Doctor Who: Every TARDIS Interior Ranked From Worst To Best

If there are no round things on the walls, can you even call it a TARDIS?

Doctor Who Every TARDIS Interior Ranked From Worst To Best
BBC Studios

Doctor Who has changed a lot over the years, and that includes the TARDIS. While the core image of a police public call box that's bigger on the inside has remained a constant, both the exterior and the interior have had countless tweaks.

Though there were subtle changes to the colour of the time rotor or the layout of the buttons on the console, the look of the TARDIS interior remained fairly consistent throughout the beginning and the end of the classic era. As such, this list will only consider the biggest or most notable changes to the console room over Doctor Who's six decades.

The 1970s era of Doctor Who saw a raft of notable changes to the inside of the TARDIS, prompting Patrick Troughton's oft-repeated criticism of his successor's taste for interior design. It also introduced the most radical TARDIS redesign up to that point, during Tom Baker's third season as the Doctor.

It was only with the modern series that the TARDIS got a considerable redesign with each new Doctor (except Ten). Some of these redesigns are better than others, and each will feature in this ranking of worst to best TARDIS interiors.

14. The Thirteenth Doctor's TARDIS (2018 - 2022)

Doctor Who Every TARDIS Interior Ranked From Worst To Best
BBC Studios

Jodie Whittaker's portrayal of the Thirteenth Doctor was a bit like everybody's favourite mad space Aunt, which was a perfect tone for the show's first female Doctor. The only problem was that this mad space Aunt also had a new age crystal shop for a TARDIS console room.

From the giant Himalayan salt lamp time rotor, to the custard cream dispenser, it all felt a bit too try-hard. It was also the absolute worst console room to choose for an era of the show that had the biggest TARDIS crew of the modern era.

It might have been hard for the writers to find satisfying plots for each of the four members of the TARDIS team during the Whittaker era, but it was even harder to frame them all in a shot on that insanely crowded TARDIS set. From the obstructive central column to the dangling wires and rigid spires, it was often very hard to see what was going on during busy TARDIS scenes.

All that being said, it looked really cool when dressed in blue for Nikola Tesla's Night of Terror.

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Citizen of the Universe, Film Programmer, Writer, Podcaster, Doctor Who fan and a gentleman to boot. As passionate about Chinese social-realist epics as I am about dumb popcorn movies.