Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS

Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS
by Steve Thompson
Originally Broadcasted: April 27th, 2013

In helping to teach Clara about the TARDIS, the Doctor takes down the shields at exactly the wrong moment. The moment when a salvage ship is passing by. The ship is exploding, and Clara is trapped inside. It's up to the Doctor and the salvage team members to save Clara from the centre of the TARDIS...

This season of Doctor Who has had many moments for fans to look forward to. The return of the Ice Warriors, the forthcoming naming of the Doctor, and this wonderful deep look into the TARDIS for the first proper time ever. I say proper time, because we have gone further into the TARDIS before, just not quite as grand as this. The Invasion of Time tried to convince us that the interior of the TARDIS is a disused mental hospital. A few years later in stories like Logopolis and Castrovalva, we got to see many rooms of the TARDIS, such as the Zero Room, some strange garden area, and Romana's room. But here in Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS, we get the first story actually based off that premise. And boy does it deliver! Thanks to the wonders of CGI, we get to see many wonderful rooms deep inside the TARDIS. We finally get to see the swimming pool that has been mentioned so many times before. The library stands right at the heart of the TARDIS, with its roof making an outline of the top of the Police Box. In that library, Clara reads a book with a very interesting title: "The History of the Time War." Many a Doctor Who fan has always wanted to see what happened during the Time War, so maybe The Name of the Doctor and/or the 50th anniversary special will delve into that. The Doctor, Clara, and the salvage crew make their way to the TARDIS' engine room to stop her from exploding, and they must use the Eye of Harmony to do that. The Eye of Harmony has been seen before in The Deadly Assassin and the Doctor Who TV Movie. The one part of the episode that I was a bit perplexed by were the deformed creatures that kept attacking everyone. I had such a great theory to who they were. Old companions of the Doctor. I was wrong, they were actually Clara. Which made more sense in terms with this story, as the Doctor finally confronted Clara about her mysterious qualities. The whole side story with the Van Baalen Brothers was pretty interesting, but I think in the end ultimately distracted from the main focus of this story: The TARDIS. After writer Steve Thompson's previous Who effort (The Curse of the Black Spot), I was a bit worried if Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS would live up to the hype. I needn't have worried, for this was a great episode of Doctor Who that finally gave us a detailed look into one of the most iconic elements of the show!

Luke's Rating: 9/10