Prince William Walking Around the TARDIS Set Is a Nice Reminder That ‘Doctor Who’ Is Not Dead Yet

Doctor Who‘s peculiar limbo is going to stick around for a good while yet, it seems, as no one is too keen to definitively put a point to the show’s future beyond a general, hopeful desire that one day it will return. That’s meant that ever since the show’s bizarro mess of a season finale earlier this year, Doctor Who fans have been left clinging to scraps to indicate that the show is not staring down the Dalek raygun barrel of total extermination. The latest scrap? His Royal Highness, the Prince of Wales.

Well, mostly the set he’s standing on. But Prince William was at least the avenue to remind us that that set—a very important one indeed at that, the latest TARDIS console room—is still ready and available for filming.

Radio Times reports that Prince William recently visited Bad Wolf Studios in Cardiff, where Doctor Who has been filmed in recent years, in his capacity as the president of the British Academy of Television and Film Arts, a position the Prince of Wales has held since 2010. Pictures of the royal visit were released today, along with the news that Prince William recorded a message at the studio that was released during tonight’s BAFTA Cymru Awards ceremony (where Who showrunner Russell T Davies accepted an award for Outstanding Contribution to Television), promoting the local film and television industry in Wales… which of course included British royalty stepping inside the TARDIS.

Putting aside Doctor Who‘s own storied history with the royal family—including that time the show nearly dropped a Titanic-shaped starship on top of Buckingham Palace (and then actually did, in an alternate timeline)—the news here is mostly heartening to fans still waiting to hear more definitive news about the show’s future, with the BBC and Disney alike remaining vaguely noncommittal but hopeful about an eventual return to adventures in time and space. And that news is that simply the TARDIS set itself, one of the most important standing sets of the series, is, well, still standing.

There had been some errant rumors that the set could be potentially broken down—i.e., dismantling the set entirely to open up the occupied studio space for other sets—if Doctor Who wasn’t planning a return any time soon (or at all). But the fact that the set has at least been maintained, even if only for the occasional visit, does at least indicate Doctor Who‘s on-screen future isn’t totally done and dusted. It leaves fans in pretty much the same place they’ve been since the broadcast of “The Reality War”—eying a 2027 return at the earliest, decreasing in likeliness the longer it goes without the BBC making any announcement—but a glimmer of hope is better than no hope at all.

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