The Christopher Eccleston Era
Series One (2005)
Series One
When the revival of Doctor Who kicked into production in the summer of 2004, the production team built two TARDIS props for use in the series. These props can be seen under construction in several images taken on Wednesday July 14th 2004. For simplicity, these props have been given the designation ‘A-1–2’, and ‘B-3–4’, in relation to the two separate frames that were constructed (‘A’ and ‘B’), and the four doors used on screen. The components of these two props were switched around several times through the programme’s first few seasons.
The original construction of the boxes featured doors with distinctly square inset panels, which matched the ones on the sides and back of the props, but at some point during construction it was decided that the door panels should be more rectangular, and replacement doors were created prior to painting. A number of the construction images show the original doors attached to the ‘B’ prop, with the new doors being created alongside.
The props for the series bore significant differences to the ones used during Doctor Who’s original run between 1963 and 1989. Quoted in 2006’s Doctor Who — The Inside Story, Production Designer Edward Thomas said of the new design;
“The final design came from Colin Richmond, who is now designing sets for the Royal Shakespeare Company — he has a fantastic, theatrical vision. The real working Metropolitan police boxes came in various shapes and sizes, ranging from timber ones to concrete ones. Colin changed the shape from the TARDIS last seen on TV; we made it much bigger and beefier; gave it what we called a British Bulldog look. I really wanted people to think ‘Yeah, that could actually be safe in outer space,’ when they saw it. Some of the TARDISes in the past have been very tall and thin, which I felt looked a bit brittle. We went to great pains to make sure that it looked wooden, taking blow-torches to all the timber, to burn away the soft grain. Then we coated the whole prop with Idenden, which is a sealant that left a tough-looking sheen on it.”
The first time a TARDIS prop was required for production on the revived series of Doctor Who was for the second night of production for Episode One, Rose, on Wednesday 21st July 2004. Production on the series had actually begun three days earlier, the first two days spent at the Cardiff Royal Infirmary recording material with the Space Pig for Aliens of London, while the previous night had been spent on the streets of Cardiff filming much of the Auton attack for the end of Episode One.
The final shot of the night on Wednesday was Rose running from the Henricks store as the Doctor blows it up. Rose runs away across the road, and right past a shrouded-in-shadows police box.
DWM’s Benjamin Cook had covered the previous night’s filming for Doctor Who Magazine issue 355, and said of the new TARDIS prop;
“It’s chunkier than the old ones, but yes, the light on top still flashes! The police box prop is so important that they’ve made it twice — both identical, each as iconic as the other.”
The prop used for this sequence was TARDIS B-3–4, and as such it was the second of the two props that was seen first by fans of the series — paparazzi pictures of its construction on location appearing in many newspapers by the end of the week. The Daily Mirror led with the headline ‘The TARDIS has landed’, noting that the ‘Dr Who [sic] time machine’ had spent 15 years ‘gathering dust at a BBC film studio’.
Strangely, perhaps, this marked the only occasion that the entire TARDIS B-3–4 appeared in its original configuration on screen for the first series.
A TARDIS prop was next required on location on Monday 26th and Tuesday 27th July, for scenes of the Doctor and Rose opposite the Millennium Wheel in London. The prop used for this scene is TARDIS A-1–2,
and it’s this prop and configuration that goes on to become the main TARDIS prop used for production of the
2005 series, with only a few notable exceptions.
It’s TARDIS A-1–2 that appears throughout the rest of Rose, before going on to be the only prop used for The End of the World, The Unquiet Dead, Aliens of London, World War Three, and Dalek.
A TARDIS prop was only required for a single day of production for Episode Six, Dalek. This was Monday 25th October 2004, where they filmed scenes for the TARDIS’ arrival in, and departure from, Henry Van Statten’s Vault. These scenes were recorded at the National Museum of Wales in Cardiff city centre. Throughout the episode, we only see the right-hand side of the TARDIS, never the doors. For a long time it was impossible to say that the prop used retained the original door configuration, but recently-unearthed photographs from production confirm the use of the full TARDIS A-1–2.
The reason there was uncertainty over the use of the doors is because Dalek was filmed in a single production block with Episode Eight, Father’s Day, in which we get our first look at a hybrid prop.
From the start of production in July up until now, the two TARDIS props had both been used for filming to some extent, but in all cases they had been in their as-originally-constructed A-1–2 and B-3–4 set ups.
Production on Father’s Day took place between Wednesday 11th and Friday 26th November, and featured the exterior TARDIS heavily. Scenes of the Doctor and Rose emerging from the TARDIS in 1987, and the Doctor returning to his ship to find the exterior divorced from the interior, were filmed on the morning of Wednesday 17th.
The TARDIS prop used on this day was a hybrid — TARDIS A-3–4, utilising the frame of the ‘A’ prop, with the doors from the ‘B’ prop. For the sequence of the Doctor looking at the interior of an empty police box, the sides and back of the prop were turned around, to give the interior a finished effect, rather than the flat black walls that usually graced the inside of the prop.
A TARDIS prop was also used earlier in the week for filming the final shots of the episode, in which the Doctor and Rose return to the ship. Due to the distance and lighting of the prop in this scene, it’s not possible to accurately identify which configuration was used.
By the following week, when the TARDIS prop was required for filming on Episode Seven, The Long Game, it had been restored to its regular configuration of A-1–2, which was used for scenes aboard the Game Station, and also for the scene of Adam being returned home at the end of the episode.
TARDIS A-1–2 was again pressed into use for several early scenes in The Empty Child — though the second half of this two parter, The Doctor Dances, only used the doors to the TARDIS Interior set. The interior of Captain Jack’s spaceship was built to back onto the TARDIS set, giving the impression that the TARDIS had materialised aboard his vessel.
Boom Town saw the TARDIS materialising on location in Cardiff Bay, at the base of the water tower on Roald Dahl Plass. The location would become more associated with the spin off series Torchwood, but made several more appearances in Doctor Who. It was again TARDIS A-1–2 pressed into service for this episode, and several images of the prop at the base of the water tower highlight many of the characteristics that identify the prop, such as the distinct grain structure of Door 1, and the dents on Frame A.
For the most part, the series finale, Bad Wolf / The Parting of the Ways, TARDIS A-1–2 is utilised. All sequences to feature the TARDIS aboard Satellite Five and the Dalek spaceship use this version of the prop.
Saturday 5th March, Eccleston’s final day of recording on the series, marked the final use of TARDIS A-1–2 in its original form. After this, Door 1 was retired from use for unknown reasons.
The final use of the exterior TARDIS for the 2005 series was on Friday 11th March 2005, when it was on location at Lounden Square in Cardiff. This was for the stunt work involving Jackie and Mickey helping Rose open the heart of the TARDIS. It’s perhaps fitting that the final use of a TARDIS for the series should prove to be another oddity, reverting to the hybrid style last seen during Father’s Day — Frame ‘A’, paired with Doors 3 and 4.
This same combination made its first TV appearance not in Doctor Who at all, but rather on Blue Peter, when Christopher Eccleston appeared on the programme during the week beginning March 21st.
Although this configuration had been the odd one out for the first series,
it would become far more common as the programme moved into its
second year.
