Board Thread:The Reference Desk/@comment-16502426-20151130235824/@comment-88790-20160202154015

I know it's a thing in Star Trek for 47 to turn up often (until the production team tired of the joke).

As with OttselSpy25 I'm not aware of anything. I think as OttselSpy25 says we can discount the TARDIS type as there's multiple TARDIS Type numbers out there.

I think the 4 incidents that have been cited does not make a pattern. I think for there to be a pattern there'd have to be focused behind the scenes work for it to happen. Which means you'd have to look at a set of stories worked on by the same script editor or executive producers. Which for the former I think someone would have noticed in Classic Who and the patterns for New Who have been rather more obvious (arcs etc).

So that would leave the comics and Big Finish's audio productions to look for patterns, but again if there's a consistent narrative element in their stories they usually take the form of arcs rather than in jokes like this.