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