Doctor Who mythology: Does the Doctor really leave the TARDIS brakes on?
By James Aggas
Has the whole of Doctor Who history been filled with the Doctor leaving the brakes on when travelling? Or was this simply a joke from River at her husband’s expense?
As an active Doctor Who fan as well as a writer, you tend to take part in many online groups and discussions regarding the mythology of the series, big or small. One discussion that recently caught my eye was from Series Five episode The Time of Angels.
It’s regarding a moment when River Song “parked” the TARDIS. The Doctor comments that the TARDIS “didn’t make the noise”. River explains to the Doctor that it’s not supposed to make that noise. It’s just that the Doctor always “leaves the brakes on”.
Now, I had just taken this to be one of River’s (many) comments made at the Doctor’s expense. A joke, nothing more. But I was surprised to learn that a number of fans actually took this moment seriously. Is it even remotely possible that the TARDIS really isn’t supposed to make that iconic sound? Especially as the Doctor explains that he really loves that noise?
Now, many of us know that the Doctor isn’t exactly great at flying the TARDIS. Even by his own people’s standards, he’s terrible at it.
He failed the equivalent of a TARDIS driving test, as he commented in The Shakespeare Code. He completely ignored the manual that Romana showed him in The Pirate Planet, before she landed the TARDIS perfectly. In fact, in the first six seasons of the series, he had absolutely no control over the TARDIS at all!
So has he really been doing the equivalent of “leaving the brakes on” this entire time?
Was River’s comment about leaving the brakes on accurate? Or do most TARDISes make that noise?
(Image credit: Doctor Who/BBC.
Image obtained from: official Doctor Who website.)
Other “brakes” being left on
No. Taking the whole series into account, it’s a very definitive no.
That’s the short version of the answer. Here’s the long version explaining why: every TARDIS in Doctor Who has made that sound. Not just his own, but most other Time Lords’, too, including the Master’s, the Rani’s and the Monk’s, to name a few. Now either they’ve all been flying their ships badly, or perhaps, it’s just more likely that anything materializing or dematerializing makes that sound.
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And I do mean anything. There have been a few examples over the years – particularly during the Jon Pertwee era – of people and objects making exactly the same sound when they materialize. (You can see some of these examples in this great YouTube edit.)
Muting the sound
So why did the TARDIS arrive without making the noise in The Time of Angels? Well, maybe it did, at least on the outside, but we just didn’t hear it. Like I said, one thing we do know is that the Doctor is pretty bad at flying his own ship. At the very least, he’s really not interested in any feature or control unless it’s crucial to keeping everyone alive. (And even that’s not necessarily a guarantee.)
So it wouldn’t be too unbelievable if the Time Lords had found a way of muting the sound, but he didn’t know about it. Not on the outside, though. This quote from the Eighth Doctor in Grand Theft Cosmos sums up not only just how loud the TARDIS can be, but also why:
"I’m sorry, but there’s no way to make the rendering of the space-time continuum any quieter!"
But perhaps there’s a button so that, for anyone travelling inside a TARDIS, they don’t need to hear a huge loud noise to know that they’ve arrived. Of course, even if the Doctor were aware of it, like he said, he loved hearing the noise, at least.
So why did River say her husband had been “leaving the brakes on”? Like I said, a joke at her husband’s expense. Or Moffat forgetting a lot of major continuity. Either’s applicable.
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Did you think River was being serious about the TARDIS brakes? Do you think it’s meant to be taken seriously? Or was Moffat just simply trying to make a joke? Let us know what you think in the comments below.