Broken Doors

Everyone's going on about the 2010 series. Oooh, will Karen Gillan play Jamie McCrimmon's great-to-the-power-of-150 granddaughter (yeah, cause only the McCrimmons out of the entire Scottish nation are worthy to be in an English show, and who cares if the comics already did that?). Will Matt Smith wear a hat? Will the titles be different? Will the music change? What will the new console room look like?

Well, riddle me this, fandom...

WHICH DOOR will the Doctor use to get in and out of the police box?

The bloke who drew this designed the 2005 police box. Significant? I think so...

Answer me that.

Go on.

Don't tell me you haven't noticed.

There are two doors in the front of the police box. One has the intructions ("pull to open" etc) and one doesn't. One has a phone behind it, one has the keyhole. So tell me: which one will open to allow you access to that fabulously expansive interior?

Let's look at the easiest example. Tom Baker and the Fourth Doctor use the right-hand instruction-free door for six years. Six long years only one of those doors is used over more than one prop. Sarah, Harry, Leela, K9, Romana I, all know that door and no other as the way to get in and out of the TARDIS. From Robot to Shada, no other door is used.

And then, in The Liesure Hive onwards, they use the left-hand door.

WHY?!

It wasn't the coat, the content, the 45-minute format or the violence - it was using the boring right-hand door that spelt the end for Doctor Who!

Now, a quick digression on police box design. The basic idea is that the door with the phone ISN'T a door, but actually a bit of wall. It's not supposed to open. Ergo, why the right-hand door is used: strictly speaking, it's the only door. And are we supposed to believe that someone as passionate about the role of the Doctor as Tom Baker wouldn't have noticed that this new police box was using a different door to the old one? That the cast and crew wouldn't notice a difference? But the question is: why the bloody hell change something like that?

The fact is that the previous police box prop COULDN'T open the other door. This mean that when, in Logopolis, when they brought that prop back, the fact the Doctor used a different door to enter the box was a clue as to its untrustworthy nature. When he's in the real TARDIS, he pushes the "pull to open" door to enter (watch as the Jovanka clan use that door), but the police box, with the phone, means that you have to use the other door. It's a plot point... which down to dodgy direction ends up totally screwed when...

What's wrong with this picture?

Of course, different doors get used quite a lot. An Unearthly Child Or Whatever The Hell You Call It makes the right-hand door the one door to use (note how it slams shut by itself in the second episode). But in one of the few Marco Polo snapshots available...

The Doctor reveals the 'standard door' circuit has broken...

The door swaps between the two, sometimes both, and in the mid Troughton era they put the instructions on the wrong door (literally, as if you see The Ice Warriors, they use the BACK of the police box to climb out of), but from Pertwee onwards it pretty much stays the right-hand door. And then when JNT turns up, it changes.

It stays the left-hand until, interestingly, the huge downturn in quality known as Arc of Infinity. Then, suddenly, it's the right-hand door again. It stays that way until Warriors of the Deep and it's back to the left hand, then both doors in Caves of Androzani. Then, the very next story, the Sixth Doctor uses the right-hand door once again! It stays that way until Trial of a Time Lord, but then Time and the Rani forever onwards the right-hand door (bar some Tennant occasions he uses both, normally in Christmas specials).

Ikona plays it safe after Colin Baker is sacked...

So... season 18, 18, 21 and 23 have use a different door to the others.

Clearly this means that the left-hand door is a signifier of radical, challenging Doctor Who rather than the play it safe skullduggery. Use of the left-hand door is a hallmark of the 1980s, as you can tell by looking at the comic strips. John Ridgeway always used the left-hand door, while his successors were not so brave...

Left hand door causing more radical stuff? Frobisher says his goodbyes.

Remember, RTD may have wiped out the Time Lords, but he not only used the right-hand door, he called the main character Doctor Who... In fact, his use of the TARDIS door is positively moronic - in The Stolen Earth, the Doctor opens both doors to gawp at outer space, but in Journey's End, does he sensibly open both doors to allow his groupies to enter the TARDIS quickly? No he makes them run in one at a time... through the right-hand door! Doubly significant considering the Doctor's desire to be seen as the genuine article rather than ragged anarchic Blue Suit, don't you think?

"Trad" rather than "rad"...

So, the next time you watch an episode, keep an eye out to see which door the Doctor uses to enter and exit his magnificent time ship - it could tell you a hell of a lot about what might be about to occur. After all, the first time we see him use the left-hand one on screen, he meets Vicki...

The Doctor finally reveals the truth - the doors take you to different parts of the TARDIS...

Yeah? So maybe I HAVE been drinking heavily of late - YOU WANNA MAKE SOMETHIN OF IT?!