Police box

A police box — or police public call box — was a telephone kiosk that could be used by the police to call into a station (DW: Logopolis) or by members of the public wishing to get help from the police. (DW: "Bell of Doom")

Function and physical characterisics
Unlike telephone booths, a police box's phone was on the outside of the structure, in a little compartment that had an exterior, instructional label. (DW: The Empty Child) According to Tegan Jovanka, who once read aloud the instructions on a police box in the Borough of Barnet, the instructions were:
 * Police telephone free for use of public
 * Advice and assistance obtainable immediately
 * Officers and cars respond to urgent calls
 * Pull to open (DW: Logopolis)

Police boxes were about the size of a large cupboard, and could provide shelter to those who had the key. Inside were kept materials relevant to the conduct of police business, such as clipboards, writing utensils and forms. (DW: The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe) According to the Ninth Doctor, the space was also large enough so that it could accommodate caught criminals until they could be transported to larger facilities. (DW: Boom Town)

Incidents and appearances

 * Early in the First Doctor's travels, the TARDIS assumed the exterior shape of a police box during a five-month stopover in 1963 London. Due a malfunction in its chameleon circuit, the TARDIS became locked into that shape. (DW: An Unearthly Child)
 * Returned to London in 1965, Ian Chesterton and Barbara Wright amused themselves after sighting a real police box. (DW: The Chase)
 * The Doctor manipulated the chameleon circuit of the Monk's TARDIS to make it assume several shapes, including that of a police box. (DW: The Daleks' Master Plan)
 * Dodo Chaplet entered the TARDIS believing it to be a police box and wanting to make an emergency call about an accident. (DW: The Massacre of St Bartholomew's Eve) The exact circumstances of why Dodo needed to make such a call and her willingness to leave with the Doctor became evident only later. (PDA: Salvation)
 * On a visit to London in 1966, the Doctor solved the problem of local policemen mistaking the TARDIS for a genuine police box and trying to use it by hanging an "out of order" sign on its doors. (DW: The War Machines)
 * In 1981, as part of a complex plot, the Master materialised his TARDIS around a real police box on the Barnet Bypass. The Doctor's TARDIS, still disguised as a police box, materialised around the Master's TARDIS, also disguised as a police box, creating a dimensional anomaly and a trap for the Doctor. (DW: Logopolis)
 * Tegan Jovanka entered the Doctor's TARDIS shortly after, mistaking it for an actual police box. (DW: Logopolis) Later, the TARDIS dematerialised, leaving the nearby policemen with the normal police box.
 * The Barnet Bypass police box was mistaken for the Doctor's TARDIS by Prince Genei, who immediately abandoned his plans to conquer Earth. Shortly afterwards, the police box - the last one in England - was taken away, as it was considered useless. (BE: Useless Things)
 * In 1925, a police officer at first mistook the Fifth Doctor's TARDIS for a real police box until invited inside by him. (DW: Black Orchid)
 * In Foxgrove in 1951, Sarah Jane and Luke stumbled upon a police box. They thought that the Doctor had arrived to help them, but realised it was an ordinary police box when PC Ferguson popped his head out. (SJA: The Temptation of Sarah Jane Smith)
 * When the Doctor once more met the Monk, he had voluntarily configured his TARDIS into the shape of a police box. (DWM: 4-Dimensional Vistas)
 * In 1959 Wales, American secret agents Jerome Weismuller and Hawk used a police box to contact their superiors at the Pentagon. (DW: Delta and the Bannermen)
 * An actual police box sat across the street from where the Seventh Doctor had landed the TARDIS in 1963. (DW: Remembrance of the Daleks)
 * During a trip to London in 1966, the Ninth Doctor appreciated the fact that it was one of the rare occasions the TARDIS' police box exterior was "any cop as a disguise." Rose Tyler noticed the TARDIS had landed next to a genuine police box and asked if they normally came in pairs. (DWM: The Love Invasion)
 * Bridget Sinclair showed LINDA slides of the Doctor's TARDIS, which she described as looking like "a faux police box". In fact, she only had photos of various real police boxes. (DW: Love & Monsters)
 * DI Billy Shipton was familiar enough with real police boxes to recognise the TARDIS as a counterfeit. (DW: Blink)
 * When the TARDIS' soul briefly occupied the body of Idris, she expressed frustration that the Doctor always insisted upon opening her doors inward when real police box doors opened outward. (DW: The Doctor's Wife)
 * Attempting to feign ignorance as regards the TARDIS, DI Patricia Menzies told the Sixth Doctor in 2010 that she thought that they only had police boxes in Scotland. (BFA: The Crimes of Thomas Brewster)

Behind the scenes

 * The British Broadcasting Corporation holds a trademark to the British design of the police box as used on Doctor Who.
 * Although the TARDIS is depicted and referred to as resembling a wooden box on a number of occasions in the series, the historical police box was usually made of concrete by the 1960s. Earlier models were indeed made of wood.
 * The production team planned to feature the Barnet By-Pass box in the series in Logopolis, only to discover that it had been vandalised shortly before the filming dates. The series' spare police box prop was pressed into service to stand in for the actual box.