Bigger on the Inside Doctor Who Confidential

Look at you.

Oh, you sexy thing!

-VICTORIA: Where are we?

-SECOND DOCTOR: Oh, it's the TARDIS, it's my home.

At least, it has been for a considerable number of years.

But it's a police box!

What on Earth's it doing here? These things are usually on the street.

Feel it.

Feel it.

-It's a faint vibration.

-It's alive.

Alive.

I'm alive.

The Doctor's latest confused companion...

-Goodbye. No, not goodbye, what's the other one?

-'..is someone very familiar.'

# Hello, old friend

# The night is dark and I feel cold... #

The Doctor meets the TARDIS.

The TARDIS becomes a woman.

-It's called the TARDIS, this thing.

-Time And Relative Dimension In Space.

-It's me.

She's not only the Doctor's personal fantasy, but countless men around the country, I'm sure.

See that box over there? That's me!

Let's personify her. She gets 42 minutes of life.

-What do I call you?

-You can call me...

Sexy.

I think he's astounded, flabbergasted, afraid, endeared and turned on all at the same time.

You have what you've always had.

You've got me.

So join Doctor Who Confidential as we witness an explosive meeting of minds.

At the Doctor Who studios, the cast and crew are preparing to shoot on a set that seems very familiar.

Hey, Confidential.

Back in your TARDIS.

It's where I did my first scene. I can remember it

weirdly like it was yesterday.

Terribly nervous. I did a little dance around here.

I like this TARDIS. It's darker.

It is a darker sort of light.

I don't know what it all does in the same way, though.

A pump of sorts. Here she is, come on, Suranne. Come and say hello.

This is the TARDIS, can you believe?

She has no idea what she's let herself in for. Folklore.

So, hi. This is Matt Smith with Suranne Jones. Hi, Suranne.

-Hi, Matt Smith, how are you?

-Good, thanks.

-How's your time been on Doctor Who?

-Brilliant.

-Everyone's been lovely.

-Oh, thanks.

I mean...were you intimidated about taking on such an iconic part and role?

-Yes.

-It doesn't show, you're very good.

Thank you. Very intimidated by...you.

Oh, thanks. Well...

Not when you smack yourself in the face!

You have such sensible hair.

Sensible hair is such a good thing.

Joining the cast and crew on set is the man responsible for bringing the TARDIS so explosively to life.

Writer Neil Gaiman.

Brilliant. Thank you very much.

This is Neil Gaiman on Confidential.

To have Neil around was a wonderful thing.

I had weirdly watched a movie called Coraline not long before, and he's a sci-fi great.

-Of course, Neil is one of the premier, if not

-the

-premier fantasy novelist on the planet.

-Cool.

That was Matt Smith.

Or possibly that was The Doctor.

I'm not quite sure which one I was talking to.

It occurred to me - not for the first time, knowing Neil's work -

I just thought, "This guy's a Doctor Who fan."

I can tell, I can smell it.

He must. He loves Doctor Who. He's practically writing Doctor Who in disguise.

Exterior, Void Space.

Bubble Universe.

Floating in utter starless darkness, a small asteroid that's a junkyard.

The Totter's Lane at the end of the universe.

On the surface, wrecked and abandoned high and low-tech things,

ripped-canvas temporary structures, held together by rope and junk.

It could come off here and come around so we're just kind of doing that.

There are four people there.

They're all dressed in patchwork clothes that look

like they were assembled from wardrobe cast-offs, using whatever was to hand.

391, take one.

Action.

-Will it be me, Uncle?

-Yes it will be you.

I only wish I could go in your place.

Nah. I don't, cos it's really going to hurt.

Holding Uncle's right hand is Idris, who is beautiful.

She wears a wrecked Victorian party dress.

It's starting.

The scene we're doing right now is before the Doctor arrives on the planet

and Idris, Aunty, Uncle and Nephew are preparing for House to kill me.

It seems like a huge responsibility to the audience and, you know,

all the fans of Doctor Who to deliver on personifying the TARDIS.

It can't be a straightforward babe. It has to be someone with real character. Real, very, very sexy.

At the same time, sexy plus motherly, plus utterly mad, plus serene.

And action.

What will happen?

Oh, Nephew will drain your mind and your soul from your body and leave your body empty.

-I'm scared.

-I expect so, dear.

We're going to build a TARDIS.

It takes a quarrel in a quarry for the Doctor and the TARDIS

to really get to the heart of their relationship.

The central idea of the story

was what would happen if the Doctor and the TARDIS actually got to talk?

I have actually rebuilt a TARDIS before. I know what I'm doing.

You're like a nine-year-old trying to rebuild a motorbike

-in his bedroom, and you never read the instructions.

-I always read the instructions!

I thought there has to be a point there were the Doctor would say...

You know, YOU have never been very reliable.

-And you have?

-You didn't always take me where I wanted to go.

I thought, and if he said that, then I know what the TARDIS would say.

-No, but I always took you where you

-needed

-to go.

And, knowing that,

it's like the entire episode grew around that conversation,

-like a pearl around a little piece of dust.

-Look at us talking.

Wouldn't it be amazing if we could always talk, even when you're stuck inside the box?

You know I'm not constructed that way.

She's every bit as smart as he is in her own way.

But her own way is very different to his way.

She exists across space and time - all of space and time simultaneously.

I exist across all space and time, and you talk and run around and bring home strays.

Turn over.

The Doctor and Idris are assembling a half-built console in front of them. A sort of Frankenstein thing.

And action!

You'll need to install the time rotor.

-How is this going to make it through the rift?

-Cut.

They've taken the one in the most of two walls, no ceiling, 1970s TARDIS as a shell.

-And action!

-We're almost done. Run computer.

Retroscope.

And they're building things.

Picking up junk, examining it, breaking bits off,

putting them into others.

Right. Perfect. Look at that. What could possibly go wrong?

That's fine. That always happens. No, hang on. Wait!

-Working incredibly smoothly together, as if they've been doing this for years.

-Right. OK. Let's go.

Like a long-married couple.

Oh, my beautiful idiot. You have what you've always had.

You've got me.

MECHANICAL THRUMMING

What's interesting about that episode is that, by the end of it,

we realise that it all comes back to good old TARDIS and Doctor.

And from Idris's dead mouth,

golden lights glitter and twinkle and gather.

Look at my girl. Look at her go!

Bigger on the inside!

A cascade of energy pours out of Idris's mouth,

a twinkling mass of pure energy. It fades into the room.

The lights in the TARDIS control room begin to flicker and change,

as if half of the room is lit by golden light,

the rest is still the greenish glow.

Finish him off, girl.

The lights are chasing each other around the control room.

The green glow is being vanquished by the golden light.

Then the control room goes dark.

-A beat.

-Doctor, are you there?

-It's so very dark in here.

-I'm here.

I think it's very hard for him to leave her,

to not have her around, physically. I think that must be...

It's such a romantic idea, really.

I'll always be here. But this is when we talked.

And now even that has come to an end.

It must have changed the relationship with his ship.

I don't know in what way yet. Maybe we'll find out.

But I'm sure if you asked him again after that episode,

he'd have a different perspective on the TARDIS. He must do.

(I love you).

He still loves her in exactly the same way.

That connection is so strong and hopefully you get, from the episode,

that that connection is so strong and that will never change.

Hours later, the Doctor is alone.

He's finally finished the work,

puts the cover back in place, presses a button on his sonic screwdriver

and the screws go down by themselves. And then, very quietly, hesitantly...

Are you there?

Can you hear me?

No, I'm a silly old...

OK, the Eye of Orion, or wherever we need to go.

Without him even touching the controls,

the light coming through the central column burns brightly

and with a crash of engines the TARDIS is taking them somewhere

that's almost definitely not the tranquil Eye of Orion.

MECHANICAL THRUMMING

Woo!

End credits.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd

Email [email protected]