Doctor Who Series 11: 10 Big Questions We Are Asking After 'Rosa'
9. What Happened Between Episode Two and Episode Three?
The reason for the TARDIS’s arrival in 1950s Montgomery is soon accounted for by the presence of Artron energy from Krasko’s vortex manipulator. Not for the first time, the sentient time ship has taken the Doctor to where she needs to be.
But this isn’t the first detour on the way from Desolation to Sheffield. The Doctor thinks it’s because she is still getting used to the remodelled controls, but whatever the reasons it doesn’t inspire confidence in her accidental companions, especially Graham who notes that they’ve landed in the wrong time and place fourteen times so far.
It is an odd detail to include given that there is much play on the fact that the companions are in awe of stepping into the past. It’s as if Montgomery 1955 is their first foray back in time.
The Doctor, too, has not quite got used to her new gender and the different ways she is addressed as a result, so with all of them still finding their feet, it’s unlikely that they even made it out of the TARDIS on those other occasions. But is the Doctor right in her suspicions, after all, the newly regenerated twelfth Doctor had to ask Clara if she knew how to fly the TARDIS?
On that occasion the Doctor had only just regenerated and he was in a post-regenerative confused state. Here, the Doctor is much more with it, to the point of having been able to build both a new sonic from scratch and a device to get them to the TARDIS in the first place.
The other possibility is that the TARDIS is acting up for a reason. We’ve yet to find out why the ship ended up on Desolation, and it’s worth keeping an eye out on the TARDIS’s behaviour, which may well be a feature of the finale.