So it's the TARDIS doing all the driving.

Some speculation

During "Listen" an injured Doctor is taken into the TARDIS by the time traveller and the Cloister Bell can be heard in the background. I had always assumed that was for the most dire of times....

Anyway some speculation that came to mind after watching that again.

I am going out on a limb here and it's my personal belief that the TARDIS has a record of ALL known history, past, present, and future since the time vortex is part of her core. She may sense things even the Doctor is not aware of. After all she takes him to where he needs to go some of the time, although wouldn't it be interesting if through all his travels the TARDIS has somehow managed to merge enough with the Doctor that she guides him as he flies her to destinations..... I kind of like this idea.. Some of the time she's guiding his hands on those controls, subconsciously..........

 

I thought The Doctor's Wife pretty much made that explicit.

 

It did. The TARDIS, aka "Sexy Thing," has clear that it wasn't a Time Lord who stole a TARDIS, it was a TARDIS who stole a Time Lord.

 

The fairy tale notion is somewhat cool, but taken to any even remotely slight extension, within Time Lord society, it becomes laughable very quickly.

Or if a villain like the Master steals one. either the TARDIS wanted to be evil and just sat there waiting for the right person to show up, or the Master has to punish it with a whip or threaten to take away its allowance or something.

 

There used to be an idea floating around back in the '80s (I think) that Time Lord technology was so advanced that the TARDIS was semi-sentient--and "The Doctor's Wife" was that to the next level.

But I think that the idea that the TARDIS is the one that really dictates where the Doctor goes can also fit in with the classic run of the series that the TARDIS was somewhat broken and the navigation system can just be very wonky periodically. Sometimes it can land the Doctor in the right place but the wrong time or in the wrong place at the right time.

 

No The Master tickled its time oscilators a little. That sexy feeling turned it to the dark side.

 

I think that the logic is that the TARDIS has a level of sentience that can be overridden by the controls, but the Doctor tends to let her have a level of control when he doesn't have anywhere particular to go.

 

And, since he's actually not very good at piloting, sometimes she can put one over on him.

Of course, how much of "the Doctor failed his TARDIS test" stuff from the classic series is now retconned as "TARDISes need six pilots and the Doctor is flying solo" and/or "he's being obfuscatingly stupid" is debatable, as we HAVE seen the Doctor pull off some pretty amazing tricks with the TARDIS in flight. But you could easily say this is just him and the TARDIS working in harmony when they are focused. Conversely, we've seen her "fight" him when he's trying to take her somewhere really bad (Trenzalore, the loop segment in "Before The Flood", even the black hole planet in "The Satan Pit").

 

Well in Edge of Darkness the Tardis went out of its way to stop itself and everyone inside it from being destroyed by a faulty spring that would have caused it to travel back to the beginning of time, so i would say it must has a very high level of sentience when it can catch a faulty spring in what looks like a box filled with literally endless machinery and componets. lol

 

There's also the bit in "The Impossible Astronaut" where the Doctor rambles on about how some times and places are easier to get to in the TARDIS than others, and he could drop by Earth, 1969 with pinpoint accuracy whenever he cared to, but other places he could never hit the bullseye if you gave him a thousand tries.

 

Well wasn't there an old episode where the TARDIS (the old girl) magicked a wheelchair for the Doctor during a regeneration or something? So she's alive pretty much I'd say.

 

^^^Now you have said that i now have a image of Davidsons Dr in a wheel chair at some point......but no idea if that is correct of not, although Pertwee was in a wheel chair escape from the hopital.

 

Davison's debut story, "Castrovalva" had him briefly puttering about a bit like a Dalek before they carved up sections of the "Zero Room" to aid his post regenerative crisis. Given the TARDIS has just about everything stashed somewhere, including swimming pools and whatnot, the notion the Doctor had squirreled away a wheelchair is not too surprising. I'm just amazed his companions were able to locate it in a timely manner.

 

No the scene I was thinking of happens way before Davison I think it was Patrick Troughton

 

I remember the Davison scene too and google showed me this shot from Spearhead From Space, but it's in a sick-bay (ie: infirmary)

 

And that doesn't look like it's inside the TARDIS.

 

^^^The Dr was in a hospital and he is just about to escape from the back of a ambulance in a very comedic wheel chair rolling down a hill type gag. Lol

 

Yeah OK Frank Spenser did that stunt in Some Mothers Do Ave Em only on a gurnie.

 

The Second Doctor was in a wheelchair in The Two Doctors in a Spanish house. I can't think of any other times Two was in a wheelchair. Davison was the only post-regeneration Doctor in a wheelchair in the TARDIS.

 

https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/Castrovalva_(TV_story)

Oh yes it was Castrovalva, the TARDIS gave the Doctor an electric wheelchair.

Also I think the Doctor's name is Mandelbrot