Doctor Who executive producer, Joel Collins, teases an extraordinary new TARDIS design as the show looks to renew the time machine for season 14.
Doctor Who executive producer, Joel Collins, teases a new design for the show’s iconic police box, the TARDIS. The time machine had many different looks over the 60 years of the show’s history, and now the Doctor’s ship – famously bigger on the inside – could be receiving its most daring makeover yet when Ncuti Gatwa is handed the TARDIS keys for season 14.
Though there is a while before Doctor Who finally returns to screens, many snippets of information have been dispensed in the interim. Doctor Who Magazine features an interview with Collins (via Radio Times) as he discusses the upcoming TARDIS redesign. The executive producer teases an extremely ambitious design that proved to be a huge challenge for the show’s production designers and is typical of the show’s mind-bending science-fiction. Read on to see Collins’ full quote:
“We talked thorough various concepts with Russell, and there was one rough idea that was just too ambitious, and too impossible – but which everybody loved. Once I’d put it in front of Russell, he’s just too visually bright to unsee it. I’d go, ‘Yes, yes, but it’s completely mad, it’s never going to happen.’ Then we started to say, ‘OK, how do we make this impossible space possible?’ Phil [Sims, production designer] brought in a brilliant engineer, who spent months trying to solve the engineering riddle of this impossible, logic-defying set, which no one in their right mind should ever have even drawn in the first place. But that kind of sums up the show…”
Why The TARDIS Needs A Redesign
The TARDIS console room has myriad looks, though many classic series designs were quite similar. When Davies revived Doctor Who in 2005, the TARDIS was completely unlike any that had come before it, yet it was unmistakably the same time machine. Described as “grunge” by the Eleventh Doctor in the 50th Anniversary special, “The Day of the Doctor,” this TARDIS version shared by the Ninth and Tenth Doctors featured pillars, a glowing green central column, and more space than ever. When Steven Moffat took over as showrunner, the Eleventh Doctor’s TARDIS received an even more colorful, alien revamp, and the same again for the Thirteenth Doctor when Chris Chibnall took over.
So far, every new showrunner introduced a major overhaul of the show, and the TARDIS’ look is one of the main actualizations of this. Given that Davies’ second stint will also undoubtedly serve as a soft reboot for Doctor Who, as with his predecessors, his TARDIS will also need to change. He has already teased a TARDIS season 14 clue with a recent casting announcement, which could already hint at its “logic-defying” nature. This ambitious new design sends a clear message that the show is being reinvented – a much-needed change for the show, which has dwindled in popularity in recent years.
When Will The New TARDIS Debut In Doctor Who?
Collins has already teased that the new design could be the most ambitious the show has seen, but one thing that remains a mystery is exactly when this change will be shown. Before Gatwa is introduced as the Doctor this Christmas, Tennant will return for three special episodes which could reveal the new TARDIS, and Doctor Who season 14 will release in 2024. Given that he has already played the Tenth Doctor, it is possible that his TARDIS console could be the same one as his first stint in the role or at least a slight modification on that model. Another possibility is that he could keep the Thirteenth Doctor’s console, with the new design being unveiled under Gatwa. Perhaps the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Doctors will share the same new “impossible” design, or maybe they will both receive their own different designs altogether. As is often the case with Doctor Who, the possibilities are endless, and there’s no telling what route the show’s producers will eventually take.
Source: Doctor Who Magazine via Radio Times
