Doctor Who Series 12: 10 Huge Questions After Fugitive Of The Judoon
5. Why Was Ruth's TARDIS Buried As A Police Box?
Before the Ruth Doctor triggered the chameleon arch and became human, she and Lee presumably had the TARDIS buried and its location marked with the fake gravestone. Conveniently a spade was still placed next to it, ready for the Doctor to dig up the grave and make the extraordinary discovery.
It makes for a wonderful scene but was it just written like this for effect? It is stretching credibility to think that covering it with soil would make it less detectable for Gat and the Judoon, so presumably the idea was to hide it from the Doctor in case memories are triggered and the Chameleon Arch compromised.
But there are other ways around the issue – like the fob-watch or fire alarm, its true nature could have been sealed from the Doctor by a perception filter. The Doctor could also have fixed the chameleon circuit and hidden the ship in plain sight.
The fact that the TARDIS is a police box has been used as an argument against the Ruth Doctor coming before Hartnell. Susan says she made up the Time and Relative Dimension in Space acronym and the ship certainly hadn’t been a police box before she left Gallifrey.
When Ian and Barbara found the police box in the Totters Lane scrapyard, Ian observed how out of place it looked. The TARDIS might have already taken on that form from an earlier visit to England by the Ruth Doctor – perhaps with Susan. The Doctor could have borrowed and returned the TARDIS before the Hartnell incarnation stole it and the next time the chameleon circuit was needed it remembered and stayed stuck thereafter.