Doctor Who Series 12: Ten Huge Questions After Can You Hear Me?
6. What Is The TARDIS Telepathic Circuit And Have We Seen It Before?
This week’s episode included a rare appearance of the TARDIS’s telepathic circuit. The Doctor connects the component, via a steampunk helmet, to Graham’s brain in order to find the coordinates for the two planets in his vision. It appears to be a last resort after the Doctor had, rather naively, asked Graham if he could help to pinpoint their location. This part of the TARDIS, like many others, has a confusing and muddled history, with it taking various forms and functions over the years, from telepathic conferencing with the Time Lords to the translation of alien languages.
The main function is to navigate the TARDIS. The 13th Doctor used the device to locate Yaz’s grandmother in 1947 when it was able to scan the date stamps on her broken watch (Demons of the Punjab). It is a wonder that such a useful feature barely gets an outing, but the Doctor may simply be reticent to use it due to the invasive nature of the technique when applied to sentient beings.
Clara had a stickier time with it than Graham (pun intended). At this time, the circuit was of a semi-organic nature and her hand almost fused with the gunky material as the TARDIS attempted to extract the location of a creature the Doctor thought had been stalking him (Listen). A similar thing happened when the Doctor used Clara’s memories of Danny Pink to locate him in the ‘afterlife’.