Bathrooms, restrooms, washrooms, water closets, heads, johns, loos… Whatever you want to call them, consider these musings about toilets in relation to Doctor Who.
Here in the United States, most of the time we refer to a room containing a toilet as a bathroom, whether or not it contains a bath. The vast majority of rooms with toilets contains sinks, so I suppose that bathing does happen either way.
There is a running gag amongst fans of Star Trek that there is an extreme lack of bathrooms on the franchise’s various space vessels. They do, however, appear now and again. Doctor Who has its share of scenes in toilets, or at least mentions of them, as well. The following are some examples.
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In ‘Boom Town,’ Blon Fel-Fotch Passameer-Day Slitheen uses her rather gaseous body as an excuse to lure Cathy Salt to a public restroom in order to kill her, but spares her life upon learning that Cathy is pregnant. In ‘Love & Monsters,’ the members of LINDA do not have a restroom where they hold their meetings, so they have to use the one in a local pub. In ‘The Bells of Saint John,’ it is revealed that Mahler was about to fix The Shard‘s toilets when his mind was taken over by the Great Intelligence and became an office worker.
One of the most memorable moments in a public restroom in the history of Doctor Who is from ‘The Impossible Astronaut.’ In this scene, Amy witnesses a White House staffer named Joy get disintegrated by a Silent.
In part three of ‘Pond Life,’ the series of short webisodes, Rory and Amy find an Ood sitting on their toilet, about which Rory comments, “Ood on the loo.” In ‘The Power of Three,’ Rory is mildly exasperated to see that a patient named Mr. Ryan has gotten his foot stuck down a toilet again.
Just as is done in many places around the globe, in the United Kingdom, people in different socioeconomic classes use differing terms for certain items. Using the term “toilet” instead of “loo” is one of the things that gave away a murderer’s true identity in ‘The Unicorn and the Wasp.’
"Agatha: You’ve never met these people and these people have never met you. I think the real Robina Redmond never left London. You’re impersonating her!Robina: How silly! What proof do you have?Agatha: You said you went to the toilet…Donna: Oh, I know this. If she was really posh, she’d say “loo.”"
What inspired me to write about toilets is a recent article from Radio Times regarding tweets from Ingrid Oliver and Michelle Gomez.
And you were right to be wary. No one gets out of that Tardis unscathed, especially Osgood!!! https://t.co/6IweBR7aiO
— MichelleGomez (@MichelleGomez) February 1, 2016
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There is a chance that you are reading this while on the toilet. If so, let us know in the comments… just, please, do not go into too much detail.
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