TARDIS

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The Third Doctor emerging from the TARDIS in the 1970 serial Spearhead from Space.

The TARDIS is a time machine and spacecraft in the British science fiction television programme Doctor Who. The name is an acronym of Time And Relative Dimension (or Dimensions) In Space.

A product of Time Lord technology, a properly maintained and piloted TARDIS can transport its occupants to any point in Time and Space. The interior of a TARDIS is much larger than its exterior, which can blend in with its surroundings through the ship's chameleon circuit. In the series, the Doctor pilots an unreliable, obsolete Type 40 TARDIS whose chameleon circuit is stuck, giving it the shape of a 1950s-style London police box.

Although "TARDIS" is a type of craft, rather than a specific one, the Doctor's TARDIS is usually referred to as "the" TARDIS or, in some of the earlier serials, just as "the ship". (In the two 1960s Dalek films, the craft was referred to as Tardis, without the definite article.)

The programme has become so much a part of British popular culture that not only has the shape of the police box become more immediately associated with the TARDIS than with its original real-world function, the word "TARDIS" has been used to describe anything that seems bigger on the inside than on the outside.

The name TARDIS is a registered trademark of the British Broadcasting Corporation.

Conceptual history

Police box mounted with a modern surveillance camera located outside Earl's Court tube station in London.

When Doctor Who was being developed in 1963, the production staff discussed what the Doctor's time machine would look like. Due to budgetary constraints, it was decided to make it resemble a police box. This was explained in the context of the series as a disguise created by the ship's "chameleon circuit", a mechanism which is responsible for changing the outside appearance of the ship in order to fit in with its environment. A further premise was that the circuit was broken, explaining why it was "stuck" in that form.

The idea for the police-box disguise came from BBC staff writer Anthony Coburn, who rewrote the programme's first episode from a draft by C. E. Webber. Coburn is believed to have conceived the time machine's external form after spotting a real police box while walking near his office on a break from writing the episode. In that first episode, "An Unearthly Child", the TARDIS is first seen in a 1963 junkyard; it subsequently malfunctions, retaining the police box shape in a prehistoric landscape.

At the time of the series' debut in 1963, the police box was still a common fixture in British cities, and with some 700 in London alone, it was a logical choice for camouflaging a time machine. While the idea may have begun as a creative ploy by the BBC to save time and money on props, it soon became an in-joke genre convention in its own right as the old-style police box was phased out of use. The anachronism has become more pronounced since there have been very few police boxes of that style left in Britain for some considerable time. Despite changes in the prop, the TARDIS has become the show's most consistently recognisable visual element.

The type of police box the TARDIS resembled was normally constructed out of concrete. However, the props for the television series were originally made out of wood, and later on from fibreglass, for easy transportation and construction on location as well as within the confines of a studio set. The props have also varied slightly in their dimensions and designs over the years, and do not conform precisely to their real-life counterparts.

The production team conceived of the TARDIS travelling by dematerialising at one point and rematerialising elsewhere, although sometimes in the series it is shown also to be capable of conventional space travel. In the 2006 Christmas Special "The Runaway Bride", the Doctor remarks that for a space ship, the TARDIS does remarkably little flying. The ability to travel simply by fading into and out of different locations became one of the trademarks of the show, allowing for a great deal of versatility in setting and storytelling without a large expense in special effects. The distinctive accompanying sound effect — a cyclic wheezing, groaning noise — was originally created in the BBC Radiophonic Workshop by Brian Hodgson. He produced the effect by dragging a set of house keys along the strings of an old, gutted piano. The resulting sound was then recorded and electronically processed with echo and reverb. The comic strip feature of Doctor Who Magazine traditionally represents the ship's distinctive dematerialization sound with the onomatopoeic phrase "vworp vworp".

In 1996, the BBC applied to the UK Patent Office to register the TARDIS as a trademark. This was challenged by the Metropolitan Police who felt that they owned the rights to the police box image. However, the Patent Office found that there was no evidence that the Metropolitan Police — or any other police force — had ever registered the image as a trademark. In addition, the BBC had been selling merchandise based on the image for over three decades without complaint by the police. The Patent Office issued a ruling in favour of the BBC in 2002.

General characteristics

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The console room from the first episode of Doctor Who, "An Unearthly Child" (1963).

TARDISes are grown, not made (The Impossible Planet; the spin-off media, which are of uncertain canonicity, suggest that they are "birthed"). They draw their power from several sources, but primarily from the nucleus of an artificial black hole, known as the Eye of Harmony (the 1996 Doctor Who television movie). In The Edge of Destruction (1964), the power source of the TARDIS (referred to as the "heart of the TARDIS") is said to be beneath the central column of the console, with the rise and fall of the column an indication of its functioning.

Other elements needed for the proper functioning of the TARDIS and requiring occasional replenishment include mercury (used in its fluid links), the rare ore Zeiton 7 (Vengeance on Varos, 1985) and "artron energy." The latter is a form of temporal energy, generated by Time Lord minds, which is also said to help power TARDISes (The Deadly Assassin, 1976; Four to Doomsday, 1982). Another form of energy, "huon energy", is found in the heart of the TARDIS and (apart from the activities of the Empress of Racnoss) nowhere else in the universe (The Runaway Bride).

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 (The Two Doctors, 1985).

Without the Imprimatur, molecular disintegration would result; this serves as a safeguard against misuse of time travel even if the TARDIS technology were copied. Once a time machine is properly primed, however, with the imprint stored on a device called a "briode nebuliser", it can be used safely by any species. According to Time Lord law, unauthorised use of a TARDIS carries "only one penalty", implied to be death.

The TARDIS usually travels by dematerialising in one spot, traversing the time vortex, and then rematerialising at its destination, without physically travelling through the intervening space. However, it has been seen to be able to fly through physical space, first in Fury from the Deep (1968) and more recently in The Parting of the Ways (2005), The Christmas Invasion (2005) and The Runaway Bride (2006). As seen in The Runaway Bride, however, this puts a strain on the TARDIS's systems.

Apart from the ability to travel in space and time (and, on occasion, to other dimensions), the most remarkable characteristic of a TARDIS is that its interior is much larger than it appears from the outside. The explanation is that a TARDIS is "dimensionally transcendental", meaning that its exterior and interior exist in separate dimensions. In The Robots of Death (1977), the Fourth Doctor tried to explain this to his companion Leela, using the analogy of how a larger cube can appear to be able to fit inside a smaller one if the larger cube is farther away, yet immediately accessible at the same time (see Tesseract). According to the Doctor, transdimensional engineering was a key Time Lord discovery. To those unfamiliar with this aspect of a TARDIS, stepping inside the ship for the first time usually results in a reaction of shocked disbelief as they see the interior dimensions.

Susan, the Doctor's granddaughter, claimed to have coined the name TARDIS: "I made [it] up from the initials". However, the word TARDIS is used to describe other Time Lords' travel capsules as well. The Discontinuity Guide by Paul Cornell, Keith Topping and Martin Day suggests that "[she] was an influential young lady, and her name for time machines caught on." The Virgin New Adventures novel Lungbarrow by Marc Platt records Susan telling the First Doctor that she gave him the idea when he was, implicitly, the "Other".

As seen in The Trial of a Time Lord (1986), the experiences of the TARDIS and its crew can be recorded and played back from the Matrix, the Time Lord computer network that is the repository of all their knowledge. The Doctor implies in this serial, with his protestations of being "bugged", that the TARDIS is not normally connected to the Matrix in this manner.

The Doctor's TARDIS

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The secondary console room from the 1976–1977 season.

In the programme, the Doctor's TARDIS is an obsolete Type 40 TT capsule (presumably TT stands for "time travel") that he unofficially "borrowed" when he departed his home planet of Gallifrey. According to the Eighth Doctor Adventures novel The Gallifrey Chronicles by Lance Parkin, it previously belonged to a Time Lord named Marnal, who was, like the Doctor, somewhat of a renegade. By the time of The Ribos Operation the Doctor had been flying it for 523 years.

There were originally 305 registered Type 40s, but all the others had been decommissioned and replaced by new, improved models (The Deadly Assassin). However, the changing appearance of the primary console room over the years and the Second Doctor's statement in 1972's The Three Doctors ("Ah! I can see you've been doing the TARDIS up a bit. I don't like it.") suggests that the Doctor does upgrade the TARDIS's systems on occasion, though it has been implied that the ship's ability to reconfigure its interior architecture applies to the console room too.

The TARDIS was already old when the Doctor first took it, but exactly how old is a matter of conjecture; the spin-off media have, on a number of occasions, had the TARDIS wait around for the Doctor for decades and even centuries in relative time. In The Empty Child (2005), the Ninth Doctor claimed that he has had "900 years of phone box travel", meaning the TARDIS is at least that old or has been stuck in that shape for that amount of time from the Doctor's personal perspective.

Exterior

As noted above, although the TARDIS is supposed to blend inconspicuously into whatever environment it turns up in, it invariably retains the shape of a police box (which it first took when landing in 1963) because of a faulty chameleon circuit. The exact nature of the fault has never been specified. The circuit was first mentioned, but not given a technical name, in the second episode of the series, where the First Doctor and Susan noted it was malfunctioning. It was first termed the "camouflage unit" in The Time Meddler (1965). The name was changed to "chameleon circuit" in the Target Books novelisations of the serials, and this term eventually made its way on screen in Logopolis (1981).

Attempts to repair the circuit were made in Logopolis and Attack of the Cybermen, but the successful transformation of the TARDIS into the shapes of a pipe organ and an elaborate gateway in the latter serial was followed by a return to the status quo. The circuit was also repaired during the Virgin New Adventures novels, but again the TARDIS's shape was eventually set back to a default police box shape. In Boom Town (2005), the Ninth Doctor implied that he had stopped trying to fix the circuit quite some time ago because he'd become rather fond of the police box shape — a claim the Eighth Doctor likewise made in the 1996 television movie.

Cosmetically, the police box exterior of the TARDIS has remained virtually unchanged, although there have been slight modifications over the years. For example, the sign on the door concealing the police telephone has changed from black letters on a white background to white on black and white on blue at various times. Other modifications include the continual jumping back and forth of wording on the phone panel from reading "Urgent Calls" to "All Calls". The "POLICE BOX" sign was wider from Season 18 onwards and for the 2005 series, but not for the television movie. Early in the programme the TARDIS also had a St John Ambulance badge on the main doors, but this eventually disappeared. The Empty Child revealed that the exterior telephone is non-functional because it is not hooked up to any telephone lines.

Despite the anachronistic police box shape, the TARDIS's presence is rarely questioned when it materialises in the present-day United Kingdom. In Boom Town, the Doctor simply noted that humans do not notice odd things like the TARDIS, echoing a similar sentiment expressed by the Seventh Doctor in Remembrance of the Daleks (1988), that humans have an "amazing capacity for self-deception."

For most of the series' run, the exterior doors of the police box operated separately from the heavier interior doors, although sometimes the two sets could open simultaneously to allow the ship's passengers to look directly outside and vice versa. The entrance to the TARDIS is capable of being locked and unlocked from the outside with a key, which the Doctor keeps on his person and occasionally gives copies of to his companions. In the 1996 television movie, the Eighth Doctor (and the Seventh before him) kept a spare key "in a cubby hole behind the 'P'" (of the POLICE BOX sign).

In the 2005 series, the keys are also remotely linked to the TARDIS, capable of signalling its presence or impending arrival by heating up and glowing. The TARDIS keys have varied in design from an ordinary Yale key to an ankh-like key embossed with an alien pattern (identified in Terrance Dicks and Malcolm Hulke's 1972 book The Making of Doctor Who as the constellation of Kasterborous, Gallifrey's home system) from the Third Doctor's era on. It was seen once again as the Yale key version for the revived series in 2005.

The TARDIS lock's security level has varied from story to story. Originally, it was said to have 21 different "holes" and would melt if the key was placed in the wrong one (The Daleks, 1963). The First Doctor was also able to unlock it with his ring (The Web Planet, 1965) and repair it by using the light of an alien sun refracted through the ring's jewel (The Daleks' Master Plan).

The changing design of the TARDIS keys also suggests that the Doctor changes the lock system every now and then, and that it does not always work the same way. In Spearhead from Space (1970) the Third Doctor said that the lock had a metabolism detector, so that even if an unauthorised person had a key, the doors would remain locked. This security measure was also seen in the New Series Adventures novel Only Human by Gareth Roberts, which called it an "advanced meson recognition system." The Ninth Doctor claimed that when the doors were shut, even "the assembled hordes of Genghis Khan" could not enter (Rose, 2005). That being said, several people have managed to just wander into the TARDIS without any problem over the years, including some who became companions.

The doors are supposed to be closed while dematerialising; in Planet of Giants (1964), the opening of the doors during a dematerialisation sequence caused the ship and its occupants to shrink to doll size. In The Enemy of the World (1967), taking off while the doors were still open resulted in rapid decompression, with the villainous Salamander being sucked out of the TARDIS. The Second Doctor and his companions managed to cling to the console, and the crisis passed when Jamie managed to shut the doors. In The Runaway Bride, however, the doors can be opened safely while the ship is in vacuum, as the TARDIS somehow protects its occupants. In Warriors' Gate (1981), the doors open during flight between two universes, admitting a Tharil named Biroc, and allowing the time winds to burn the Doctor's hand and seriously damage K-9.

The Time Lords (as well as similarly powerful beings) are able to divert the TARDIS's flight path (The Ribos Operation, 1978), as the renegade Time Lord known as the Rani also did once (The Mark of the Rani, 1985). The Rani used a Stattenheim remote control to summon her TARDIS to her. In The Two Doctors, the Second Doctor also used a portable Stattenheim.

The exterior dimensions can be severed from the interior dimensions under extraordinary circumstances. In Frontios (1984), when the TARDIS was destroyed in a Tractator-induced meteor storm, the interior ended up outside the police box shell with various bits embedded in the surrounding rock. The Doctor eventually tricked the Gravis, leader of the Tractators, into reassembling the ship. In Father's Day (2005), a temporal paradox resulting in a wound in time threw the interior of the ship out of the wound, leaving the TARDIS an empty shell of a police box. The Doctor attempted to use the TARDIS key in conjunction with a small electrical charge to recover the ship, but the process was interrupted and the TARDIS was only restored after the paradox was resolved.

Interior

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The TARDIS wardrobe from The Christmas Invasion.

Once through the doors of the police box, the TARDIS interior has a vast number of rooms and corridors. The exact dimensions of the interior have not been specified, but apart from living quarters, the interior includes an art gallery (which is actually an ancillary power station), a bathroom with a swimming pool, a medical bay and several brick-walled storage areas (all seen in The Invasion of Time, 1978). Portions of the TARDIS can also be isolated or reconfigured; the Doctor was able to jettison 25% of the TARDIS's structure in Castrovalva to provide additional "thrust."

Despite a widespread assumption that the interior of the TARDIS is infinite, there are indications that it is not. In Full Circle (1980), Romana stated that the weight of the TARDIS in Alzarius's Earth-like gravity was 5 × 10⁶ kilograms. Presumably that referred to its internal weight as the TARDIS has been seen on several occasions to be light enough to be lifted by several men (although most real police boxes were concrete) and any movement of the exterior has also been known to be transmitted to its interior.

In the tie-in novels, the interior of the TARDIS has been known to contain an entire city (Cat's Cradle: Time's Crucible); used to encompass an entire parallel Earth (Blood Heat); and when turned inside out, to dwarf Gallifrey itself (The Ancestor Cell). It is also seen to exist in multiple timelines.

A distinctive architectural feature of the TARDIS interior is the "roundel." In the context of the TARDIS, a roundel is a circular decoration that adorns the walls of the rooms and corridors of the TARDIS, including the console room. Some roundels conceal TARDIS circuitry and devices, as seen in the serials The Wheel in Space (1968), Logopolis, Castrovalva (1981), Arc of Infinity (1983), Terminus (1983), and Attack of the Cybermen (1985). The design of the roundels has varied throughout the show's history, from a basic circular cut-out with black background to a photographic image printed on wall board, to translucent illuminated discs in later serials. In the secondary console room, most of the roundels were executed in recessed wood panelling, with a few decorative ones in what appeared to be stained glass. In the new series, the roundels are built into hexagonal recesses in the walls of the new console room.

Other rooms seen include living quarters for many of the Doctor's companions, although the Doctor's own bedroom has never been mentioned or seen. The TARDIS also had a "Zero Room" — a chamber that was shielded from the rest of the universe and provided a restful environment for the Fifth Doctor to recover from his regeneration in Castrovalva — but it was among the 25% jettisoned. However, the Seventh Doctor spin-off novel Deceit indicated that the Doctor rebuilt the Zero Room shortly before the events of that novel. (As always the canonicity of the spin-off media is uncertain.)

Although the interior corridors were not seen in the 2005 series, the fact that they still existed was established in The Unquiet Dead, when the Doctor gave Rose some very complicated directions to the TARDIS wardrobe. The wardrobe is mentioned several times in the original series and spin-off fiction, and seen in The Androids of Tara (1978), The Twin Dilemma (1984) and Time and the Rani (1987). The redesigned version, from which the Tenth Doctor chooses his new clothes, was seen in The Christmas Invasion (2005) as a large multi-levelled room with a spiral staircase. Designer Ed Thomas has suggested that more rooms may be seen in coming episodes.

The console room

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The console room from the 1984-1988 seasons.

The most often seen room of the TARDIS is its console room, where its flight controls are housed. The console room was designed by Peter Brachaki and was the only set he designed for the show. It was built on a shoestring budget and a tight schedule, which led to Brachacki leaving the show due to disagreements with the production team and possibly a feeling that he had been given an impossible task. Despite his leaving the show and mixed reactions as to how the set looked (producer Verity Lambert liked it but director Waris Hussein did not), the basic design of the hexagonal console and wall roundels has persisted to the present day.

The TARDIS has at least two console rooms — the primary, white-walled, futuristic one most used throughout the programme's history and the secondary console room used during Season 14, which has wood panelling and a more antique feel to it. Two other console rooms have also been seen, in the television movie and the 2005 series. The cavernous, steampunk-inspired console room of the television movie may have been a reconfiguration of either of the previously mentioned console rooms (as first suggested in New Adventures novels and later in the Big Finish Productions audio plays) or another one entirely.

In the Third Doctor serial The Time Monster (1972), the console room of the TARDIS was dramatically altered, including the wall roundels. This new set, designed by Tim Gleeson, was disliked by producer Barry Letts who felt that the new roundels resembled washing-up bowls stuck to the wall. As it turned out, the set was damaged in storage between production blocks and had to be rebuilt, so this particular design only saw service in the one serial.

In the 2005 series, the console room became a dome-shaped chamber with organic-looking support columns. The interior doors are now absent, with the police box doors being clearly visible from inside the TARDIS. How this configuration came about is not explained, but in The Gallifrey Chronicles, the TARDIS interior was severely damaged by a cold fusion explosion. Although The Gallifrey Chronicles was written before the start of the 2005 series, Parkin has commented in the Outpost Gallifrey fan fora that the TARDIS repairing itself after this coincidental event could explain the change in look. (As always the canonicity of the non-televised media is uncertain.)

The Virgin novels introduced a tertiary console room, which was described as resembling a Gothic cathedral (Nightshade by Mark Gatiss). Another novel (Death and Diplomacy by Dave Stone) suggested that the "native" configuration is so complex and irrational that most non-Time Lords who witness it are driven mad from the experience.

The TARDIS console

The main feature of the console rooms, in any of the known configurations, is the TARDIS console that holds the instruments that control the ship's functions. The appearance of the primary TARDIS consoles has varied widely but share common details: hexagonal pedestals with controls around the periphery and a moveable column in the centre that bobs rhythmically up and down when the TARDIS is in flight, like a pump or a piston. Although fan opinion is divided on this point, the arrangement of the controls implies that it was designed to be manned by more than one person. One piece of fan continuity, used in the spin-off media and also mentioned by the current production team, is that the intended number of operators is somewhere between three and six Time Lords. This may explain why the Doctor tends to do a lot of manic running around the console while he is piloting the TARDIS, as well as the occasional difficulty he has in controlling it.

The console can be operated independently of the TARDIS. During the Third Doctor's era, he occasionally detached the console from the TARDIS to perform repairs on it. In Inferno (1970) the Doctor rides a detached console into a parallel universe.

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The console room from the 1996 television movie.

The central column is often referred to as the "time rotor", although when the term was first used in The Chase (1965) it referred to a different instrument on the TARDIS console. However, the use of this term to describe the central column was common in fan literature and was finally used on screen when the Doctor referred to the central column as the time rotor in the 1996 television movie. The current production team uses the term in the same way.

The secondary console was smaller, with the controls hidden behind wooden panels, and had no central column. The 1996 television movie console also appeared to be made of wood and the central column connected to the ceiling of the console room. The new series' console is circular in shape and divided into six segments, with both the control panels and the central column glowing green, the latter once again connected to the ceiling.

The new series console has a much more thrown-together appearance than previous consoles, with bits of junk from various eras substituting as makeshift controls, including a glass paperweight, a small bell and a bicycle pump, the latter identified in the Tenth Doctor interactive mini-episode Attack of the Graske as the vortex loop control. Two other controls, the dimensional stabiliser and the vector tracker were also identified, but although the stabiliser had been mentioned before in the series, the canonicity of the mini-episode is also unclear. As seen in World War Three, there is now a working telephone attached to the console.

Precisely how much control the Doctor has in directing the TARDIS has been inconsistently portrayed over the course of the series. The First Doctor did not initially seem to be able to accurately steer it, but over time subsequent Doctors seemed to be able to pilot it with more precision. However, writers continued to use the plot device of having the TARDIS randomly land somewhere, or imply that the TARDIS was "temperamental" in its courses through time and space.

Following the Key to Time season (1978–79), the Doctor installed a randomiser to the console which prevented the Doctor (and by extension the evil and powerful Black Guardian) from knowing where the TARDIS would land next. This device was eventually removed in The Leisure Hive (1980). In the 2005 and later series, the Doctor is shown piloting the TARDIS at will, although he still makes the occasional error, such as returning Rose to Earth a year later than he meant to in Aliens of London (2005), or landing in 1879 instead of 1979 in Tooth and Claw (2006).

In Boom Town, a portion of the TARDIS console opened and a luminescent vapour could be seen within, described by the Doctor as the "heart of the TARDIS", harkening back to the description in The Edge of Destruction. In The Parting of the Ways (2005) it was shown that this is connected to the powerful energies of the time vortex.

TARDIS systems

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The new series console room, first seen in Rose.

Because the TARDIS is so old, it is inclined to break down. The Doctor is often seen with his head stuck in a panel carrying out maintenance of some kind or another, and he occasionally has to give it "percussive maintenance" (a good thump on the console) to get it to start working properly. The second-hand nature of the TARDIS may account for some of this. Efforts to repair, control, and maintain the TARDIS have been frequent plot devices throughout the show's run, creating the amusing irony of a highly advanced space-time machine which, at the same time, is an obsolete and unreliable piece of junk.

Controls

The TARDIS possesses telepathic circuits, although the Doctor prefers to pilot it manually. In Pyramids of Mars (1975), the Fourth Doctor told Sutekh that the TARDIS controls were isomorphic, meaning only the Doctor could operate them. However, this characteristic seems to appear and disappear when dramatically convenient, and various companions have been seen to be able to operate the TARDIS and even fly it. It has been theorised that either the Doctor was lying to Sutekh or the isomorphic feature is a security feature that the Doctor can activate and deactivate when convenient. The Eighth Doctor does just this in the Big Finish Productions audio play Other Lives (2005) to allow his companion C'rizz to operate the console.

Apart from the sound that accompanies dematerialisation, in The Web of Fear (1966), the TARDIS console was also seen to have a light that winked on and off during landing, although the more usual indicator of flight is the movement of the central column. The TARDIS also possesses a scanner so that its crew may examine the exterior environment before exiting the ship. In the 2005 series the scanner display is attached to the console and is able to display television signals as well as various computing functions and occasionally what the production team has stated are Gallifreyan numbers and text.

In some of the First Doctor serials, the console room also contains a machine that dispenses food or nutrition bars to the Doctor and his companions. This machine disappears after the first few serials, although mention is occasionally made of the TARDIS kitchen.

In the television movie, access to the Eye of Harmony is controlled by means of a device that requires a human eye to open. Why the Doctor would program such a requirement is retroactively explained in the Big Finish Productions audio play The Apocalypse Element, where a Dalek invasion of Gallifrey prompts the Time Lords to code their security locks to the retinal patterns of the Sixth Doctor's companion Evelyn Smythe.

Defences

Some of the TARDIS's other functions include a force field and the Hostile Action Displacement System (HADS), which can teleport the ship away if it is attacked (The Krotons, 1968). The force field may no longer be present on the current TARDIS, as an external device had to be hooked up to provide one in The Parting of the Ways. The TARDIS's Cloister Bell sounds when "wild catastrophes and sudden calls to man the battle stations" are imminent (Logopolis).

The interior of the TARDIS is said to be in a state of "multidimensional temporal grace" (The Hand of Fear, 1976). The Fourth Doctor explained this meant that, "in a sense," things do not exist while inside the TARDIS. This has the practical effect of ensuring that no weapons can be used inside its environs. However, this last function is also inconsistent in its application — weapons were fired in the console room in both Earthshock (1982) and The Parting of the Ways. In Arc of Infinity, the Fifth Doctor was planning to repair the temporal grace circuits but was interrupted by the events of that story.

Other systems

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The "Jade Pagoda," art by Peter Elson.

The TARDIS also grants its passengers the ability to understand and speak other languages. This was previously described in The Masque of Mandragora (1976) as a "Time Lord gift" which the Doctor shared with his companions, but was ultimately attributed to the TARDIS's telepathic field in The End of the World (2005). In The Christmas Invasion, it was revealed that the Doctor himself was an integral element of this capability. Rose was unable to understand the alien Sycorax whilst the Doctor was in a regenerative crisis. In The Impossible Planet (2006), it was said that the TARDIS normally even translates writing; in that episode, the TARDIS was unable to translate an alien script, and the Doctor said that meant the language was "impossibly" old. In the Ninth Doctor Adventures novel Only Human, the telepathic field includes a filter that replaces foul or undesirable language with more acceptable terms.

At times the TARDIS appears to have a mind of its own. It is heavily implied in the television series that the TARDIS is "alive" and intelligent to a degree (first in The Edge of Destruction), and shares a bond with those who travel in it; in the television movie the Doctor calls the TARDIS "sentimental." In The Parting of the Ways, the Doctor leaves a message for Rose when he believes he will never return, asking her to "let the TARDIS die." Later on in the same episode, Rose says that "this thing is alive," echoing The Doctor's earlier statement in Boom Town. These characteristics have been made more explicit in the spin-off novels and audio plays. In the Big Finish audio play Omega, the Doctor meets a TARDIS which "dies" after its Time Lord master's demise.

In the novels, a portion of the TARDIS could be separated and used for independent travel. This was featured in two Virgin novels, Iceberg by David Banks and Sanctuary by David A. McIntee. This subset of the TARDIS, resembling a small pagoda fashioned out of jade, had limited range and functionality, but was used occasionally when the main TARDIS was incapacitated. A Yahoo! Groups electronic mailing list dedicated to discussion of the Doctor Who spin-off novels adopted the name "Jade Pagoda."

In The Runaway Bride (2006), the Doctor uses the TARDIS to make it snow by means of "atmospheric excitation".

Other TARDISes

The interior of the Rani's TARDIS

Other TARDISes have appeared in the television series. The Master had his own TARDIS, a more advanced model. Its chameleon circuit is fully functional, so it has been seen in various forms including a filing cabinet, a grandfather clock, a fireplace, an Ionic column, and an iron maiden. While a TARDIS can materialise inside another, if both TARDISes occupy exactly the same space, a Time Ram will occur, resulting in total annihilation (The Time Monster). In Logopolis, the Master tricked the Doctor into materialising his TARDIS around the Master's, creating a dimensionally recursive loop, with each TARDIS appearing inside the other's console room. In the reconstructed Shada, the Time Lord known as Professor Chronotis has a TARDIS disguised as his quarters at Cambridge University.

Other Time Lords with TARDISes included the Meddling Monk and the Rani. The War Chief provided dimensionally transcendent time machines named SIDRATs (Space and Inter-Dimensional Robot All-purpose Transporter, according to the novelisation of The War Games) to the alien race known as the War Lords. In the script for The Chase, Dalek time machines are known as DARDISes.

In the spin-off media, Gallifreyan Battle TARDISes have appeared in the comic books, novels and audio plays, which fire "time torpedoes" that freeze the target in time. The renegade Time Lady Iris Wildthyme's own TARDIS was disguised as a No. 22 London Bus, but was slightly smaller on the inside than it is on the outside. The Eighth Doctor Adventures novels have stated that future model Type 102 TARDISes will be fully sentient, and able to take on humanoid form (Alien Bodies). The Eighth Doctor's companion Compassion was the first Type 102 TARDIS (The Shadows of Avalon), and she was seen to have enough firepower to annihilate other TARDISes (The Ancestor Cell). The "unofficial" Ninth Doctor from the 40th anniversary animated webcast Scream of the Shalka had a TARDIS console room that looked similar to the Eighth Doctor's steampunk version.

In the Big Finish audio play The One Doctor, confidence trickster Banto Zame impersonated the Doctor. However, due to incomplete information, his copy of the TARDIS (a short range transporter) was called a Stardis instead, resembled a portaloo rather than a police box, and was not dimensionally transcendental. In Unregenerate!, the Seventh Doctor and Mel stopped a secret Time Lord project to download TARDIS minds into bodies of various alien species. This would have created living TARDIS pilots loyal to the Time Lords and ensuring that they would have ultimate control over any use of time travel technology by other races. Those created before the project was shut down departed on their own to explore the universe.

Since the destruction of Gallifrey and the Time Lords as stated in the 2005 series, the Doctor believes that his TARDIS is the last in the universe (Rise of the Cybermen, 2006). The removal of Gallifrey — and by implication the Eye of Harmony — may also be why the TARDIS in Boom Town needed to refuel using radiation from a space-time rift. In Rise of the Cybermen the Doctor also states that the TARDIS draws power from "the universe", but is unable to do so while in an alternate reality.

The 28 October 2006 Radio Times, in an image of the Torchwood Institute headquarters, identified a piece of large coral on Captain Jack Harkness's desk as the beginnings of a TARDIS. John Barrowman, who plays Jack in Torchwood and Doctor Who confirmed that "Jack's growing a TARDIS...It's probably been there for 30 years. I suppose in 500 years he'll be able to begin the carving process".

Other appearances

Spin-offs

• The TARDIS has also appeared off-screen in the Torchwood episode End of Days, where it materialises within Torchwood base, and Jack Harkness is picked up, presumably by the Doctor. The TARDIS itself is not seen, though the noise of it arriving (it is seen by Jack who smiles and walks towards it) and then leaving are heard.
• Sarah Jane Smith has a diagram of the TARDIS in her attic, as shown in The Sarah Jane Adventures pilot episode Invasion of the Bane.

Merchandising

As one of the most recognisable images connected with Doctor Who, the TARDIS has appeared on numerous items of merchandise associated with the programme. TARDIS scale models of various sizes have been manufactured to accompany other Doctor Who dolls and action figures, some with sound effects included. Fan-built full-size models of the police box are also common. There have been TARDIS-shaped video games, play tents for children, toy boxes, cookie jars, book ends, key chains and even a police-box-shaped bottle for a TARDIS bubble bath. The 1993 VHS release of The Trial of a Time Lord was contained in a special edition tin shaped like the TARDIS.

With the 2005 series revival, a TARDIS-shaped DVD/CD cabinet, standing 22 inches (55 cm) tall with adjustable shelves, was made by Cod Steaks Ltd, a Bristol-based model-making company. Other TARDIS-related merchandise announced in conjunction with the new series included a TARDIS coin box and a TARDIS that detects the ring signal from a mobile phone and flashes when an incoming call is detected, a TARDIS "Zipperdrobe" (wardobe made of fabric), as well as a children's book, the TARDIS Manual which contained information on the ship and a pop-out-and-make cardboard model. The complete 2005 season DVD box set released in November 2005 resembles a TARDIS. Firebox, a UK based manufacturer of computer peripherals have made a 4-port USB Hub shaped like a TARDIS.

A model TARDIS, used in the television series' production in the 1970s, sold at auction in December 2005 for £10,800.

Popular culture

The TARDIS has frequently appeared or been referred to in popular culture outside of Doctor Who.

• TARDIS has come to be used for anything surprisingly spacious (appearing in adverts for small cars, for example) and it has been immortalised in space: Asteroid 3325 was named "TARDIS" in its honour. In the 1989 movie Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure, the two protagonists travel in a time machine disguised as a phone booth, although it is no bigger inside than outside, and humour is derived from its being crowded. In the 1995 movie Blue Juice, JC, a character played by Sean Pertwee (son of Third Doctor actor Jon Pertwee), talks up his rather small caravan as being "a lot bigger on the inside — you know, like the TARDIS".

• When answering children's questions on an episode of the BBC television programme Blue Peter in October 2006, British Prime Minister Tony Blair compared the interior of his official residence at 10 Downing Street to the TARDIS when asked if it was larger on the inside than it looked from the street. "Yes, I mean a lot bigger, we call it like the Tardis."

• The TARDIS made a background appearance in "Marooned", an episode of the science fiction comedy series Red Dwarf (in a corner of the Starbug launching bay). An episode of the situation comedy Chelmsford 123 includes a brief scene in which the TARDIS materialises in Roman Britain in the year 123 and the silhouetted figure of the Doctor rushes out to urinate in the woods — implying that the TARDIS does not have a toilet. A TARDIS console was also on the bridge of the Terra Venture in the Power Rangers: Lost Galaxy television series. The TARDIS has also appeared in many Doctor Who spoofs and parodies over the years.

• In the 1999 millennium production Blackadder Back and Forth, the latest incarnations of the eponymous antihero and his idiotic servant Baldrick travel in a time machine apparently designed by Leonardo da Vinci and somewhat resembling a TARDIS, but again not bigger inside than out. The resemblance of a police box to a portable toilet often leads to parodies of the TARDIS (as in the abovementioned audio play The One Doctor); in the Bottom Live 2003 comedy tour, Adrian Edmonson's character Eddie refers to his time-travelling toilet invention as a "TURDIS".

• The TARDIS also appeared, abandoned and ignored, in a corner in Doctor Strange's study during the Marvel Mangaverse event published by Marvel Comics in 2002. The main artist on this series and architect of the event, Ben Dunn, is a Doctor Who fan, also having included a Doctor-inspired character in the cast of his Ninja High School comic.

• In the PC game Fallout, the TARDIS is featured in an Easter Egg, where it appears in a desolated piece of desert and disappears when approached. The MMORPG Asheron's Call uses the TARDIS in a similar manner.

• In Cylon Attack, a game for the BBC Micro by A&F, the TARDIS occasionally crosses the screen. It is invulnerable.

• In 1988 the band The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu (later known as The KLF) released the single "Doctorin' the Tardis" under the name The Timelords. The song is a mix of Gary Glitter's "Rock and Roll (Part 1)", Sweet's "Blockbuster" and the Doctor Who theme, with sparse vocals inspired by the Daleks and Harry Enfield's "Loadsamoney" character, in addition to sampling the original theme music composed by Ron Grainer. The TARDIS also gets a mention in the lyrics of the song "How Long's A Tear Take To Dry?" by the Beautiful South (from their album Quench), and in the lyrics of the song "All Things To All Men" by The Cinematic Orchestra (featuring Roots Manuva on vocals).

• "Tardis" was also the name of a mid-1990s era Internet time server program, which used a blue police box as its onscreen icon.

• At Australian Broadcasting Corporation radio stations, a "Tardis Booth" refers to a small studio where an interviewee or reporter may participate in a radio programme in another city or timezone. It is so-called because it "'transports you' to wherever the interview is."

• Since 1986, all Sun UNIX workstations at the Department of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering of the ETH Zurich have been called "Tardis".

• The Tardis Project is a student-run UNIX computing facility established in 1987 in the Computer Science department (now Informatics) of the University of Edinburgh. The name was chosen because the project's first computer was a GEC-63, a minicomputer housed in a large blue cabinet resembling the TARDIS.

• TARDIS is also the name of two separate types of radar interface: one for airports which is an acronym for "Terminal Automated Radar Display and Information System" and one for the Panavia Tornado fighter aircraft, an acronym for "Tornado Advanced Radar Display Information System". Whether the acronyms were influenced by Doctor Who is not known.

• "Time's Orphan", an episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, featured Chief O'Brien using, among other equipment, a hexagonal console with outward-facing control panels (visible in the background) in his effort to recover his daughter from a time vortex.

• An episode of Star Trek: Enterprise entitled "Future Tense" paid homage to the TARDIS by having the crew encounter a timeship that is bigger on the inside than on the outside.

• In Spiceworld The Movie, the Spice Girls' tour bus is larger on the inside than on the outside and the interior decoration is TARDIS-inspired.

• An old blue police box is seen (and obliquely commented on) in the sixth episode of the short-lived BBC time travel crime drama Crime Traveller.

• The Fourth Doctor and the TARDIS appeared briefly in an episode of Robot Chicken.

• Kylie Minogue used the sound of the TARDIS materialising during the introduction to the song 'Light Years' on her Showgirl Homecoming tour.

• Tardis Environmental Ltd., primarily a supplier of portable toilets in the West Midlands, is named after the TARDIS. Their company logo is an orange police box and their company slogan is: "Just what the Doctor ordered". A 'Tardis' is apparently a UK industry-wide nickname for a single re-circulating chemical toilet unit on account of its resemblance to the Doctor's time machine.

• Disney Channel TV sitcom series, The Suite Life of Zack and Cody, has an episode which features a phone box-shaped dimensional travelling device. Although the type of phone box is a conventional 21st century design(and no larger inside than out), this would seem to be a slight reference to the TARDIS.

References

• Harris, Mark (1983). The Doctor Who Technical Manual. UK: Random House. ISBN 0-394-86214-7. 
• Nathan-Turner, John (1985). The TARDIS Inside Out. UK: Picadilly Press, Ltd. ISBN 0-394-87415-3. 
• Howe, David J.; Stephen James Walker (1994). The First Doctor Handbook. London: Virgin Publishing. ISBN 0-426-20430-1. 
• Howe, David J.; Stephen James Walker (2003). The Television Companion: The Unofficial and Unauthorised Guide to Doctor Who. UK: Telos Publishing Ltd.. ISBN 1-903889-51-0. 
• Howe, David J.; Arnold T. Blumberg (2003). Howe's Transcendental Toybox: The Unauthorised Guide to Doctor Who Collectibles. UK: Telos Publishing Ltd.. ISBN 1-903889-56-1. 

See also

• Creative geography

External links

• The TARDIS on the official BBC Doctor Who website
• The TARDIS Library - A guide to the various props used over the years, and their relationship to real police boxes
• TARDIS Manual - an extensive, fan-written guide with much speculative information.
• TARDIS 360° Views - virtual views of the 2005 series TARDIS console room
• Doctor Who Collectibles: An Annotated Bibliography
• A TARDIS Storage Shed
• TARDIS builder's site, with free plans
• More TARDIS pictures
• The TARDIS Technical Index - an extensive fan-written guide
• Policeboxes.com - a catalogue of model police boxes