Does the front door of the TARDIS always open up to the control room?

Question

In all of the episodes of Doctor Who that I've seen the TARDIS' front door opens up to the control room. However, it would seem that given the TARDIS' capabilities it would be possible for the door to open up to any internal space within the TARDIS.

Has the front door of the TARDIS ever been shown to connect up to and open into another room besides the control room? I was prompted to ask based on this related question dealing with gravity inside the TARDIS and the issue regarding how River was able to dive into the pool room of a sideways TARDIS in the episode Day of the Moon.

Answer 1

Well I would say that clearly the TARDIS front door can at least open up to more than one of the control rooms.

The TARDIS has at least one alternative control room - as seen for a whole sequence of storylines in the Tom Baker period:

I think the front door operated in exactly the same way here - appearing to go from the control room straight outside. This would appear to validate your idea that the front door can open elsewhere in the TARDIS interior. I wish I could recall a storyline where it opens to another room.

Answer 2

"Day of the Moon" provides some information on this, but I'm not sure whether it's an argument for or against the possibility:

CANTON: She dove off a rooftop.
DOCTOR: Don't worry. She does that. Amy, Rory, open all the doors to the swimming pool.
(River turns into a dive, and plummets through the Tardis' open door where it is parked on the side of the skyscraper. There is a big Splosh! [sic, my copy is of questionable provenance])
^{Doctor Who (new series) S6E2 "Day of the Moon"}

The "big splosh!" is not merely a sound effect but a visible splashing of water out of the TARDIS's front door, which suggests to me that the door was directly connected to the pool. But it's not clear to me why the Doctor asked Amy and Rory to open the doors, plural. I assume he was talking about doors internal to the TARDIS, rather than the front door. That would mean she fell through the control room into the swimming pool. And if he could just rearrange where the front door led, it seems like he wouldn't need them to open any internal doors. Perhaps he wanted to make it easier for River to get back to the control room? But she should know her own way around the TARDIS, since she can usually fly the thing better than the Doctor.

Out of universe, I suppose the writers put this in because they just needed to get the phrase "swimming pool" into the script (to explain River's survival) with as little unnecessary exposition as possible. I doubt they were actually thinking about it at this level of detail. Perhaps even they don't know whether the Doctor can change the front door in this fashion.

So in conclusion, we just don't know.

Answer 3

I suppose it is of interest to note that in Logopolis, the Tardis door led to the Tardis door .... though this was a trap set by the Master.

Answer 4

I don't think that that was the Tardis door changing to different places.I think the doctor can change the density of certain parts of the Tardis. I also recall an episode where the doctor says that the tardis can change itself to trap unwanted visitors in a room.Perhaps the tardis SWITCHES The Place of the Swimming pool to one door away so River could simply dodge the central console and land in the swimming Pool.