Doctor Who (8 page)

Bigger on the Inside

“Just how big is the TARDIS?”

“Well, how big's big? Relative dimensions, you see. No constant.”

—Sarah Jane and the Fourth Doctor, from “The Mask of Mandragora” (1976)

 

In the 1977 TV story “The Robots of Death,” the Fourth Doctor attempts to explain the science of “trans-dimensional engineering” that makes the
inner dimensions of his ship possible. He takes two boxes, putting the larger on the console, then brings his companion Leela to the edge of the room and holds up the smaller one in front of her. Of course, she understands that it's only her perspective that makes the smaller one look larger. The Doctor concedes, but adds that if you can keep the larger box a distance away while simultaneously having access to it, then you can “fit” it inside the smaller box.

“That's silly,” Leela says.

In the early adventures, viewers saw that the TARDIS had sleeping quarters, hallways, a wardrobe, and a small section that housed a food machine. But as the crew spent more time adventuring through time and space, the more interesting locations lay beyond the ship's doors rather than within it, and so the control room became the main interior setting. In the 1970s, some of the Fourth Doctor's stories showed more of the TARDIS interior again, including a swimming pool, a jungle room with a man-eating plant, and a large drawing room with a pair of Wellington boots, which was called the “boot cupboard.” There was also the cloister room, which housed an alarm that rang if the ship was in extreme danger. The cloister bell has rung several times in the modern series.

Tom Baker often suggested the ship's interior be explored more, believing it could have entire sections that resembled restaurants, cathedrals, and city streets. He joked that he could find someone who had stowed away for years, unnoticed because the Doctor had simply stopped visiting that part of the ship. In the
Doctor Who Magazine
comic strip, writer Grant Morrison created memory rooms within the TARDIS that simulate places the ship had visited.

Although the control room (which was renamed the console room in the 1980s) is what first comes to mind when people consider the interior, it constantly changes. When the Second Doctor wound up in the TARDIS of his third incarnation, he commented that he didn't like how the room had been redecorated. We had no explanation for these differences until the 1977 TV story “The Invisible Enemy,” when the Doctor mentioned programming the TARDIS computer to alter the interior design.

On another occasion, in “The Mask of Mandragora,” the Fourth Doctor wanders through his ship and stumbles across an entirely separate control
room from the one he's been using, one with a wooden console. He first assumes this is the “secondary control room,” but then finds the recorder he once used during his second life, along with one of the outfits he'd worn in his third incarnation. Since he's been here in multiple forms, he wonders if this isn't the original control room after all, which means he unknowingly began using the secondary version some time ago, while this one modified its design. In any event, he decides to use the wooden control room until further notice and the ship's main exit doors conveniently relocate to accommodate him.

This wooden control room, the only version without a time rotor in the center of the console, had been built to be a smaller, more manageable set. The design evoked a Jules Verne sensibility, making it seem timeless rather than trying to look like some idea of the future. When Graham Williams later took over as producer, he preferred something closer to the classic room with its white walls and space-age style, so he had the wooden set destroyed.

In the 1980s, script editor Christopher Bidmead's high interest in computers influenced the ship's capabilities. He compared the TARDIS and its many rooms to a database that held many files. Some files could be moved, some redesigned, and some deleted, depending on the programming. In a couple of 1980s stories, the Doctor jettisoned certain rooms of the TARDIS in order to gain thrust. The Eleventh Doctor showed us more of the ship's rooms and inner workings in 2013, including a technology tree that grew machines you needed.

I asked
Doctor Who
fans and writers how much we should see of the TARDIS. Is it a place to explore, or is it better to keep it as a mysterious means of travel?

Doctor Who
novelist and comic book writer Dan Abnett: “My gut feeling as a writer is to say that the less we know, the better. It allows our imagination to roam, and the TARDIS is a plot mechanism. Although it is an enduring thing that has taken on, quite literally at one point, a life of its own. You can have fun with it without revealing all its secrets. You can have that moment of realizing, wait, there's a second console room?”

Electronics expert and
Mythbusters
team member Grant Imahara: “I enjoy every once in a while hearing references to other parts of the TARDIS,
but I would rather they be kept out of the main narrative. I'm sure the rooms in my imagination are much better.”

Big Finish Productions script editor, novelist, and past editor of
Doctor Who Magazine
Gary Russell: “I'd like to explore the TARDIS more. I think it's silly that fifty years later, we've still only seen a few rooms and corridors. This is a living, breathing craft. Let's see what it truly has in its walls.”

The Rules of Time

“You can't rewrite history. Not one line!”

—The First Doctor, from “The Aztecs” (1964)

 

Originally, the BBC directed that major historical events and figures be depicted accurately, unaltered by the TARDIS crew. According to writer Dennis Spooner, Sydney Newman told them that, when it came to history or large-scale events, the Doctor preferred to observe, limiting how much influence he had. This explains why the First Doctor occasionally dressed like a native and assumed an alias that suited the location, unlike most of his later incarnations.

David Whitaker explained the philosophy behind these limits when he responded to mail from a viewer named R. Adams of Quinton, Birmingham. Whitaker's letter read:

 

Undoubtedly one must look at time as a roadway going uphill and down the other side. You and I are in the position of walking along that road, whereas Doctor Who is in the position of being placed on top of the hill. He can look backward and he can look forward, in fact the whole pattern of the road is laid out for him. But you will appreciate of course that he cannot interfere with that road in any way whatsoever. . . . The basis of time travelling is that all things that happen are fixed and unalterable, otherwise of course the whole structure of existence would be thrown into unutterable confusion and the purpose of life itself would be destroyed. Doctor Who is an observer. . . . Where we are allowed to use fiction, of course, is that we allow the Doctor
and his friends to interfere in the personal histories of certain people from the past. We can get away with this provided they are not formally established as historical characters. We cannot tell Nelson how to win at the Battle of the Nile because no viewer would accept such a hypothesis. However, we can influence one Captain on board a minor ship in Napoleon's armada.

 

So when the Doctor warned Barbara that it was impossible to alter the major history of the Aztecs, he was speaking literally as far as the writers were concerned. However, by the end of the program's second year, writer Dennis Spooner succeeded Whitaker as script editor and decided to bring up the alteration of history as a real danger. Since the Doctor acted to keep history on its proper course (and educate children in the process), the BBC didn't object.

In the final story of the second year, “The Time Meddler,” the TARDIS crew encounters a villain who seeks to alter British history. Unconvinced of the danger at first, Steven points out to Vicki that he remembers his history, and therefore the past is safe from the meddler.

 

STEVEN:
“What about the history books?”

VICKI:
“That's all right. They're not written yet. They'll just write and print the new version.”

STEVEN:
“But that means that the exact minute, the exact second that he does it, every history book, every—well, whole future of every year and time on Earth will change, just like that, and nobody'll know it has?”

 

“The Time Meddler” certainly turned up the drama of life in the TARDIS and made the Doctor a protector of reality itself. In the same story, the Doctor tells his enemy the Monk that there are rules concerning time travel, an idea repeated in the 1973 story “The Three Doctors,” in which a Time Lord notes that the First Law of Time says no one may visit a future or past version of his or herself (though another Time Lord argues this can be broken on occasion, in special circumstances). Paradoxes were things to avoid.

The potential to change history now also brought up new moral disagreements. When Steven asks why they can't save certain people in the past, the Doctor explains. “My dear Steven, history sometimes gives us a terrible shock, and that is because we don't quite fully understand. Why should we? After all, we're all too small to realize its final pattern. Therefore don't try and judge it from where you stand.”

In the TV story “Pyramids of Mars” (1975), the Fourth Doctor and Sarah Jane are defending humanity from a powerful alien menace in 1911. At one point, Sarah Jane suggests they simply leave since she knows her planet wasn't destroyed in 1911. Humoring her, the Doctor travels to 1980 and opens the TARDIS doors: The Earth that lies outside is a lifeless wasteland, the result of a new timeline created by leaving humanity defenseless in 1911. Either their adventure in Earth's past is fulfilling a part of history that was always there or the presence of different time traveling races in the universe causes ripples that create new dangers in past and future that have to be vanquished to preserve reality. The Doctor admits, though, that most people can only influence the future, as it takes a powerful being to completely alter or destroy a planet's fate. Of course, history is much more delicate since the events of the Last Great Time War . . .

6

Violence and Endings

“It's a very difficult thing, time . . . Once you start to interfere with it, the strangest things start happening.”

—The Third Doctor, from “Day of the Daleks” (1972)

 

In the two years following Barbara and Ian's departure, change became the main theme of the show, which charged forward under the banner that nothing was static.

During a trip to Earth's past, Vicki found a new life for herself (and fulfilled a place in history otherwise vacant). She was succeeded by Katarina, a Trojan woman who at first believed the Doctor was a god traveling in a magic temple but who soon understood the basics of technology. Katarina (played by Adrienne Hill) became another example of the program's darkening atmosphere in the twelve-part story “The Daleks' Master Plan.” While the heroes and new allies are escaping Daleks in a starship, a madman takes the young Trojan woman hostage in the airlock, demanding the ship land immediately on the nearby planet Kembel. Knowing that Kembel is ruled by Daleks, Katarina chooses to die rather than allow Steven and the Doctor to endanger themselves. Having learned how to operate the ship's airlock earlier, Katarina opens it, expelling herself and her captor into the cold void of outer space. The Doctor and Steven can only watch. The heroes didn't save the day and a traveling companion was dead.

As the adventure continues, the Doctor and Steven attempt to warn the people of the future that the Daleks are planning an all-out assault. A member of the Space Security Service, Bret Vyon—played by Nicholas Courtney, whom we'll see again—joins them. Vyon learns that Mavic Chen, his superior and appointed Guardian of the Solar System, has betrayed the human race to the monsters. Meanwhile, Chen dispatches Vyon's sister, Space Security operative Sara Kingdom, telling her that the man is a traitor. Never questioning her orders, Sara hunts down and kills her brother for
the greater good, only learning the truth afterward. With her faith in the system shattered, she joins the Doctor and Steven, hoping to make amends by saving humanity.

Sara Kingdom (played by Jean Marsh) was the first militaristic character to join the Doctor's team. In contrast to young Katarina who had fallen into tropes of being a young damsel in distress, Kingdom was an adult and the first physically formidable woman on the TARDIS, which we wouldn't see again until the late 1970s with Leela. Terry Nation even intended for Sara Kingdom to spin off into a US TV series featuring an anti-Dalek task force. When that plan fell through, Nation absorbed some of the ideas into “The Daleks' Master Plan” and, sadly, decided to end the character. In the final chapter, Sarah Kingdom is caught in the temporal onslaught of the Daleks' new weapon, the Time Destructor. She falls to the ground, aging rapidly into a skeleton, then dust. The Doctor defeats his enemies again, but the victory proves hollow in the wake of so many deaths.

As she appeared only in “The Daleks' Master Plan,” some have argued that Sara Kingdom doesn't “count” as a companion. But during her stay, she visits multiple planets and time periods with the Doctor. What's more, the narrative implies that weeks pass during the 12-part story, and the novelization and various tie-ins state that Sara actually stayed on the TARDIS for months, leading to new stories produced later that filled in the gaps. In recent years, Jean Marsh—who was married to Third Doctor Jon Pertwee for a time before
Doctor Who
began and later fought the Seventh Doctor as Morgaine le Fey—has returned to the role of Sara Kingdom in multiple Big Finish audio dramas.

After “The Daleks' Master Plan” came “The Massacre of St. Bartholomew's Eve,” the first television adventure to feature the Doctor with only one traveling companion at his side (and a male, at that). At the end of the story, the two must leave just before the event of the title takes place. The Doctor explains that many are fated to die, and admits he can't offer any evidence of the survival of Anne Chaplet, a servant girl whom Steven befriended. Steven challenges the Doctor, and leaves when the TARDIS next lands. The Doctor stands alone, musing aloud. “Now they're all gone. All gone. None of them could understand. Not even my little Susan . . . or Vicki. And as for Barbara and Chatterton . . . Chesterton . . . They were all
too impatient to get back to their own time. And now, Steven. Perhaps I should go home, back to my own planet. But I can't! . . . I can't.”

Then, a girl identical to Anne Chaplet walks into the TARDIS, believing it a real police box. Their new arrival confuses Steven, who has returned. The girl is Dorothea “Dodo” Chaplet of 1960s England, possibly Anne's descendant, which means she did survive. Filled with hope and amazement, Steve, the Doctor, and their new friend Dodo set off for adventure.

Jackie Lane—whom some sources have claimed was considered for the role of Susan years before—played Dodo, a friendly, jocular orphan who reminded the Doctor of his granddaughter. (Lane was later the theatrical agent for Fourth Doctor Tom Baker and Janet Fielding, who played the Doctor's companion Tegan Jovanka in the 1980s.) Dodo brought back a sense of fun after months of mostly darkness, but was it too little, too late?

Growing Discomfort

Doctor Who
was taking its toll on William Hartnell. During “The Dalek Invasion of Earth,” the ramp of a Dalek spaceship collapsed, and he fell to the ground, requiring complete bed rest for several days. The grueling production schedule that left little time for breaks exacerbated his arteriosclerosis, which made filming more difficult and prompted more line flubs. During “The Myth Makers,” his beloved aunt Bessie died, but he couldn't take time off to attend her funeral.

Along with this, Hartnell grew concerned with the increasingly dark and violent storylines. Along with the obvious death and violence in “The Dalek Invasion of Earth,” “The Escape,” “The Daleks' Master Plan,” and “The Massacre of St. Bartholomew's Eve,” there had been an implication of rape in “The Time Meddler.” Hartnell believed that the stories were dropping all educational and moral value for children and catering too much to the older audience. He argued over the matter with John Wiles, Verity Lambert's replacement producer, as well as with script editor Donald Tosh. Wiles argued that Hartnell took his role too seriously, adding that the actor was becoming more feeble and having increasing difficulty remembering his lines. Others have argued that Hartnell's health problems were exaggerated by Wiles to justify recasting the Doctor. Wiles and Tosh considered
recasting the hero in the four-part story “The Celestial Toymaker,” which aired halfway through the program's third year.

Michael Gough as the Toymaker, an immortal cosmic being, forced people into strange games where their lives and freedom were at stake. When the TARDIS crew found itself in the Toymaker's realm, the Doctor quickly recognized his surroundings and tried to leave. The Toymaker arrived and commented, “You're so innocent, Doctor. The last time you were here, I hoped you'd stay long enough for a game, but you had hardly time to turn around.”

Tie-in media later expanded that the Toymaker had met the Doctor when the scientist was a young man, before he left his home planet. According to Donald Tosh, the original intention was that the Celestial Toymaker, like the Monk in “The Time Meddler,” belonged to the Doctor's society. However, as we learned more about Time Lords, this became unlikely. Tie-in media expanded the character, and it became generally accepted by Whovians that the Toymaker is a cosmic force rather than native of Gallifrey, possibly a unique creature in the universe. The novel
The Quantum Archangel
refers to the Toymaker as an embodiment of a fundamental force in the universe, and, in the Big Finish audio drama
The Magic Mousetrap,
the Seventh Doctor calls him, “a spirit of mischief from the infancy of the universe.”

As Wiles and Tosh originally intended for the story “The Celestial Toymaker,” the villain makes the Doctor invisible. When he later returns the hero's visibility, we see the Doctor's appearance has been transformed, another of the Toymaker's tricks. Despite defeating the villain, the Doctor would remain trapped in his new body as he and his friends leave in the TARDIS.

The notion of replacing the lead of the program was surprising. Head of Serials Gerald Savory resisted the casting of a new Doctor and it was scrapped. During filming on “The Celestial Toymaker,” Wiles and Tosh were replaced by new producer Innes Lloyd and script editor Gerry Davis, which led to several rewrites. This made filming more difficult, in addition to the fact that a legal issue arose when one character seemed to be based on Billy Bunter, the comedic lead character of a recent TV program that aired from 1952 to 1961. Despite this, the story was completed and Hartnell remained as the Doctor. There were later attempts to bring back the
Celestial Toymaker as a recurring villain, but they never came to fruition. Many older fans still hope that this strange trickster might appear again in the modern day show.

(Now here's a strange but fun bit of trivia. Peter Cushing once said in an interview that the existence of the Toymaker could explain how his film version of the Doctor could be part of the TV show's official continuity. According to Cushing, he actually played a future version of the Doctor who had been captured by the Toymaker and forced to relive his earlier adventures, his memory altered so he believed that he was a human literally named Dr. Who. It's not the strangest idea that's ever cropped up in the stories.)

Although Hartnell remained past the third season, Peter Purves didn't. In “The Savages,” the second story after “The Celestial Toymaker,” Steven Taylor helps bring peace between two warring races, after which he's asked to remain as leader of both. He thanks the Doctor for all their experiences and begins a new life. This made Steven the first companion who wasn't on his native planet when he joined the TARDIS crew and didn't return to his home when he left.

Farewells

Despite the change in producer and script editor, Hartnell still protested that the show focused too much on villains and dark scenarios without also including educational value and morality. Lloyd and Davis claimed that the actor had become overly territorial about the program. Unlike Wiles, Innes Lloyd had more success in negotiating Hartnell's departure and the BBC decided that
Doctor Who
was successful enough to merit continuing even with a new lead actor. Varying accounts report the exact nature of Hartnell's exit. Rumors said he had finally grown too ill to continue and conceded to leave, but that ignores that he acted on stage afterward.

In BBC press releases, Hartnell said he left because he believed three years a good tenure to play the Doctor, and it was time for a change. Other BBC press releases and Innes Lloyd said it was a mutual decision due in part to Hartnell's desire to return to stage acting. Lloyd even claimed that Hartnell happily suggested Patrick Troughton as his replacement. But in a
response to fan mail, the actor said, “I didn't willingly give up the part.” In other interviews, he said that he had been sad to go but had been upset during the last few months of work and decided to leave because he couldn't agree with the direction of the show.

The final story of the third season was “The War Machines.” After parting ways with Steven, the Doctor's time ship lands in 1966 London, just months after Dodo was first picked up. The two time travelers befriend sailor Ben Jackson and lab assistant Polly Wright, played by Michael Craze and Anneke Wills, the latter of whom was married to Michael Gough and was also once considered for the part of Susan. Following another fight against evil, Dodo goes away to the countryside to recuperate. Ben and Polly later arrive at the TARDIS and tell the Doctor that Dodo has decided to stay and sends her regards. Taken aback by this abrupt departure, the alien scientist storms into the ship. Curious about the man, and needing to return a TARDIS key he dropped earlier, Ben and Polly enter the police box. Before they realize that it's a time ship, the TARDIS is already taking flight as the show's third year ends.

Hartnell did only two stories in the fourth year of
Doctor Who.
When he left, Ben and Polly aided the audience in the transition from one Doctor to another.

Bodies Wearing Thin

Hartnell's final adventure aired in October 1966, entitled “The Tenth Planet” (before we realized that Pluto had fooled us all). The story, written by Kit Pedler and Gerry Davis, has the Doctor, Ben, and Polly discover a military station in Antarctica in 1986. The station is monitoring a space flight when suddenly a new planet appears, one with massive engines that make it a mobile fortress. The Cybermen are here, returning to a solar system that never knew of them until now.

In the third episode of their debut story, the Cybermen activate a weapon that begins draining half the Earth of its power. This weapon apparently affects the Doctor, who sways, moans, and collapses into unconsciousness. In the fourth and final episode, he recovers. Polly asks what happened, and the Doctor responds, “Oh, I'm not sure, my dear. Comes from
an outside influence. Unless this old body of mine is wearing a bit thin.” The adventure continues, and the Cybermen are defeated, but the old man looks increasingly ill. As Ben assures him that the crisis is over, the Doctor seems frightened and possibly delirious. “It's all over. That's what you said. No, but it isn't all over. It's far from being all over . . . I must get back to the TARDIS immediately!”

Back in his ship, the scientist activates the console. Some of the controls operate by themselves, as if the ship is preparing for what's about to happen. The Doctor collapses to the floor, and Ben and Polly rush to his side. As we hear the familiar sound of dematerialization—though we later find out that the ship may not actually be flying this time—the hero's face glows with a strange light. Moments later the glow is gone, leaving a new, shorter, younger man in the Doctor's place, followed by a fade to black.