Tales of the TARDIS Makes Doctor Who Feel Like Forever

“This song is ending,” the Tenth Doctor is told as he limps painfully back to the TARDIS to choir-backed, tentacle-faced psychic alien with a glowing ball attached to said tentacle face. The other incredibly Doctor Who thing is that it’s truest line of dialogue ever spoken in 60 years of the franchise.

WatchThe M3 MacBook Pro: Made Dark for Halloween CCShare SubtitlesOffEnglishScreenshot: BBCAdvertisementBut just because things change don’t mean that there isn’t stuff that sticks around in your heart and minds—time changes, yes, but the memories of all these heroes and villains, all these adventures, the happiness and the heartbreak, they all live on, within Doctor Who fans as well as the show itself. It is this idea that AdvertisementTales of the TARDIS operates a series of special omnibus collections of classic Doctor Who stories: the Fifth Doctor story “Earthshock;” the Second Doctor’s “The Mind Robber;” the Sixth Doctor’s “Vengeance on Varos;” the anniversary special “The Three Doctors;” the First Doctor’s “The Time Meddler,” and the Seventh Doctor’s “The Curse of Fenric.” Each story is condensed into a single edited episode, bookending new material featuring a veritable cast of Doctor Who icons, as they find themselves gathered in a TARDIS that is a mashup of 60 years of console room designs, cramped, stuffy, but also oddly homey because of it. Image: BBCAdvertisementThis “Remembered TARDIS” is how Tales of the TARDIS both excuses that its stars have aged since we last saw them, and also how it reunites Doctors and companions, and old friends pulled apart after their adventures in Time and Space. The Seventh Doctor and Ace (Sylvester McCoy and Sophie Aldred) physically reunite after their brief moment in “But while memories are fixed upon moments, these new scenes with all these characters are about acknowledging that time has indeed changed. Jo and Clyde reminisce over the people they’ve lost in Sarah Jane and Jo’s husband, Cliff Jones, as do the Fifth Doctor and Tegan over the death of Adric in “Earthshock.” Zoe and Jamie and Steven and Vicki all reflect on how their lives have changed since traveling with the Doctor, and in an especially touching arc the Seventh Doctor and Ace finally reconcile their dark, twisting relationship and all the anger and hurt that came between them as a result of the Doctor’s machinations. It’s an acknowledgement that these characters don’t ever have to be held in amber beyond their last official appearance in whatever you consider “proper” Doctor Who to be—even if we didn’t see some of them for years, these characters went on and had lives, changed and grew as people. Just because they don’t look exactly the way we remember them doesn’t mean that they aren’t those people in the here and now.AdvertisementImage: BBCAnd in the here and now, in this TARDIS of memories—where it’s never really sure if these people are their physical selves or some sort of memory ghost, none of which really matters either way—these stories can never end. Each of the Tales of the TARDIS shorts ends with that kind of hopeful reminder. In some cases it’s literal, like Ace, Tegan, Peri, and their respective Doctors deciding to use the chance of their reunions to travel the universe together again. More bittersweetly, in the case of Jo and Clyde, they strive to continue their adventures in the spirit of those they’ve lost, keeping them in their hearts and minds forever. But they are all united in this idea that these characters and stories are timeless as long as we remember them, generations after generations of Doctor Who to be kept alive across many years to come. Their may come and go, or take a pause, but the stories? They always go on.AdvertisementWe’ll find out Screenshot: BBCAdvertisementTales of the TARDIS is available to watch now in the UK and Ireland on the BBC iPlayer. An international release is currently not planned. Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest

Based on reporting by gizmodo.com.