We’ve talked quite a bit about our favourite console rooms in the past, and there have been quite a variety of them, but we don’t have many discussions about all the other rooms in the TARDIS. 

Here’s a dimensionally transcendental box of wonder containing… well, we don’t know what, because in 60+ years, we’ve barely looked around. And the few times we have been invited in, rarely have we seen much good stuff. 

Easily 99.99999% of our time spent in the TARDIS has been in the console room,  but that main room might only account for less than 1% of the box’s interior. We don’t even know. Some console rooms either impress or distract the viewer enough that they don’t even think about what lay deeper into the machine. 

Take, for example, the original console room in An Unearthly Child. Spacious, enigmatic, and futuristic, but with practical buttons, knobs, and switches. Early on, we really didn’t think too much about just how big the rest of the ship is, as this was all new to us. In those earliest if days, we got a glimpse of a lounge with recliners, a side hallway where the giant computer bank containing the fault locator, a food machine, and later we saw the Space Time Visualizer in another side room. 

This sated the curiosity of many fans at the time. And although that was an impressive start, the producers eventually focused mainly on the console room. And so it was for many a season.

Patrick Troughton’s Second Doctor takes us into the TARDIS’ power room for a minute in The Mind Robber, but after that, everything was focused in and around the console room until Season 14, when Tom Baker’s Fourth Doctor gave Sarah Jane Smith (and us) a short tour, glimpsing a couple halls, a regal boot cupboard and… another console room! Although this was entirely different from the main console room we knew. This Victorian control room was rich in wood, brass, and stained glass — indeed, a fan favourite at the time. A season later, we got a more expansive and eclectic tour of the interior, with several levels including an art museum, a botanical garden, and the infamous swimming pool. This was the first time the viewers really started to grasp just how big this interior was, and we still didn’t know if we’d scratched the surface. 

But then, John Nathan-Turner stepped in and he, more than anyone at that point, started really showing us around on a regular basis. The Cloister Room, for instance — oh, and everyone got bedrooms! Romana, Adric, Tegan, Nyssa, Turlough: they all got their own rooms (except the Doctor, as far as we knew). We got introduced to the Zero Room, and numerous hallways time and again. JNT may have had his difficulties and blind spots but he was the greatest TARDIS tour guide the classic series ever had, particularly with the Peter Davison team. 

Odd that it took nearly 20 years to get a really good look around. 

The 1996 TV Movie with Paul McGann’s Eighth Doctor focused mostly on the now lavish console room that resembled a study, but we also got a look at the chamber containing the TARDIS’ link to the Eye of Harmony.

The Ninth and Tenth Doctors stuck strictly to the console room once again, except for a three second wide shot of the wardrobe room. A room that looked so cool, it left us wanting more. In fact, it was of a much nicer design than the console room itself with its grunge theme.

We had to wait until the Matt Smith era before more exploration was done. Whereas the grunge room was large but empty, the Eleventh Doctor had arguably the most wondrous looking console room reminiscent of Willy Wonka fantasy aesthetic. It also had stairs and levels that led to bedrooms, etc., which we never saw — although there was talk of bunk beds.

And only when a malevolent entity entered the TARDIS and started torturing Amy and Rory did we see more inner hallways of the ship. We also learned that the TARDIS archives all its control rooms, so they’re all dotting around behind the scenes still!

But then came Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS. Easily the most extensive exploration of the interior, as the Doctor hurried to save Clara from a locked-down and defensive TARDIS, and zombies, while a crew of brothers roamed around looking for salvage and loot. We got to see the magnificent library, the observatory(!), the link to the Eye of Harmony once again, and crucially for the story itself, the Architectural Reconfiguration System. In essence, some of the most vital and interesting sections of the ship — as far as we know. But it took writing a story about the TARDIS interior for us to finally get the grand tour. 

With the arrival of Peter Capaldi’s Twelfth Doctor, there was a lovely compromise with the console room. Possibly the most intricate, detailed, and fully furnished of any of them to date. Having now seen so much of the inner workings in the Eleventh Doctor’s era, the Twelfth Doctor just decided to bring a lot of stuff into the console room. He had his library in there, along with a work bench, chalk board… it was like a university professor’s apartment loft, or study, and it exuded warmth. 

The Thirteenth Doctor’s console room was rather ramshackle, filled with giant plastic crystals and nothing was seen beyond that room. 

Which brings us to the present, with the gleaming white version inhabited by Fifteenth Doctor, Ncuti Gatwa. Having seen this version since the beginning of the Disney era, while it is nice to look at, one can’t help but notice that, like the grunge model for the Ninth and Tenth Doctors, it’s big, but empty. In fact, the current model looks much bigger than the grunge desktop model, but all the emptier. It has ramps, stairs, ramps and more ramps, but so far, they don’t lead anywhere that we’ve seen. 

I’m assuming that since Russell T Davies never showed us much beyond the console room during his first run, that it might be the same this time. It seems a shame to have such an expansive room filled with nothing. 

There could be bunk beds.