Five Doctors this resulted in the phrase being used as a nostalgic reference. In the Tenth Doctor episode "The Lazarus Experiment" the Doctor, while hiding in Lazarus' machine, comments that it had taken him too long to reverse the polarity due to being out of practice; the Tenth Doctor uses the full phrase in "Music of the Spheres". During the episode "The Almost People", a clone of the Eleventh Doctor speaks the phrase while reliving the memories of all his predecessors. He goes on to conflate it with his regeneration-spanning love of jelly babies, remarking "reverse the jelly baby of the neutron flow".
The phrase has entered geek culture, and has been used in many television programmes as a piece of technobabble.
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Famous quotes containing the words reverse and/or polarity:
“They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.”
—Bible: Hebrew Isaiah, 2:4.
The words reappear in Micah 4:3, and the reverse injunction is made in Joel 3:10 (”Beat your plowshares into swords ...”)
“The same polarity of the male and female principle exists in nature; not only, as is obvious in animals and plants, but in the polarity of the two fundamental functions, that of receiving and penetrating. It is the polarity of earth and rain, of the river and the ocean, of night and day, of darkness and light, of matter and spirit.”
—Erich Fromm (1900–1980)