Robert C. Murrell
I rewatched my recording of the Fox Doctor Who movie recently. For the most part, I don't think it's too terribly well done, even for a TV movie (although Paul McGann does have the Doctor Who "look"), but there's one scene that has me wondering.
In the scene I'm referring to, the newly-regenerated Doctor takes Grace Halloway to the TARDIS, which has been surrounded with yellow crime scene tape, for the first time. As the Doctor unlockes the doors, Grace asks, "Why a police box?" To which the Doctor replies, "The cloaking device got stuck on a previous misadventure. I like it like this."
But I think it goes deeper than that. I would like to take this time bring up a few of points which I think play a major part in the fact that the TARDIS has remained a police box for twenty-six seasons, two feature films and a TV movie.
First, let's look at at the box as an icon. If you were to ask someone who has watched Doctor Who religiously for a long time what two things came to his or her mind first when you mentioned Doctor Who, one of them would very probably be a blue police box. It's been the TARDIS's exterior form for so long that fans can't imagine it being anything else.
It was William Hartnell's Doctor who first discovered thatthe TARDIS's chamelion circuit was broken. After attempts to repair it failed, he left it alone (at least, that's how I remember it) until Tom Baker's Doctor tried to have it fixed at Logopolis.
I think that if the chamelion circuit on the TARDIS had been repaired during Hartnell's run as the Doctor, or even during the early Traughton era, then the show could have gotten away with it and gone on the achieve, quite possibly, the same amount of popularity it enjoyed during its run on the BBC, if not more.
By the time Tom Baker took the TARDIS to Logopolis, however, the TARDIS's police box facade had become as much a part of the Doctor Who mythos as the Daleks, and thus Tom's attempt at having the chamelion circuit repaired was destined to fail, lest the fans rise up in protest and the show flop during the Doctor's fourth regeneration.
An interesting FYI that I think proves this point is the fact that the Doctor (I don't know which) did in fact manage to repair the chamelion circuit at one time. This gave the show a few moments of comedy, since the TARDIS turned into a pipe organ and the Doctor banged on the keys a bit. Afterwards, though, the Doctor decided to keep the TARDIS in the guise of a police box, because he had grown attached to that particular form. I think a more accurate statement would be to say that the fans had grown attached to that particular form, and to change it would be ratings suicide.
This brings me to my second point. As devoted as I am to Doctor Who, the fact that the TARDIS has remained in the form of a police box so immutably forces me to question the Doctor's intelligence in this area.
Have you ever noticed, in episodes where the basic plot is the Doctor versus the Master, how the Master's TARDIS always blends so well into the surroudings in which it lands, and the Doctor's always sticks out like the proverbial sore thumb? For example, in "The King's Demons", the Master's TARDIS is in the form of an iron maiden, which fits beautifully into any particular setting in which it would be placed in Lord Ranulf's castle. The Doctor's TARDIS, on the other hand, stands out garishly every time we see it. If the chamelion circuit were working, the Doctor, Tegan and Turlough might still have been alleged to be demons, but they would have had a much easier time gaining the trust of the people.
There are many other such occurences, not all in episodes involving the Master, where the Doctor might have had an easier time getting things done had he been able to change the TARDIS's appearance. Blatantly ignoring such an obvious way of making his work easier is a definite strike against the Doctor's competence.
The third, and probably correct, theory I have as to why the TARDIS remianed a police box is the fact that, aside from those rare occasions where it occasionally worked, the BBC simply couldn't afford it.
I base this theory on this rather rare event: the regeneration scenes. Usually, when the Doctor regenerates, the effect is done by a bright light appearing that obstructs our view of the Doctor, and when the light finally fades again, the new Doctor has taken the old one's place (i.e., Hartnell- Traughton, Davison-Baker(2)). In some cases, though, we are treated to the neat effect of watching the old Doctor's features melt into those of the new (Pertwee-Baker(1)). These regenerations use some of the most advanced special effects that the series ever saw, and as such must have cost quite a bit. I think that if the BBC had decided to allow the Doctor to fix the TARDIS's chamelion circuit, they would probably have opted to have it land in the necessary form, only allowing us to watch it change on rare occasions, if at all.
But this brings us back to the fans again. In the case of the Master's TARDIS, in those episodes where we see his TARDIS land before we ever see the Master himself, we don't know that it's the Master's TARDIS until we see him use the thing, or step out of it, or whatever. If the Doctor's TARDIS landed in a different form every time as the Master's does, the fans would get confused. At it is now, every time we hear that fabulous "grd-whir-grd" and see a blue police box with a flashing light on the roof appear, we know that good has arrived, evil will ultimately be vanquished, and it's time to start cheering, for the Doctor has come!
Why a police box?
Because in 1963 the BBC worked itself into a rut that, on many levels, it would have been suicide to climb out of.
That's "why a police box", Doctor Halloway.
Robert C. Murrell
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