12 Years Ago, Doctor Who Revealed the Real Reason the TARDIS Looks Like A Police Box

There are few vehicles in science fiction more popular than the TARDIS from Doctor Who. Bigger on the inside and capable of traversing all of time and space, the TARDIS has been with the Doctor for over 60 years on the show. Even as other characters get redesigned, the TARDIS remains looking like a standard blue police box. For the 50th anniversary in 2013, Doctor Who Magazine featured a comic storyline titled “Hunters of the Burning Stone” that reveals why the TARDIS is stuck as a police box and the reason for its consistent appearance celebrates the legacy of one of the greatest shows and characters in television history.

When Doctor Who debuted in 1963, the First Doctor, played by William Hartnell, took his first human companions the professors Barbara Wright and Ian Chesterton into the TARDIS. Initially, the writers wanted the TARDIS to alter its appearance through a chameleon circuit, which would have let it blend in with the time and place it landed in. However, building a new TARDIS for every set proved too costly. Hence, the writers had the chameleon circuit malfunction, and the Doctor unable to fix it. But it took 50 years for an in-universe explanation of how the chameleon circuit broke and turned the TARDIS into the iconic blue police box.

The Doctor Broke the TARDIS’s Chameleon Circuit to Save Humanity

“Hunters of the Burning Stone” has the Eleventh Doctor reunite with Barbara and Ian to fight the Prometheans. These aliens removed all higher emotions from humanity so that through fear humans would worship the Prometheans as gods. The Prometheans use psychic metal shaped like the Sun to implant their ideas and imagery into humanity’s minds, paralyzing them with fear. Yet, the Doctor realized that there’s another image subconsciously implanted in every human mind throughout history: the TARDIS. Thanks to his countless time-travelling adventures, the Doctor had inadvertently implanted the image of a blue police box into the subconscious of every human in history, with depictions of the TARDIS dating back to the Stone Age.

By harnessing this mental image, the Doctor reshaped the Promethean’s psychic metal sun into that of the TARDIS. This image freed humanity from its mental imprisonment, encouraging them to no longer live in fear. To ensure that the TARDIS has a consistent appearance that would ingrain itself into humanity’s collective memory as a symbol of hope, the Doctor travelled back in time to 1963 during the events of Doctor Who’s first episode. He then destroyed the younger version of the TARDIS’s chameleon circuit to ensure it would be stuck as a police box.

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The TARDIS’s Police Box Form Represents the Doctor’s Role in the Universe

For centuries, the Doctor has traversed across all of space and time to help anyone in need. “Hunters of the Burning Stone” establishes perfectly the Doctor’s role in the guidance and preservation of humanity. He has saved the Earth so many times that he’s ingrained himself and the TARDIS into humanity’s collective memory. Even if a person had never seen a police box before, the moment they see the TARDIS, they instinctively recognize that someone is there to save them. It’s even revealed in the comic that the design of the TARDIS directly inspired the creation of British police boxes as a place where people could call for help in perilous times.

This wouldn’t be the only example of the Doctor’s selflessness inadvertently influencing humans. Season 6, Episode 7, “A Good Man Goes to War,” revealed that the Time Lord inspired humans to use the word “doctor” to mean healer and wise man. Similarly, the Doctor’s adventures with the TARDIS made the police box a universal symbol of safety and security. “Hunters of the Burning Stone” uses the iconic appearance of the TARDIS as a metaphor for the enduring impact the Doctor has had, both in-universe and on science fiction. With the help of his TARDIS and through countless acts of heroism, the Doctor has remained a timeless symbol of hope and a pop culture icon.

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