Box

The term of box was applied to many types of usually-rectangular containers. Not least among them where the police boxes whose form was borrowed by the Doctor's TARDIS after her visit to 1963 London, prompting the Doctor to define themselves as "a madman with a box" (or variations thereof) on many occasions.

Usage

The TARDIS as a box

Following a stopover in 1963 London, the Doctor's TARDIS was stuck with the exterior shape of a telephone box, specifically a police box, due to a malfunction in its chameleon circuit. (TV: "The Cave of Skulls" ^[+]Part of An Unearthly Child, Loading...{"namedep":"The Cave of Skulls (2)","1":"An Unearthly Child (TV story)"}) As the First Doctor explained to Ian Chesterton and Barbara Wright, the box was an entrance chamber to a fourth dimension, leading directly into the control room. (COMIC: The Secrets of the Tardis ^[+]Loading...["The Secrets of the Tardis (comic story)"])

The Doctor would continue to refer to his TARDIS as a "box" all throughout their lives; the Eleventh Doctor called himself "a madman with a box" (TV: The Eleventh Hour ^[+]Loading...["The Eleventh Hour (TV story)"]) and, while believing he was dying, looked back on his story as that of "a daft old man who stole a magic box and ran away". (TV: The Big Bang ^[+]Loading...["The Big Bang (TV story)"]) He referred to the TARDIS's physical shell as "the box" when the heart of the TARDIS wrenched back control of said shell from House, declaring that "now she [was] back in the box again". (TV: The Doctor's Wife ^[+]Loading...["The Doctor's Wife (TV story)"]) His next regeneration, at a turning point in understanding himself, proclaimed himself "an idiot! With a box, and a screwdriver!". (TV: Death in Heaven ^[+]Loading...["Death in Heaven (TV story)"])

Ruby Sunday once described the TARDIS as "a battered blue box full of secrets". (PROSE: Who's the Doctor? ^[+]Loading...{"page":"6","1":"Who's the Doctor? (short story)"})

Other boxes

Pandora's box was a legendary item to which the Pandorica bore a resemblance. Before he was made aware of its true nature by the Dalek members of the Pandorica Alliance, the Eleventh Doctor also derisively called the Pandorica "a box". (TV: The Pandorica Opens ^[+]Loading...["The Pandorica Opens (TV story)"])

An advanced, interactive computer who served as Liz Shaw's companion shortly before her retirement from the Preternatural Research Bureau also went by the name of Box, as, indeed, she resembled one. (HOMEVID: When to Die ^[+]Loading...["When to Die (home video)"])

Despite forming an alliance with the Daleks, the Master privately grumbled them off as "stupid tin boxes", in a contemptuous reference to their casings. (TV: Frontier in Space ^[+]Loading...["Frontier in Space (TV story)"])

The Moment's true form was a small box. When its interface spoke to the War Doctor during the Fall of Gallifrey, it sarcastically noted that "stuck between a girl and a box" summarised his life rather well. (TV: The Day of the Doctor ^[+]Loading...["The Day of the Doctor (TV story)"]) Inspired by that adventure, the Doctor helped secure the peace of Operation Double via two, empty, Osgood Boxes. (TV: The Zygon Inversion ^[+]Loading...["The Zygon Inversion (TV story)"])