the tardis is such a great character but you need to analyze like five stories to piece together a single one of her traits. in colditz she dematerializes while a nazi is halfway inside of her and leaves his legs behind, dooming him to a painful gruesome death, his intestines unravelling and spilling out into the time vortex. and then several other stories reveal that she can maintain a bubble around her AND she can shake people off. she chose to do that to him. she’s FUCKED.
apologies, I failed to mention when I wrote this post that in The Husbands of River Song, the doctor mentions that the TARDIS cannot take off while someone is partially inside and partially outside. implying an extremely funny conversation. “you can’t do that, old girl. you can’t just chop people up. yes, even if they suck. look at Ace. you traumatized her. she’s had nightmares for weeks, she’s considering vegetarianism.” and then the TARDIS makes a sad blooping sound.
the part that fucked me up was how, when she turned human for a bit, the Doctor complained that she didn’t always go where he wanted, and she argued that she always took him where he needed to go. And he just accepted this as obvious truth, instead of asking about the time when she took them to the wrong place and stranded Amy Pond on a hostile planet all alone for years and then forced him and Rory to choose between her traumatized aged future-self and her young self that didn’t get stranded there and Old Amy dies miserably outside the door they’ve locked on her and why, why, WHY did the TARDIS think the doctor somehow needed that to happen
I mean, he prolly didn’t bring it up because that hadn’t happened yet? The Doctor’s Wife was episode 4 of Series 6, while The Girl Who Waited was episode 10.
Aaaaw dang I forgot that. Okay this makes the story complex in another whole way…
1. tardis doesn’t live in linear time like everyone else, so in The Doctor’s Wife she probably already KNOWS she’s gonna do this. But Doctor doesn’t know, because he still (sorta kinda) experiences time in a linear way
2. So, when she says she always goes where he needs… she (and not he) is aware of this exception… and she either doesn’t consider it an exception… Or she reasons that she can say this without getting questioned, because he doesn’t know about that exception yet
3. OR, IF the Tardis does actually experience time in some sort of wobbly not-quite-linear way that still allows her to be unaware of some things that are gonna happen…
4. then does this mean she makes the choice to go there WHILE THINKING of how she previously promised Doc she always took him where he needed?
5. And if so that is an incredibly fucked decision to make in that moment, and I can only barely imagine her motives