10 Doctor Who Facts Most Fans Don't Know
7. The Met Police Sued The BBC For The Rights To The TARDIS
In the run-up to the 1996 TV Movie, the Patent Office approved the familiar blue box of the Doctor's TARDIS as a BBC trademark.
The police objected to this, stating that they should own the copyright given that the TARDIS was disguised as a police public call box. However, police boxes had begun to disappear from UK streets in 1958, five years prior to the broadcast of Doctor Who's very first episode in 1963. This led the hearing officer to state:
"I bear in mind that for most of the period since the police call box was taken out of service, the only sight the public at large would have had of this item of street furniture has been in the TV programme Doctor Who, provided by the BBC where it is a TARDIS, a fictional time-travelling machine with the external appearance of a police box."
It was a bizarre move by the Met to try and profit from the merchandise from a sci-fi show, and nowadays their craven commercialism would surely attract the attention of the anti-corruption officers from Line of Duty's AC-12.
You can just picture Ted Hastings staring at a Met copyright lawyer across a table of TARDIS t-shirts, piggy banks, and bubble bath bottles, firmly shaking his head and uttering: "You've got a bloody nerve".