Police Box of Delights - A Brief TARDIS History

Version 1 - Season One - Brachacki

The designer responsible for the first Doctor Who serial was Peter Brachacki and as such the very first TARDIS shape is his "design", but it is a reasonably faithful reproduction of those Police Boxes which could be seen on the streets of England in the sixties. It was tall, with a high-stacked roof and a St John's Ambulance logo on the door. One interesting thing to note is that the lock of the original TARDIS was on the left door, and there were no door handles.

The prop remained relatively unchanged throughout the sixties, although in season two it's rounded glass lamp was replaced by a cylindrical plastic one with a large, pillared black cage. There was also quite a refurbishment for The War Machines, and inconsistencies can be seen between the location footage and the studio recording.

Another "version" of the ship worth mentioning was seen at the end of The Massacre during double-banking and a very ropey couple of sides were knocked up to go with a front panel (shown on the right).

Version 1b
Season Four - Brachacki

Year four of Doctor Who saw a reconstruction of the roof of the Police Box. When the TARDIS landed in a cave in The Smugglers, the tall stack had been reduced in height by about fifty percent but the same lamp was retained. The image on the left shows the season four TARDIS with a dotted blue line showing how high it had previously been. The prop was further modified at the end of the season when the doors were refitted, resulting in the unusual sight of the telephone plaque appearing on the right-hand door panel instead of the left. This can be seen in the screen shot from The Evil of the Daleks on the right. This right-handed appearance lasted into the following season five (model shots in Tomb of the Cybermen not withstanding) and can be see on location in The Abominable Snowmen.

During season six, the wrongly-positioned phone-plaque was corrected for the first story, and then in The Invasion the TARDIS police box acquired two handles; one on the phone panel and one on the right door, and the key-hole switched over to the right door. Pictured right.

For the The Seeds of Death, the sign on the telephone compartment door changed considerably. The new version is different in layout, font, size and colour. The black-on-white became white-on-blue and the words "FOR USE OF PUBLIC" were all run together on one line. The word "and" was replaced in two places with an ampersand (&) which would be retained to the present day.

This version of the prop continued on into the third Doctor's era (revealing its colour) and it looked ever more neglected throughout season eight. In season nine it got a repaint and it became vivid blue, whilst the plaque changed again from a blue background to a black one. For Jon Pertwee's final season the TARDIS gained a new, simpler light which changed again slightly and the prop was refurbished and repainted for season thirteen (pictured left).



Version 2 - Season Fourteen

Following the deterioration and ultimate alleged collapse of what remained of the original, a new prop was created by Barry Newbery for the start of season fourteen, and it featured from The Masque of Mandragora up to and including The Horns of Nimon.

This prop had the least in common with the old London Police Boxes, but the phone plaque at least regained its full frame and it also switched back to white text on a blue background whilst reverting to the original configuration of having the word "PUBLIC" appearing largest. One strange thing occurred however, as the letter 's' was dropped from the word "officers".

Aside from a couple of changes of the lamp (including turning into an actual rotating Police car light in The Armageddon Factor) this prop remained in use for four of Tom Baker's middle years. However this Newbery prop made three guest appearances - One in Logopolis with a built up roof (making it look considerable better), then in Castrovalva, and finally in Black Orchid.

It was during a refurbishment for the Castrovalva cameo, that the wording on the telephone plaque was changed which would have a knock-on effect in the 21st century. During the episode the TARDIS was only seen on its side and from a distance, but publicity photos of the new Doctor shows that where it used to say "officer and cars respond to urgent calls" it now says "officer and cars respond to all calls."

Version 3 - Season Eighteen

John Nathan-Turner had a new prop created in fibreglass for The Leisure Hive, with a stacked roof more faithful to the first sixties prop, and its plaque featured the correct "urgent calls" wording.

One interesting thing to note about this prop is that it had a switchable front and rear, with one face having left-opening priority and the other having right-opening priority. For this reason the door sign wasn't permanently attached so that it could be swapped over for whichever face was being the front on that particular recording session.

It got a slightly greyish repaint in season twenty when the sign changed from "urgent calls" to the incorrect Newbery revamp version which said "all calls". The wording was then normal again the following season, but then wrong again in The Two Doctors!

For season twenty-three a second copy of this fibreglass prop was moulded which had only minor differences such as the "Police Box" sign and the base, and also the door handle is placed above the lock. The proper word "urgent" made its final appearance at the end of Trial of a Time Lord and throughout the Sylvester McCoy era the plaque carried the incorrect "all calls" phrase.

Version 4 - The TV Movie

For the Paul McGann TV Movie, a new prop was commissioned by Philip Segal to more closely match the William Hartnell TARDIS. The 1980s fibreglass plans were used as a staring point but some modifications were made so that the columns were more pronounced and the panels set further back, taking away that "flat" feel that the 80s version had. It had an original fresnel navigation lamp complete with brass rims, and a special yale/ankh combination keyhole.



Version 5

For the resurrection of the series in 2005 a new TARDIS shell was created. To be more specific, four were created at first. This prop was designed by Ed Thomas at Cardiff and his interpretation was considerably wider and taller than any box that had gone before. For example, the doors of the new prop are 6'10" high, whereas the original prop's door were only 6'6".

The windows were lit around the frames to try to create the illusion that it was bright on the inside, but this looked odd when the patches of illumination stuck to the window when the door opened, plus the new back-lit photographic blowup of the console room was never bright enough to explain the amount of light in the windows.

The plaque on the telephone door panel was black lettering on a white (actually metallic silver) background, not seen since the first sixties prop, however it still used the ugly ampersands, and had the "s" missing from "officer", and it also had the incorrect "all calls" wording first seen in Castrovalva. This error came about because this plaque was copied off a replica which had itself been copied from the incorrect eighties version.

During the pre-publicity for the re-launch of the series, it was often commented that the prop (and particularly the windows) looked too wide, but this criticism didn't carry over too heavily into broadcast and some commented "it doesn't seem that bad on screen." The reason for this is that the excessive width was only a feature of the first two props which ended up only being used in promotional material. When the second two props were constructed the front panels were narrowed slightly, and it was these later two props which appeared on screen.

Due to the weight of the props and the damage caused to them, a new fifth prop was made out of fibreglass which featured from The Christmas Invasion onwards and the incorrect plaque was continued for the following series.

The Peter Cushing TARDIS

For the two 1960s Peter Cushing film versions of Doctor Who in which a human creates his own time machine, a very faithful reproduction of a Police Box was built.

The main difference between the TV prop and the film version was that the doors opened outwards. The doors and interior of the prop were shown to be painted white.