Doctor Who Season 14: What was wrong with the TARDIS?

Doctor Who Season 14 saw the Time Lord’s time machine struggling a little, with everyone growing to realize that something was very wrong with the TARDIS.

While Ncuti Gatwa’s Doctor jumped right into his sci-fi adventures with his new companion, Ruby Sunday, the TARDIS is lagging a little bit. Although the police box still takes them anywhere they want to go in Doctor Who Season 14, some scenes featured the machine acting strange.

Most notably, it didn’t sound right, and it got to the point where even the Doctor himself noticed it in certain new Doctor Who episodes. With so many mysteries unraveling over the course of the season, the TARDIS just added to the list of potential reveals for the finale.

Here’s everything you need to know about what happened with the TARDIS.

What’s wrong with the TARDIS?

It was revealed in ‘The Legend of Ruby Sunday’ that the TARDIS had been cloaked by a dark entity associated with Sutekh this entire time, which caused it to make strange noises across Doctor Who Season 14.

The TARDIS, being the ancient time traveling machine it is, hasn’t always been in proper working order. It’s been through a lot over the years, but Season 14 very much implied that something was wrong. In a handful of episodes, the machine could be heard making low rumbling noises, almost as if it’s in pain.

Hints that something was wrong

The Doctor and Ruby first noticed it in Episode 2, ‘The Devil’s Chord’. After encountering Maestro, the Doctor and Ruby fly back to 1960s London. But after leaving the TARDIS and crossing the Abbey Road crosswalk, they both hear the strange noise the machine makes and stop dead in their tracks.

Ruby asks the Doctor, “Did you break it?”, to which he replies, “No, that’s something else…” Obviously, this moment would not have been made so prominent if it didn’t mean something.

Later, in Episode 4, ‘73 Yards’, the TARDIS gets a mind of its own again. After the Doctor disappears, Ruby can’t get back into the police box. It’s seemingly locked her out, which makes no sense as she has a key. What’s more, the TARDIS quickly becomes ravaged by its environment, growing moss and getting weathered by the nature around it.

It’s reluctance to let Ruby back in and the run-down nature of the TARDIS definitely seemed like another reason to believe that something’s afoot.

In Episode 6, ‘Rogue’, this happens again. When the Doctor and Rogue are exploring the TARDIS, they hear it making the same strange groaning noises heard before. Rogue asks the Doctor what it means, but the Doctor only gives a joking answer, suggesting it doesn’t like bounty hunters.

In Episode 7, we finally got some answers. When the Doctor and Ruby fly into UNIT to get help with the ongoing Susan Twist situation, they go about investigating Ruby’s mysterious mother, and even step into a Time Window to relive that night on Ruby Road on Christmas Eve in 2004.

When they discover a black, ghostly entity surrounding the police box (which Carla dubs “the Beast”), UNIT attempts to uncover what’s going on. While the Doctor’s busy working out that Susan Triad is actually Sutekh, they scan the TARDIS and see that the entity actually exists outside of the Time Window, and is in the room with them.

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When Sutekh is revealed, the shape makes itself known, appearing as a large, beastly creature around the TARDIS. That accounts for why the TARDIS has been behaving strangely; it’s been covered by a big nasty monster this whole time. The only reason they manage to get away is because they jump into the Time Window’s remembered TARDIS.

The Doctor defeats Sutekh and gets the TARDIS back

In ‘Empire of Death’ the Doctor, Ruby, and Mel survive in the remembered TARDIS as they go about coming up with a plan to stop Sutekh. Meanwhile, Sutekh and his minions still have control of the original TARDIS.

The Doctor manages to get it back when he and Ruby fling Sutekh into the Time Vortex using an “intelligent rope”, defeating him once and for all (hopefully!). After this, the TARDIS seems to go back to normal, and the Doctor and Ruby fly it out of UNIT.

For more Who, check out everything there is to know about Susan Twist, and check out our ranking of every Doctor Who Season 14 episode. You can also find out if the Devil’s Chord is real, for some trivia. 

Don’t miss our guide to Doctor Who Season 15, too!