There was a time before the BBC held the trademark on police call boxes and TARDIS-like kiosks lined British streets. But as we look back at these Google streetview images mashed up with vintage photographs, we can imagine that each picture represents a past visit from the Doctor.


Mark Dando created this "Ghosts of the TARDIS" series, combining the old and the new to show where these police boxes once sat. (The one up top was on Goldhawk Road in London.) It's fun to cook up Doctor-centered vignettes that might go with each photo, but it also shows how something that now triggers a sense of the fantastical was once commonplace. Once, a blue callbox didn't evoke wondrous adventures through time and space; it simply summoned the police.

Ghosts of the TARDIS [Retronaut via The Mary Sue]


Charing Cross

Hampton Hill




Old Kent Road




Plumstead Common