Doctor Who Eve Of The Daleks: 10 Huge Questions After The New Year Special

10. Why Did The TARDIS Need Another Reboot?

In Village of the Angels the Doctor was forced to trigger a reboot of the TARDIS in order to expel the Weeping Angels from the ship. She told Yaz and Dan that it would take some time for the TARDIS to complete the process. By the end of The Vanquishers the time machine was finally working again, but it still appeared to be damaged by the Flux.

So when the Doctor says the TARDIS needs to be rebooted, it’s odd that there is no mention of this previous attempt. It feels like a clumsy bit of repetition, as if that first reboot never happened. Let’s assume it isn’t a scripting error, in which case the fact that it needed multiple reboots is significant. It means for a start, we can’t trust that it has worked successfully this time, despite it looking all shiny and new when they leave Manchester to fly off for a new adventure. It also means the Doctor can’t trust the TARDIS either - not a great place to be given the secrets it now hides (The Vanquishers).

We can’t shake off the feeling that something is still wrong, and that it might go beyond the events of Doctor Who Flux. With Karl from The Woman Who Fell to Earth making a surprise cameo, maybe we should be looking to the beginning of the 13th Doctor’s life, when she was violently ejected from the ship and had a whole new adventure trying to find it again (The Ghost Monument).