Live from Master Closet Studios, you’re listening to the only podcast on the internet whose schedule is more wibbly wobbly than the Doctor’s! It’s the Noobs and the Whovian!
My name is Austin and I’m the Whovian, and these are my sons Corbin and Tripp and we’re the noobs!
This is the podcast that introduces a whole new generation to Doctor Who by watching an episode each week and discussing it from the perspective of a dad who’s seen it before, and two sons who haven’t.
Welcome to Episode 106 covering the Series 7 episode 10: Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS.
This is the one where the Doctor and Clara have to get to the centre, er center of the TARDIS to stop it from blowing up only to find out it already blew so they have to stop it before it starts using a big friendly button.
Production notes
- Story # 236
- Originally aired April 27 2013 to 7.69 million viewers-ish
- Written by: Steve Thompson
- Directed by: Mat King
Misc Trivia
- This is the first TV episode to have the word “TARDIS” in the title.
- How is this possible?!
Checklist
- Name of the episode spoken in dialogue?
- almost…
- Short cut: to the centre of the TARDIS
- Creature of the week
- The Time Zombies – two of the Van Baalen brothers and Clara are… burned by the star? And die, but live? It’s unclear.
- CGI
- The exploded TARDIS center in the white room
- Bow ties are cool
- Amy’s reading glasses
- Hats
- Geronimo
- Just before the jump over the snarl
- Running count – 13
- Stuff the Doctor loves
- Jiggery Pokery
- Sonic
- TARDIS
- Again, she and Clara aren’t getting along. The Doctor tries to let Clara fly her for a little bit to get to know her.
- She has her own gravity
- He manually cut on the extractor fans, why didn’t he just holler it from the doorway like before.
- It has a self-destruct?!
- There’s a room with the Doctor/Melody/River’s crib and Amy’s craft-paper TARDIS
- The telescope from Tooth and Claw
- The pool from Midnight?
- The Eye of Harmony that we talked about last week!
- Architectural reconfiguration system – reconfigures particles into anything you need
- Library with A History of the Time War
- Who in the world wrote The History of the Great Time War?!
- A lot in this episode reiterating that the TARDIS is sentient, including Tricky picking up on it
- Eleven describes it as infinite. I wonder if this is the first time this is explicitly stated
- Psychic paper
- Random
- Sonic
- Needless sacrificial death
- Clara deaths
- Sorta?
- Running count – 3
- The Question/Doctor Who?
- While reading the History of the Time War, “so that’s who…”
- You call yourself the Doctor, why? You have a name, I’ve seen it in a tiny corner.
- Strax’s armory
- Termy-wermy
- Jammie Dodger sighting
- Running count – 4
- Existential Horror
- Tricky’s brothers decided to pretend he was an android?!
Other stuff we noticed
- The Encyclopedia Gallifreya apparently transmits knowledge in liquid form
Who’s Who?
- Who is Clara Oswald?
- A girl about so high, feisty
- She died again… sorta
- He finally confronts Clara. What are you?! A trick?! A trap?!
- She has a freakout moment when he does this, but is calmed down when he saves her from falling.
- The Doctor erases all of this by rewriting the whole adventure
- You ran away with a spaceman in a box, anything could happen. I’m counting on it.
- Who is The Doctor?
- Don’t get into a spaceship with a madman, didn’t anyone ever teach you that?
- Time Lords: No dress sense, dreadful hats, but smart.
- Ok, we’re not doing hugging, I get that now
- The ol’ wiggly button trick
- Secrets protect us, secrets make us safe.
- Who is Vastra?
- Who is Jenny?
- Who is Strax?
Can we talk about wibbly wobblies?
Classic Who Connection
- Bad dress sense, Dreadful hats – he is possibly referencing Time Lord Hats and robes
- We finally see the swimming pool! Until now we had only heard about it or seen the effects of water running out from it
- We see the Seventh Doctor’s umbrella that was a usual part of his outfit. The Sixth Doctor also commonly carried an umbrella but his was multi-colored (which matched his clownish outfit). The Seventh Doctor’s was much more common looking in the cloth part, but the handle was in the iconic shape of a question mark.
- We talked recently about the Eye of Harmony and now we see it.
- The Fourth and Seventh Doctors talked about the “architectural reconfiguration system”. This is the most information we have ever had about it.
- The interior layout of the TARDIS is not fixed and has changed before. The earliest mention of this is with the Fourth Doctor with Logopolis.
- We see the Doctor closing the TARDIS door from the TARDIS console. He used to do this all the time in Classic Who.
- While time is leaking from the TARDIS the following quotes from classic who are heard
- “I made up the name TARDIS…” Susan Foreman – An Unearthly Child
- “The TARDIS is dimensionally transcendental”, “What does that mean?” – The Third Doctor and Jo – Colony in Space
- “That’s trans-dimensional engineering. A key Time Lord discovery.” – The Fourth Doctor – The Robots of Death
- “A thing that looks like a police box, standing in a junkyard…” Ian Chesterton – An Unearthly Child
Overall impressions
- Overall rating out of 10 –
- Jared – 9 TARDIS remakes
- Austin – 6 snarls
- Corbin – 8 Encyclopedia Gallifreya
- Tripp – 8 lava things
- Creep Level – out of 500
- Jared – 200
- Austin – 225
- Corbin – 125
- Tripp – 150
Theories
- Tripp thinks all the Claras are relatives, not the same person.
- Corbin says Clara is a normal person.
Listener Input
- We haven’t gotten a new review since August. Just sayin…
The Game Plan
- Next week, we continue Series 702 with episode 11: The Crimson Horror.
- After that, because we’re on the ball this time, we’re releasing the Sixth Doctor Primer minisode early! Episode 107.5 will get us all caught up for the Classic Who Rewind on episode 109.
Closing
Noobs and the Whovian is a production of Master Closet Studios, where it’s always smaller on the inside. Your Senior Producer is Austin Reason. Our Audio Engineer is Tripp Reason. Corbin Reason is our Production Editor. Special thanks to tardis.wikia.com for the trivia, and to Jared for the Classic Who Connection. Shout outs to Victor, Jared, and James for their Patreon support.
You can find us at facebook.com/noobsandthewhovian or twitter.com/noobswhovian and email us at [email protected]. Consider supporting us at https://www.patreon.com/noobsandthewhovian. Please subscribe and leave a rating wherever you found us, and share us with a friend not because we’re a great show but because we watch one.
