- 6 weeks ago
From the round things to the console, every Doctor Who TARDIS interior has its pros and cons. So let's rank 'em!
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00:00Doctor Who has changed a lot over the years, and that includes the TARDIS.
00:04While the core image of a police box that's bigger on the inside has remained a constant,
00:08both the exterior and the interior have had countless tweaks.
00:12Before we get into the ranking, a quick disclaimer.
00:14This video will cover only the biggest or most notable changes to the TARDIS interior,
00:19so there may be the odd minor variation or recycled set that doesn't make the cut.
00:24If we do miss any that you'd like to mention, please do leave a comment below,
00:27and we might throw you a cheeky heart so everyone else can see it too.
00:30So, with that in mind, I'm Ellie with Who Culture here with every TARDIS interior ranked from worst to best.
00:38Number 14, The 13th Doctor's TARDIS, 2018-2022
00:42Jodie Whittaker's portrayal of the 13th Doctor was a bit like everybody's favourite mad space aunt,
00:48which was a perfect tone for the show's first female Doctor.
00:51The only problem was that this mad space aunt also had a new age crystal shop for a TARDIS console room.
00:57From the giant Himalayan salt lamp time rotor to the custard cream dispenser, it all felt a bit too try-hard.
01:05It was also the absolute worst console room to choose for an era of the show that had the biggest TARDIS crew of the modern era.
01:11It might have been hard for the writers to find satisfying plots for each of the four members of the TARDIS team during the Whittaker era,
01:17but it was even harder to frame them all in a shot on that insanely crowded TARDIS set.
01:22From the obstructive central column to the dangling wires and rigid spires,
01:26it was often very hard to see what was going on during busy TARDIS scenes.
01:31All that being said, it looked really cool when dressed in blue for Nikola Tesla's Night of Terror.
01:35Number 13, The 3rd Doctor's TARDIS, Planet of the Daleks edition
01:40The 3rd Doctor's TARDIS console in a shed in Season 7 doesn't really count.
01:44However, for an incarnation who was stranded on Earth,
01:48the 3rd Doctor had several variations of the TARDIS interior during his tenure.
01:52This version was introduced in The 3 Doctors and lasted throughout John Pertwee's final two seasons
01:57after the Doctor had been given back the secrets of time travel and a shiny new dematerialization circuit.
02:04The interior is a solid callback to the iconic original version with a shiny new TARDIS console installed.
02:09However, Planets of the Daleks also revealed a bizarre upgrade by way of a cheap white wooden bedroom set.
02:16It was a means to let the 3rd Doctor recuperate after having been shot in the previous serial
02:20without constructing a separate TARDIS sickbay set.
02:24Unfortunately, the jarring image of a cheap bit of MDF furniture in the Doctor's impossibly futuristic space and time ship
02:30was totally jarring.
02:32This furniture set was quietly scrapped for the remainder of Pertwee's tenure.
02:36Thank God.
02:36Number 12, The War Doctor's TARDIS 2013
02:40John Hurt's TARDIS was the perfect mixture of old and new for the 50th anniversary.
02:45It retained the round things from the classic TARDIS interiors,
02:49but had the grungy columns and console of the 2005-2010 TARDIS.
02:53Some may call this design an ugly mishmash of ideas,
02:57but this was a Doctor who was fighting in the last Great Time War.
03:00He likely didn't have time to consider a spot of redecorating.
03:03Although the TARDIS is glitching, this is indisputably what the War Doctor's TARDIS interior looked like during the Time War.
03:10If the TARDIS is a reflection of each Doctor's persona, in the modern era at least,
03:14then this was the ideal interior for the man who rejected the title.
03:18It's a TARDIS interior that is stripped back to basics,
03:21but retains some of the quirks of the character.
03:23The perfect console room for John Hurt's War Doctor, effectively.
03:26As it's a one-night-only sort of TARDIS, it's hard to rank it any higher.
03:30But there are some interesting ideas here.
03:32It also begins the modern series' obsession with the round things
03:36that would continue throughout the remainder of the Moffat era,
03:39and into the Chibnall one as well.
03:41Number 11. The Fugitive Doctor's TARDIS 2020
03:44The Fugitive Doctor's TARDIS interior is an exercise in stripped-back simplicity,
03:49which makes sense, really.
03:51Given the canon-shattering reveals in Fugitive of the Jadoon,
03:54a distracting and wild new TARDIS interior would only have made things more complicated.
03:58It's a beautiful-looking TARDIS console, though,
04:00harking back to the ancient Gallifreyan design.
04:03With the Fugitive Doctor being decidedly no-nonsense,
04:06it's also stripped of any quirks like a custard cream dispenser.
04:09It's a clean, simple TARDIS design for the covert division operative about town.
04:14This simple but recognisable TARDIS interior also aids the tension of the scenes
04:18between Joe Martin and Jodie Whittaker in Fugitive of the Jadoon.
04:21It's so recognisably a TARDIS that it further cements the impossible knowledge
04:25that the Doctor and the audience are being presented with.
04:28A spot-on interior, then, but the police box exterior of the Fugitive Doctor's TARDIS
04:33is a whole different matter that will keep the fandom arguing for decades.
04:37At least they can all agree that it's good she kept the round things.
04:40Number 10.
04:41The Third Doctor's TARDIS, The Time Monster Edition
04:44The washing-up bowl TARDIS gets a hard time,
04:47but it's exactly what you'd expect from a 1970s update of the original 1960s design.
04:53It's not for nothing that it was this interior that the LEGO Dimensions designer
04:57chose for the third Doctor's TARDIS in the game.
05:00It only lasted for the Doctor and the Master's game of TARDIS chicken
05:02in the Time Vortex at the end of the Time Monster, but it's an underrated gem.
05:07It has a sense of scale to it that other TARDIS console rooms don't always achieve,
05:11while the fact that the roundels double up as scanners is a neat touch.
05:15The Master's TARDIS looked exactly the same on the inside,
05:18which is perhaps why they dispense with this design in the very next serial.
05:21This set was retained for the three Doctors in the next season,
05:25but they stripped out the bowls to more overtly call back to the 1963 original.
05:30While this was an obvious choice for the show's 10th anniversary,
05:33it was disappointing that the more space-age spheres built into the walls were excised,
05:37never to be seen again.
05:38Number 9.
05:39The RTD-era TARDIS, 2005-2010
05:43From very early on in Doctor Who's history, the TARDIS was a place of safety.
05:47That's why The Edge of Destruction was the perfect third serial for the first season,
05:52because just as Ian and Barbara were becoming comfortable with the Doctor and Susan,
05:55the TARDIS became a place of danger.
05:57Since then, returning to the brightness of the TARDIS with its comforting white walls
06:01became shorthand for safety.
06:03However, you don't get that with the RTD-era TARDIS,
06:06which is an almost oppressively dark and dingy place.
06:10It's clear that RTD sees the TARDIS as a means to get the Doctor and their companions from A to B,
06:14and wasn't as interested in developing it beyond the console room as other showrunners were.
06:19I mean, it's pretty telling that it was old-school Doctor Who fan Mark Gatiss
06:23who wrote the Doctor's hilariously convoluted directions to the TARDIS wardrobe in The Unquiet Dead.
06:28But oddly, the set is designed in such a way that it's hard to envision the ship beyond the main choral console room.
06:35Where are the other passageways leading from that self-contained central platform?
06:39Still, this is an undeniably iconic and beloved TARDIS interior.
06:43It looked cool in its green and red lighting variants,
06:46and had an interesting multi-level structure to the console room.
06:49See, the Doctor's horrified realisation that Jackie Tyler is still on board in Army of Ghosts.
06:54It was also very spacious, with plenty of room for lots of companions.
06:58The energetic Tenth Doctor had tonnes of space to dash around the console,
07:02flicking switches like a madman, which he often liked to do.
07:05Number 8.
07:06The Fourth Doctor's Secondary Console Room, 1976-1977.
07:11It took producer Philip Hinchcliffe two whole seasons to realise his dreams of a more Jules Verne-style TARDIS.
07:19In Doctor Who Season 12, there's barely a TARDIS at all, and in fact the interior was never shown on screen,
07:24as the Fourth Doctor, Sarah Jane and Harry use transmats and time rings to get around.
07:29And then in Season 14's The Mask of Mandragora, the Fourth Doctor and Sarah Jane go for a wander through the TARDIS corridors.
07:35After finding a boot cupboard that looks more like a grand drawing room, they eventually arrive in the Secondary Console Room.
07:42With its mahogany panels, stained glass windows, and wooden console,
07:46it was an appropriate TARDIS interior for Hinchcliffe and Robert Holmes' more gothic and literary take on Doctor Who.
07:52But unfortunately, it's just a bit less exciting than the main TARDIS interior.
07:56The dark wood and lack of an impressive time rotor give it the impression of a stuffy university office.
08:01And it's no surprise that when Graham Williams was brought in to make the show less dark, he jettisoned this interior.
08:07Number 7. The Eleventh Doctor's First TARDIS 2010-2012
08:12Matt Smith's first TARDIS interior took the concept of a madman with a box and flogged it to within an inch of its life.
08:19It's insanely chaotic and wacky.
08:21From the old-school analogue telly for a scanner to the typewriter encased in the console,
08:25all the way up to the gramophone-esque brass-encased time rotor,
08:29it felt more like a time-travelling cocktail bar than a futuristic time ship,
08:33which actually sounds really cool now that we put it like that.
08:36While the look of old bits of pipe and temperature gauges made everything look a wee bit mish-mashed together,
08:41this fit nicely with the mad professor vibe of the Doctor, and of Matt Smith's Doctor specifically.
08:47This interior was absolutely enormous too,
08:49well and truly pushing that bigger-on-the-inside mandate as far as it could conceivably go with a single room.
08:55Unlike the RTD TARDIS, it was also bright, warm and homely,
08:59somewhere you'd actually want to hang out between adventures.
09:02There were also stairwells and corridors leading to other areas,
09:06genuinely giving the impression that there was endless space within.
09:09It was the perfect console room for the bow-tie and tweed-wearing young hipster Doctor,
09:13even though it was perhaps a little too chaotic at the same time.
09:17Now personally, this one is my favourite.
09:19But we have to listen to everyone's opinions here at WhoCulture,
09:22so I will allow this not to be number one for a change.
09:26Number 6, The Fourth Doctor's TARDIS, 1977-1982.
09:31The Fourth Doctor's main TARDIS lasted right up until Peter Davison's second season as the Doctor,
09:36albeit with some subtle changes.
09:38The addition of the columns to the walls made this interior feel slightly more grand,
09:42although they also ironically squashed the bigger-on-the-inside time machine slightly.
09:46The Fourth Doctor, Romana, and K-9 spent a lot of time in the TARDIS,
09:50playing chess, doing crosswords, and being stuck in time loops orchestrated by a sentient cactus.
09:55There was a real lived-in feel to this TARDIS console room that reflected Tom Baker's comfort
10:00in the role of the Doctor.
10:01It also opened up slightly to reveal Romana's bedroom,
10:04and, in the invasion of time, a whole Victorian hospital that was lurking behind one of the doors.
10:09Complete with a swimming pool, this was arguably the biggest the TARDIS has ever looked.
10:13However, the clear differences between the studio-bound scenes and location footage
10:18meant that viewers could really see the join.
10:20It meant that, ultimately, nobody really bought that the Doctor and Leela
10:23were really being chased through the expansive TARDIS corridors by Sontarans.
10:28Number 5.
10:29The Twelfth Doctor's TARDIS, 2014-2017
10:32Sure, it's just a refit of Michael Pickwood's design for the 50th Anniversary series.
10:37However, he updates the Peter Capaldi TARDIS with enough significant changes
10:42to merited having a place of its own on this list.
10:44To compliment Peter Capaldi's more brooding Doctor,
10:47the Twelfth Doctor's TARDIS wasn't quite as bright and inviting as his predecessors.
10:52The lights were turned down low, and the brilliant blue of the time rotor
10:55was instead replaced with a burning orange light.
10:57The addition of the bookcase and the utilisation of the gallery as a library
11:01allowed for some truly breathtaking TARDIS scenes.
11:04Say what you like about In the Forest of the Night,
11:06but the bit where the camera spins around the TARDIS is a bravura shot,
11:10which is rarely seen in similar Doctor Who scenes.
11:13It also gave Peter Capaldi heaps of space to move around the TARDIS,
11:17flicking switches, pilling levers,
11:18and playing out his childhood fantasy of finally becoming Doctor Who.
11:22It's a gorgeous set, and the second-best TARDIS interior of the modern era.
11:26Number 4.
11:27The Twentieth Anniversary TARDIS, 1983-1989
11:31To celebrate Doctor Who's twentieth anniversary,
11:34the TARDIS interior got a subtle but significant upgrade
11:36to see the show through to its cancellation in 1989.
11:40The columns from Tom Baker's console room remained,
11:42but were reshaped to provide more space.
11:45There was also a designated space for the scanner,
11:47all the better for Susan and Turlo to helplessly watch the Cybermen
11:50place explosives at the base of the TARDIS in The Five Doctors.
11:54A brand new console was also installed,
11:56with that memorable fragmented time rotor,
11:59which ultimately inspired the central tubes that feature
12:01in every new TARDIS from 1996 onward.
12:04In what was a sign of things to come,
12:06the BBC no longer had the set by the time of Sylvester McCoy's final season.
12:11This is why the Seventh Doctor's TARDIS scenes in Battlefield
12:13are shot in front of a blanket.
12:15Thankfully, Doctor Who would come back bigger than ever in 2005,
12:19consigning the blanket-fought TARDIS to the niche corners of history.
12:23Number 3.
12:24The TV Movie TARDIS, 1996
12:26The TARDIS interior in the 1996 TV movie is absolutely gorgeous.
12:31Although clearly influenced by H.G. Wells' The Time Machine,
12:34it also feels like the Jules Verne console room
12:37that Philip Hinchcliffe would have had if he'd had the money back in 1976.
12:41It's expansive, grand, and it all fits into a tiny British police box.
12:45Aside from Paul McGann's reinvention of the Doctor as a romantic hero,
12:49the TV movie's stunning console room is its other crowning achievement.
12:53Sure, the actual Eye of Harmony shouldn't be there,
12:56but Moffat kind of fixed that in Series 7.
12:58The warmth of the lamplight contrasted by the chilly blue of the TARDIS
13:02in flight or in danger is a neat touch.
13:04Meanwhile, the grand staircases and gothic cloister room
13:07give the Doctor's impossible ship a sense of scale
13:10that it's struggled to replicate before or since.
13:13Although, given how much the TARDIS gets bumped around in the Time Vortex,
13:17all those candles and open flames feel like a bit of a fire hazard.
13:21Number 2. The 11th Doctor's Second TARDIS 2012-2013
13:26Designed by Michael Pickwode, Matt Smith's second console room was utterly stunning.
13:31The clean lines, the bright lights, and the silver spaceship aesthetic
13:34really helped to sell the inside of the TARDIS as infinitely bigger than the exterior.
13:39It was the first time that modern Doctor Who fully embraced the design potential of the Doctor's ship.
13:43It's spacious, it's futuristic, and it's an absolute stunner, quite frankly.
13:48It was the best Christmas present that Doctor Who fans could have asked for back in 2012.
13:52It also retained the multi-floor design of Matt Smith's original TARDIS,
13:56allowing for some lovely shots of the Doctor tinkering underneath the console.
14:00The mushroom of wires at the base of the console was a beautifully subtle nod
14:03to the fact that the TARDIS is a living thing.
14:06And has there been anything cooler than those big silver rotating discs
14:09at the top of the time rotor that spin when the TARDIS is in flight?
14:13It was in this TARDIS that Stephen Moffat attempted to right the wrongs of the Invasion of Time
14:17by revealing other runes.
14:19The TARDIS library was remarkable, even if Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS wasn't.
14:24Number 1. The 1960s TARDIS, 1963-1969
14:29The original and the best, and the TARDIS console that the show keeps harking back to even now.
14:35It's not an exaggeration to suggest that the original TARDIS interior was key to the show's success.
14:40The Daleks solidified Doctor Who in the minds of viewers,
14:43but the moment that Ian and Barbara stumbled into that vast, brilliant white control room
14:48was when a TV legend was truly born.
14:51Despite a few of the first Doctor's antiques being shifted around,
14:54or the size of the room being reduced slightly,
14:56this look endured throughout the 1960s.
14:58In the decades that followed, the classic series made some tweaks to the basic look
15:02in order to keep up with the changing technology of TV production.
15:06It's fascinating that modern Doctor Who has never fully embraced this iconic look
15:10since its 2005 return.
15:12From the minute they recreated the 1960s TARDIS for Mark Gatiss's docudrama
15:16An Adventure in Space and Time,
15:18the classic TARDIS interior was constantly popping back up.
15:22From the other TARDIS in Hellbent,
15:23to the Fugitive Doctor's TARDIS,
15:25and the 13th Doctor's Dalek trap,
15:27they've all harked back to that brilliant white room.
15:30Maybe Shooty Gatwa's era will once again embrace this classic design.
15:34A fitting refresh for the show in its 60th anniversary year.
15:37Now that's everything for this ranking,
15:39but as you might know, we do love a good ranking here at WhoCulture,
15:42so why don't you check out every Doctor ranked from worst to best.
15:46In the meantime, I've been Ellie with WhoCulture,
15:48and in the words of Riversong herself,
15:50goodbye, sweeties.
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