This first-hand account reveals how the 1960s TARDIS prop was painstakingly recreated for the Christmas Special.

FEATURE BY MATT SANDERS

TARDIS builders Matt Sanders (above) and Tony Farrell.

On Saturday 9 June 2007 I went to a Doctor Who convention, and in the evening we all watched the first broadcast of the episode Blink. At one point DI Billy Shipton (Michael Obiora) points out that the TARDIS isn’t a real police box: “The phone’s just a dummy, and the windows are the wrong size.” The convention audience thought this was very funny indeed.

As a police box devotee, I knew that writer Steven Moffat was making a sly reference to online debates about the unexpected proportions of the police box in recent series. Little did I know that those proportions would play a role in my own TV career…

Ten years later I was the Art Department draftsman on the 2017 series of Doctor Who, responsible for drawing up such sets as the Chasm Forge mining station, the Vatican library, the Monks’ pyramids, the Ice Warrior hive, the Iron-Age cairn, the Mondas spaceship and the roof of the Cyberman hospital… And then came the Christmas Special, Twice Upon a Time.

Plans for the 1966 version of the TARDIS exterior, drawn by Tony Farrell.

All additional images in this article © Matt Sanders.