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The TARDIS is, as anyone knows, The Doctor’s
space craft. It is also his oldest and most loyal friend and companion.
The name is an acronym of Time And Relative Dimension (or Dimensions)
In Space. It is Time Lord technology, although The Doctor said that
they are grown rather than built, and it has always been understood
that there is an organic and a psychic element to the ship, making
it much more than any ordinary space ship. The Doctor has always referred
to it in feminine pronouns, calling it ‘old girl’ and
‘she’. It has been identified as a Type 40 TARDIS, and
has been referred to by other Time Lords as obsolete, but The Doctor
has always been fiercely proud and protective of it, despite some
of its shortcomings. Before a TARDIS becomes fully functional, it must be primed with the biological imprint of a Time Lord, normally done by simply having a Time Lord operate the TARDIS for the first time. This imprint comes from the Rassilon Imprimatur, part of the biological makeup of Time Lords, which gives them both a symbiotic link to their TARDISes and the ability to withstand the physical stresses of time travel. Occasionally, other companions aboard The Doctor’s TARDIS have been able to operate it, however. It seems that the TARDIS decides for itself, sometimes, to let people use limited functions. The TARDIS is a living thing, at least semi-sentient. The TARDIS travels through time in the time Vortex, after dematerialising. But it can also fly in conventional space, and also hover along in air like a helicopter, although this actually causes severe strain to the engines. The TARDIS is powered primarily by the Eye of Harmony, which according to the Eighth Doctor is a piece of a star kept in the cloister room under an iris like cover. Occasionally, it is necessary to ‘refuel’ however. The Sixth Doctor was forced to do so on one occasion, and the Ninth came to Cardiff to harvest energy from the rift.
The TARDIS is virtually indestructible. It has survived falling through to the centre of a planet, being roasted at the temperature at which lava is viscous, has been submerged by high tide, and broken apart entirely more than once. How The Doctor came to own the TARDIS is something of a mystery. There is a suggestion that he ‘stole’ it when he left Gallifrey as an exile. ‘Borrowed’ seems a less pejorative word. There is also the idea that he DID own the TARDIS but simply did not have permission to leave the planet. In any case, when the Time Lords eventually put him on trial for his Renegade activities they did not try to confiscate the TARDIS, only restrict its movements, confining The Doctor to Earth until they were prepared to reprieve him from his exile. One question over the years seemed to be whether The Doctor could OPERATE the TARDIS properly. When he and Susan, along with Ian and Barbara first left Earth, they did so without co-ordinates, and The Doctor found himself unable to remember how to get back to Earth in the 1960s. This was put down to his age and forgetfulness. When the Daleks were pursuing them all through time and space in The Chase, The Doctor used a kind of randomiser to try to throw the enemy off the scent by going to a series of arbitrary locations. The randomiser was used again in the Fourth Doctor era to avoid the Black Guardian. When The Doctor was exiled on Earth, parts of his memory were also blanked out by the Time Lords so that he literally DIDN’T know how some of the TARDIS controls worked. Later, they restored those memories and restored the controls but even so that would occasionally interfere with The Doctor’s plans, forcing him off course to planets where they wanted him to solve problems on their behalf.
But sometimes it DOES seem as if the TARDIS can land on a sixpence in space one moment, can’t even get the CENTURY right the next. Whether it IS the TARDIS at fault or The Doctor is never quite explained. It is strongly suspected that sometimes The Doctor deliberately gets lost in order to liven things up for himself and his friends. But he certainly didn’t mean to take Rose away from home for a whole twelve months instead of twelve hours, and he DID seem to want to go to the Ian Drury concert in 1979 not Scotland in 1879. So sometimes the TARDIS DOES get it wrong all by itself. The exterior of the TARDIS has not changed very much for several centuries. It became stuck as a police telephone box in 1960s England and remained that way with only small changes. A St. John’s Ambulance badge on the door disappeared early on, and there was a slight change in the height of the doorstep. The tiered roof also changed slightly over the years. But apart from a brief day in the 6th Doctor era when it changed to several completely useless disguises including a garish Welsh dresser and an organ, it has remained firmly and stubbornly as a Police Box. It is suspected that The Doctor COULD fix it if he wanted to, but he doesn’t want to. The interior has changed much more dramatically. The current look of the console room is a long way from the clean, white, clinical look it had in the beginning of The Doctor’s televised travels. The walls were indented roundels including the inside of the door which became almost invisible when closed. The console was hexagonal shaped and included knobs, buttons and viewscreens with a 1960s style. In the early days there were other pieces of equipment including the fault locator, the food dispenser and furniture including chairs, tables, a hatstand, and pieces of free standing sculpture. By the time the second doctor took control of the TARDIS the console room was less cluttered and the food dispenser seemed to have been dispensed with.
The Fourth Doctor temporarily relocated his base of operations to the secondary console room, which had a smaller console, more suited to one man operation. The console and the wall panelling were wooden and had a Victorian look. He later returned to the larger, original console room. During the Fourth Doctor era, though, we saw much more of the inner parts of the TARDIS than before. In Invasion of Time, we saw many of the older corridors and unused portions of the TARDIS, all of which looked very gone to seed and neglected, apart from the very pretty recreation room with the swimming pool and greenery all around it. In Logopolis, Tegan found herself lost in mazelike corridors which all had the same indented roundels and eventually found the cloister room, which was very much like a walled garden with plants and pillared walkways. The Fifth Doctor also wandered the mazelike grey corridors in his early hours of regeneration, looking for the zero room. This was a refreshingly cool, empty room with pink and grey walls. The fifth Doctor also introduced a new, 80s hi-tech console, still retaining the hexagonal shape, but with a more colourful range of buttons and switches and screens. The TARDIS remained much the same after that, right up to the Eighth Doctor’s adventures, when it had changed very dramatically inside. Gone were the cool, white walls and roundels and bright overhead lights. Instead the console room had become a cavern, the roof held up by industrial like girders and the console had a HG Wells Time Machine style to it. There was a relaxation area in the corner where The Doctor had a reclining armchair and tea table and his favourite book – The Time Machine. Rassilon’s Seal formed a prominent part of the décor. The cloister room had become a beautiful cathedral like space, again featuring the Seal of Rassilon, as well as the Eye of Harmony concealed beneath an eye like cover.
1996 And again, when the Ninth Doctor took over the TARDIS and not much was seen of the other rooms, although they were referred to, often. The console room had now become even more obviously organic. Its roof supports were coral like structures and the walls and ceiling merged into a dome covered in small roundels with an orange glow that lit the room. the floor, which before had been a simple, clean, smooth surface, was now wire mesh panels beneath which things glowed and occasionally sparked. The console was now far from a geometric hexagon. Its six sides were rounded and there were almost no components that looked like they belonged to an ordinary computer. Everything glowed green as if the console itself was alive with some kind of lifeforce.
2005 The only interior room identified so far in the new look TARDIS is the wardrobe. This, proved to be a multilevel cavern with winding stairs and more coral and pillars of various kinds that again make it all seem quite organic and alive, as The Doctor insists that it is.
It is allegedly infinite in size, and according to Roman its weight is 5 × 106 kilograms. However, when it is necessary to move the TARDIS manually it can be lifted onto carts and vans, and even pushed by small blue-faced aliens. What the TARDIS never fails to do is surprise. The limits to what it is capable of doing. It can revert an adult Slitheen to an egg. The Doctor can communicate with it telepathically. And it can reorganise his entire DNA and mental patterns to make him temporarily Human with a whole Human identity and personality. What the TARDIS can do, apparently, is only limited by the imagination.
The TARDIS Through The Years
First Doctor
First Doctor's TARDIS With St. John's Ambulance Badge.
Susan in Console Room With Sculpture
Susan With Food Dispenser
First Doctor's TARDIS Seen From Above
That Radiation Detector
First Doctor At Console
First Doctor At Console
A Sensorite Stealing The TARDIS Lock? Exactly how the TARDIS is locked and what sort of key opens it has varied over the years.
The Space Time Visualiser
Out of Order in 1960s London
The Monk's Console Room Without Dimension Chip
Second Doctor
The Second Doctor's TARDIS Breaking Up In Space
Jamie and Zoe in Second Doctor's TARDIS
Second Doctor's TARDIS
Second Doctor With Jamie and Zoe in TARDIS
Third Doctor
The Third Doctor's TARDIS Materialises on Earth
The Third Doctor Arrives on Earth in Decommissioned TARDIS
Third Doctor With Console In Workshop
Jo and The Third Doctor in Console Room. Good View of The Roundels
Doctor and Jo at The Console
The Doctor's TARDIS and The Master's disguised as a computer. Note the flat roof of the TARDIS in this design.
The TARDIS In Miniature
Sarah Janes Knocks At The Door
The TARDIS on Metebelis III - The Blue Planet
Fourth Doctor
The TARDIS on Neuva Beacon
The New 1976 Console, Not Seen For Several Episodes when The Secondary Console Room Was Used Instead.
The Secondary Console Room
TARDIS Corridors
Fourth Doctor's TARDIS key.
TARDIS Appreciation
Fourth Doctor's TARDIS Parked
Fourth Doctor's TARDIS Parked in a Cave
The TARDIS in the swamp
K9 Interfacing With Console
Romana Driving
Police Box And TARDIS - Spot the Difference
Adric and The Fourth Doctor Measure A REAL Police Telephone Box - Or Is It The Master's TARDIS?
Fifth Doctor
Fifth Doctor, Nyssa and Tegan around Console
The Zero Room
The Fifth Doctor Redesigned the Console. The Closed Viewscreen in Grey Behind
Anxiety Around 5th Doctor's Console - There's The Hatstand
Closer View of Fifth Doctor's Console
Tegan and Turlough in Adric's old Roon
Sixth Doctor
The Sixth Doctor Repairs The Cameleon Circuit Controls Inside One Of The Roundels
The TARDIS as Floral Furniture
The TARDIS as a Pipe Organ
Seventh Doctor
Pink TARDIS?
Seventh Doctor and Ace Outside the TARDIS
Eighth Doctor
The TARDIS Being Shot At in San Francisco
Eighth Doctor at the Console.
Chang Lee With TARDIS Key
Long view of The Eighth Doctor's Future Industrial Console
The Seventh Doctor At The Console r Eighth Doctor In Cloister Room with Seal of Rassilon in Background
Console with Seal of Rassilon in Background
Eighth Doctor's Console Room Again
The Eye of Harmony in the Cloister Room
Ninth Doctor
Ninth/10th Doctor's Command Chair
9th Doctor's Console
9th Doctor In Console Room
9th Doctor's TARDIS Controls
HE Knows How It Works
Semi-Organic?
9th Doctor's TARDIS Parked.
Tenth Doctor
Speed....
A TARDIS Christmas
Eleventh Doctor
Dying TARDIS All New... and improved... Steampunk.... TARDIS For a NEW era.
Check out the new viewscreen.
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