 Throughout the history of Doctor Who, the
TARDIS has long been the one constant in the show. Companions have
departed or died, adversaries have been defeated, destroyed or just
never come back to the series, The Doctor rarely visits planets more
than once (With the obvious exception of Earth), even The Doctor
himself will eventually regenerate... but the TARDIS itself, with
its familiar blue Police Box shape, has long remained a constant
in the series, right from that moment in "An
Unearthly Child" when
a pacing policeman shone his torch on the box as it stood in the
scrapheap, throbbing slightly, as though alive with power.
One of the most distinctive aspects of the
TARDIS is its vast interior, far larger on the inside than it is
on the outside. This is attributed to it being 'dimensionally transcendental',
which was explained to Leela by the Fourth
Doctor using the analogy
of how a larger cube can appear to be able to fit inside a smaller
one if the larger cube is further away, yet immediately accessible
at the same time. Apart from the obvious feature of the console room,
containing the controlling console, the TARDIS interior also includes
an art gallery containing some of history's great works (Rescued
by The Doctor from disasters which history states destroyed them),
a bathroom with a swimming pool, a medical bay, several brick-walled
storage areas, a vast library, a wardrobe room containing clothes
from all eras of humanity (Although The Doctor rarely uses this,
preferring to wear the same outfit throughout his incarnation, certain
incarnations were prepared to vary some little details, such as the
colour of their jackets (the Third
Doctor) or the pattern of their
waistcoats (the Sixth
Doctor)), and, of course, living quarters for
The Doctor's various companions. There is also a secondary console
room, apparently made of wood, which the Fourth Doctor used for a
year before returning to the original model, although he reconfigured
it in his seventh incarnation into a more gothic-looking formation,
which was used by the Eighth
Doctor until the TARDIS interior was
practically vaporised by a cold fusion reactor exploding within it
in "The
Gallifrey Chronicles", thus necessitating its regeneration
into the console room used in the new television series. The exact
size of the TARDIS has never been specifically confirmed, although
when the interior dimensions were mapped onto the exterior it dwarfed
even The Doctor's home planet of Gallifrey, and on another occasion
The Doctor materialised the entire TARDIS around an alternate Earth
to prevent the detonation of nuclear warheads by trapping the entire
planet in the TARDIS's state of temporal grace.
 |
| The Very
First Appearance |
|
The TARDIS is, essentially, The Doctor's only
true home in the entire series. Even when the Third Doctor was exiled
on Earth, finding a new, if unorthodox, family among his colleagues
at UNIT, the TARDIS was still the main reason he stayed with the
organisation in the first place, taking a job as Scientific Advisor
to the organisation to acquire parts to repair the TARDIS. Although
it has been said on many cases that the TARDIS is not fully operational
- indeed, in "The Gallifrey Chronicles", Marnel, the TARDIS's
previous owner, stated that only ten per cent of the TARDIS's necessary
functions aren't working (Including, for some bizarre reason, animal-language
translators) - the TARDIS always seems to have all the necessary
features that a space/time machine carrying any possible species
would need. These include the ability to protect its passengers,
to show them where they have landed on a view screen (Although since
the screen shows them the absolute positive value of coordinates,
it isn't much use in the parallel reality of E-Space where coordinates
are negative), to allow them to understand any language, a yearometer
(Giving them their location in space as well as time), a food machine,
a wardrobe, and necessary living quarters for its passengers, along
with a power source - and, or course, the ability to set coordinates
and get from A to B by travelling through the fifth dimension of
the Time Vortex.
 |
| Outside
with the First Doctor |
|
The TARDIS's steering abilities, of course,
are one of the prominent points that caused The Doctor to argue with
his companions. For The Doctor's first two incarnations, he was unable
to steer the TARDIS to anywhere that he claimed he would get it to;
even if, by some miracle, the First
Doctor reached
Earth with Ian and Barbara when
he said he would, it was invariably not the correct time or place,
and even on those rare occasions (Such as ""The
Plotters" or "The
Time Travellers") that The Doctor
did manage to land in London, albeit always at least a few decades
out from his target. In "Heart
of TARDIS", the Second
Doctor
attributed this problem to security devices in the TARDIS which,
in the event of a theft, prevent the pilot from getting exactly where
he wants to go, although given that he still had some problems in
his next few incarnations, when he'd sorted out his differences with
his people and his third self's exile had been lifted, it would appear
that he wasn't being totally honest. However, in recent times, even
with such problems as his eighth self's century-long amnesia following
his battle with Faction
Paradox in "The
Ancestor Cell",
The Doctor appears to have mastered how to control the TARDIS when
he has a location that he desperately needs to get to, although he
can't take it anywhere if he isn't especially bothered about getting
there for himself (Hence why the Ninth
Doctor materialised
at the Powell estate twelve months after he and Rose originally left
as
opposed to the twelve hours he was aiming for).
 |
| Inside
with the Second Doctor |
|
The TARDIS's most predominate inoperative
feature is, of course, its chameleon circuit. Normally, this device
is meant to change a TARDIS into something that blends in seamlessly
with its surroundings, but the TARDIS's chameleon circuit has remained
a Police Box ever since it left Totter's Lane in 1963 (Originally,
the producers were going to include a working chameleon circuit,
but it was deemed to be too expensive to supply all the props necessary
for such a feature, and so the idea was scrapped). On two occasions
since then, however, the Sixth and Seventh
Doctors have attempted
to repair the circuit (And the Fourth contemplated repairing it but
was distracted when The Master's latest scheme nearly destroyed the
Universe and made him regenerate), but, both times, they reset it
back to its default Police Box form; the Sixth Doctor ("Attack
of the Cybermen") because the circuit was turning the TARDIS
into objects that still simply refused to blend in with its new location,
and the Seventh ("Conundrom" and "No
Future") because The Meddling Monk hacked into the circuit and nearly gave the TARDIS
away. Since then, The Doctor has appeared to be satisfied with the
Police Box shape; indeed, in "Boom
Town", the Ninth Doctor
specifically stated that he likes the TARDIS as it is.
 |
| The Third
Doctor |
|
Other, lesser-used parts of the TARDIS include
among their number the time safe, a permitted temporal paradox that
must be used sparingly; unlike normal safes, where things are put
in for future use, in a time safe, things are put in later for prior
use. To date, the only recorded use of the safe was when the Fifth
Doctor and Turlough used to send a diary to their past selves that
led to them facing the mysterious beings known as the Vrall on the
moon of 1878 ("Imperial
Moon") (There has been some speculation
that the safe may have been used by the Seventh Doctor to send himself
notes about problems he would later face, but this remains only a
theory). There is also the Jade Pagoda (Named for its resemblance
to Lao Tzu's structure of that name), which serves as an escape pod
in the event of the TARDIS running into trouble, and draws the main
TARDIS to it when the danger has passed - or, if damage is done to
the Jade Pagoda, it returns to the TARDIS when the damage becomes
too great. One of the more practical components of the TARDIS is
the Time Vector Generator (Or the TVG) which resembles an eighteen-inch
long gold stick with one white end; when extracted, it causes the
TARDIS to lose its link to the interior dimensions, reverting it
to a simple Police Box (Or whatever it looks like at the time) until
the TVG is reinstalled.
 |
| The Fourth
Doctor |
|
There is also the HADS, or Hostile Action
Displacement System, which causes the TARDIS to dematerialise whenever
a weapon is used against it that may cause it damage and reappear
a short distance away. It has also been shown to possess a force
field, although this function is rarely used since the TARDIS is
strong enough on its own, and, in any case, that function appears
to have been disabled following the Time War, since the Ninth Doctor
was forced to wire up an external device to protect himself and his
companions from the Daleks in "The
Parting of the Ways".
The TARDIS also used to possess a Zero Room, an area where Time Lords
can go to recuperate after a traumatic regeneration; since the Zero
Room is sealed off from the rest of the universe, Time Lords are
able to relax and focus on reorganizing their new personality (However,
The Doctor only used it at the beginning of his fifth incarnation,
and it was lost in the subsequent escape from Event One ("Castrovalva"),
although the Seventh Doctor reconstructed it shortly before the novel "Deceit").
However, one of the few extra features in the TARDIS that actually
has an impact on where the TARDIS goes is the Fast Return Switch,
a switch that causes the TARDIS to go back to a previous destination
if pressed correctly; if used too often, or stuck in one position,
as shown in "The
Edge of Destruction", the TARDIS can go
all the way back to the beginning of the universe itself, at which
point the intense gravity can tear the power source of the ship away.
 |
| The Fifth
Doctor |
|
The TARDIS's power source has remained one
of the more interesting points in the series. There were hints in
the earlier stories, such as in "The
Daleks", when it was
established that the TARDIS requires mercury for its fluid links
in order to travel anywhere, but it wasn't until "The Three
Doctors" that it was specifically stated that the time-travelling
capabilities of the Time Lords were powered by a trapped black hole,
named in "The Deadly Assassin" as the Eye of Harmony, although
the TARDIS does require other energy sources to function properly,
such as the rare ore Zeiton Seven ("Vengeance on Varos")
and arton energy, a form of energy generated by Time Lord minds.
During his exile on Earth, the Third Doctor removed the TARDIS console
from the main ship in an attempt to get around the blocks the Time
Lords had placed on the ship during his exile ("Inferno"),
using the energy of a nuclear reactor to 'jump-start' the ship, but
this was only a temporary measure and the console soon ran out of
power after only a couple of trips. Despite Gallifrey's destruction
in "The Ancestor Cell", and thus also the loss of the Eye
of Harmony, the TARDIS has somehow managed to keep going (After its
regeneration in "Escape
Velocity"), suggesting that it
has been fitted with an alternative source of power to the Eye; indeed,
in the Ninth Doctor adventure "Boom Town", The Doctor parked
the TARDIS over a dimensional rift in Cardiff to refuel, confirming
that it now operates independent from Gallifrey, with Cardiff being
used as a ‘pit stop’ to top up its power. However,
given that in "The Gallifrey Chronicles" the TARDIS still seems to
be linked to a black hole, it seems a fair assumption that there
are still some aspects of the Eye in existence that the TARDIS can
access, but the TARDIS must periodically tap into another source
of power in order to maintain the connection between it and the Eye
fragments now that the direct link to Gallifrey has been lost. During "Rise
of the Cybermen/The Age of Steel", when the TARDIS was briefly
transported intoa parallel universe, The Doctor stated that the TARDIS
actually draws its power from the universe as a whole, and it was
hence inoperative in parallel realities, but given that this was
never a problem when the TARDIS was sent to multiple alternate worlds
during the "Fractured Reality" saga (When the actions of
the Eighth Doctor's foe Sabbath resulted
in the barriers between parallel worlds being broken down from "Time
Zero" to "Sometime
Never..."), this is most likely a new limitation caused
by the loss of the Eye and Gallifrey. The 2006 Christmas Special "The
Runaway Bride" also revealed that the TARDIS's power source
is connected to Huon particles, a long-lost source of energy that
is naturally inert unless they catalyse inside something alive but
unravel the atomic structure if exposed to them on a long-term basis,
but the importance of Huon energy to the ship's operation on a daily
basis is unclear. When The Doctor was pitted against the beings known
to fans as the 'Weeping Angels' - beings who fed off the energy of
lives they'd sent into the past - the Angels sought to acquire the
TARDIS to feed on the time energy within it, but this attempt was
averted thanks to the actions of Sally Sparrow, a young woman in
the present who'd acquired video footage of The Doctor based on information
he'd acquire from her in the future.
Although the TARDIS is easily capable of travelling
through time, its ability to go to other universes where history
diverged from our own has varied on some occasions. In "Battlefield",
the Seventh Doctor revealed that travelling into parallel universes
is referred to as travelling sideways in Time, but it has also been
stated that the TARDIS has various safety blocks that prevent it
from materialising in a universe other than our own. Although these
features were briefly disabled in "Heart of TARDIS" (When
the Second Doctor was trying to get rid of the blocks the Time Lords
had installed that prevented him from taking the TARDIS where he
wanted to go) and "Inferno" (When the Third attempted to
bypass the blocks the Time Lords had installed again that prevented
him from dematerialising during his exile), The Doctor always restored
them, and remained content with being 'limited' to this universe.
Apart from the obvious exceptions of history in the 'prime' reality
being altered by outside forces (Such as in "Timewyrm:
Exodus" or "Timewyrm:
Genesys"),
The Doctor's only other visits to parallel realities occurred during
the events of the 'Fractured Reality' saga and "Rise of the
Cybermen/The Age of Steel", when the ship fell through a crack
in reality that took the entire ship into an alternate reality. Although
it commonly travels from place to place by dematerialising and travelling
through the higher dimension of the Time Vortex, "The
Runaway Bride" demonstrated that the TARDIS was capable of 'flying'
through the air almost like a regular spaceship, but such a feature
is clearly draining for the ship - judging by the fact that it was
subsequently out of action for a few hours - suggesting that it was
never designed to operate like that.
 |
| The Sixth
Doctor |
|
Another matter for debate in the series is
a simple one; is the TARDIS alive? At the start of the series, the
First Doctor rejected the merest suggestion of such a concept, regarding
the TARDIS as a mere machine ("The Edge of Destruction"),
but, eventually, he began to acknowledge that it was far more than
that, even telling his companion Steven
Taylor, at the conclusion
of their meeting with Dodo Chaplet and
their battle with the so-called 'Gods of the Latter-Day Pantheon'
("Salvation"),
that he would do well to remember that the TARDIS had a mind of its
own.
By the time he was in his fourth incarnation, The Doctor was acting
as though the TARDIS had a mind of its own on a regular basis, some
of his companions doing the same (Indeed, in "The Invasion of
Time", K9 referred to the TARDIS as 'a very stupid
machine' due to its inability to speak.). However, despite all this,
there
have only been some very rare moments when the TARDIS has displayed
actual moments of sentience, such as when it refused to let the Sixth
Doctor near it because it was terrified after it nearly Time Rammed
its past self due to a virus planted in it by The Master ("The
Quantum Archangel"), or an alternate version of it initially
distrusting the Seventh Doctor after he took it from its home reality
due to its Third Doctor being dead.
 |
| The Seventh
Doctor |
|
Although the TARDIS is The Doctor's closest
friend, it has had to experience some very traumatic events in its
time with The Doctor. One of the worst was in "Frontios",
when it was literally destroyed by a meteor storm triggered by gravity-controlling
insects known as 'Tractators', but it was pulled back together when
the Fifth Doctor tricked the head Tractator - known as the Gravis
- into pulling it back together; since the interior then existed
in its own separate dimension, the Gravis was cut off from the other
Tractators, and all of them were shut down, as the Gravis was the
source of their power. A couple of lifetimes later, after an attack
by an alien parasite caused the TARDIS to collide with an early Gallifreyian
Time Scaphe, the TARDIS was briefly spread out into a vast city,
torn between three different timelines, haunted by the Seventh Doctor’s
ghost and populated by early Gallifreyians who believed that The
Doctor had stolen their future. Although the TARDIS managed to help
Ace restore The Doctor to normal, two different versions of the parasite
teamed up with a rogue Gallifreyian to try and kill The Doctor, with
The Doctor only being saved when he tricked the parasite into killing
its infant self, restoring the Gallifreyians to their proper places
in time. However, when The Doctor finally managed to repair his ship,
the TARDIS was infected by a shard of demonic protoplasm in the process,
resulting in the TARDIS’s interior becoming warped, with a
corridor stretching to infinity or arton energy strands being tainted
with streaks of green along with various other malfunctions, as well
as The Doctor becoming increasingly withdrawn from Ace and his new
companion Benny due to his telepathic link to the ship. Unable to
get rid of the infection as it always knew what he was doing, The
Doctor was forced to spend several months reprogramming the tertiary
console to the new Zero Room without consciously thinking about it,
thus allowing The Doctor to cut himself off from the universe and
wait until Ace- who had recently left the TARDIS- returned to him
to help restore his memories.
Shortly after it was cured of the virus, the TARDIS was
also lost in an alternate Earth created by the Meddling Monk in "Blood
Heat"; in fact, the Seventh Doctor genuinely thought it had
been lost, and spent some time travelling in its alternate self (Its
Third Doctor having been killed by the Silurians and his regeneration
interrupted by the Meddling Monk) until it was returned by the mysterious
Muldwych ("Birthright"), who revealed it had escaped the
destruction of that alternate Earth by riding on a Fortean Flicker,
a temporal anomaly that displaced people and objects from their proper
places in space and time. The alternate version of the TARDIS was
given to Muldwych, and The Doctor departed for more adventures in
his old ship, grateful to have his old home/friend back with him.
 |
| The Television
Movie |
|
The next two occasions where the TARDIS faced
its own death, however, are almost proof that the TARDIS is sentient;
indeed, it could almost be assumed from these that the TARDIS is
in love with The Doctor! In "Neverland",
the Eighth Doctor was forced to materialise the TARDIS around an
anti-time 'bomb' to
prevent it contaminating the universe and save the life of his companion
Charley.
Although the risky manoeuvre worked, the results were horrific; The Doctor and the TARDIS were infected by anti-time, their minds
splitting into two personalities. The Doctor's anti-time side - named "Zagreus" after
an old Gallifreyian nursery rhyme - was merely a destructive maniac,
but the TARDIS's evil side based itself around a more specific emotion;
jealousy at the fact that The Doctor was willing to sacrifice it,
his oldest friend, to save a foolish girl who shouldn't have been
alive in the first place. Forming an alliance with Rassilon, the
TARDIS's Zagreus-side nearly destroyed The Doctor's mind when it
had its old shell melted down, but there was enough good left in
the TARDIS to give Charley (Along
with former companions Leela and Romana) a chance; with the aid
of three holograms based on the Fifth,
Sixth and Seventh Doctors, The Doctor/Zagreus was able to fight
off Rassilon and overcome the Zagreus part of him, although he then
exiled
himself to the anti-time universe for a while until the infection
was removed. During his time in the anti-time universe, The Doctor
was briefly separated from the TARDIS and trapped on a planet divided
into various ‘zones’, forcing him, Charley, and new companion
C’rizz to work with a mysterious entity called the Kro’ka
to travel through the zones to track down the TARDIS, until they
arrived in a maze and the TARDIS was able to send The Doctor a message.
With the TARDIS restored to him, The Doctor departed the anti-time
universe with his companions, leaving the deceitful Kro’ka
to its fate.
 |
| The Ninth
Doctor (with Rose) |
|
After that, the TARDIS's next case of near-destruction
could be traced all the way back to the Third Doctor, although the
effects only caught up with The Doctor in his eighth incarnation
while he was travelling with Fitz Kreiner and Compassion. In his
third incarnation, The Doctor's history was altered by the group
known as Faction Paradox, who, by tricking the Eighth Doctor, lured
the Third onto the distant planet of Dust, where he was shot in the
chest and forced to regenerate ahead of schedule. As a result (Due
to it having been released earlier), the Faction's biodata virus
was able to infect The Doctor while his biological defences were
focused on helping him regenerate, although it would take some while
to take effect. Indeed, at the very least, his fourth, fifth and
sixth incarnations would definitely be the same as they were in the
original history, and the seventh had a good chance of turning out
fine as well, but for the Eighth Doctor, the virus was a whole other
story and would become a serious problem for him...
Or, it would have been, if the TARDIS hadn't
taken the virus into itself when the Third Doctor regenerated inside
it, realising that history had somehow gone onto the wrong track.
Desperate to restore history, the TARDIS even managed to hold itself
together after it was destroyed when it got caught between the reality
barriers between this world and the Land of Dreams ("The
Shadows of Avalon"), latching on to a power source in the form of a
Universe in a Bottle and regenerating itself around it over the course
of five thousand years in the Vortex. After spending centuries trying
to get the infection under control, the TARDIS eventually appeared
over Gallifrey - the source of the Bottle - in the form of a vast
Gallifreyian flower of remembrance, its interior having been mapped
onto its exterior so that it was the exact same size inside and outside.
Appearing to be made of bone due to the Faction virus inside it,
the TARDIS manifested defences against intruders in the form of giant
bone spiders, a connotation to the timeline it was trying to restore
(See "Planet of the Spiders"), and, at the console room,
the dust particles assembled themselves into the form of the Third
Doctor - or at least, the 'temporal ghost' of the Third Doctor who
should have been before the Faction messed with his history.
 |
| Inside
The Ninth Doctor's TARDIS |
|
In a final confrontation on the twisted TARDIS,
where the Eighth Doctor and the Third's 'ghost' faced off against
Grandfather Paradox, the twisted future version of The Doctor that
would be created by the virus, the Eighth Doctor drained off the
TARDIS's energy by firing its long-dormant weapons systems, thus
forcing one timeline to become real; fortunately, it was the uninfected
one, although The Doctor then had to erase his own memory to transfer
the Time Lord Matrix into his subconscious while the TARDIS collapsed
down to the size of a snuff box. Taken to late nineteenth-century
Earth by his friend Compassion, The Doctor was left to recover from
what he'd had to do while the TARDIS regenerated itself, the two
of them leaving Earth in 2001 ("Escape Velocity"), accompanied
by old companion Fitz Krienier and new companion Anji Kapoor, ready
for new adventures.
Since then, Fitz and Anji have gone their
separate ways, The Doctor's memories have been restored, and he has
regenerated into his ninth incarnation, joined in his travels by
new companion Rose Tyler... and, for the first time in the show's
history, The Doctor has specifically said 'The TARDIS is alive',
rather than just making enigmatic comments or simply treating it
like it was alive. This occurred in the episode "Boom Town",
when his old adversary Margaret Blaine, really a Slitheen in disguise,
tried to destroy the Earth by channelling the TARDIS's energy through
a device that would enlarge a rift in time. However, knowing Margaret
was trying to destroy it, the TARDIS, tapping into her thoughts and
desires, revealed the Time Vortex to Margaret, turning her back into
an egg and giving her a second chance at life, away from the criminal
influence of her Slitheen family.
 |
| The Tenth
Doctor (with Rose) |
|
Shortly after this, the TARDIS's link to the
Time Vortex was again accessed, this time by Rose Tyler, who had
been sent back home in the ship while The Doctor and new companion
Jack Harkness faced off against an army of around half a million
Daleks. Eventually, when everyone else on the satellite where the
battle had been waged was dead, the only way The Doctor could stop
the Daleks was by triggering a delta wave, which would fry the brain
of every living Dalek... but, unable to refine the wave in the time
he had, The Doctor would annihilate all life on Earth as well. Just
as The Doctor was about to be exterminated, Rose returned, now imbued
with the power of the Vortex... and, with this power, she turned
the entire Dalek fleet to dust, before The Doctor took the energy
into himself to save her life at the cost of his ninth incarnation.
For a brief time after The Doctor's regeneration, the TARDIS was
forced to devote all its power to keeping the Tenth Doctor stable,
resulting in a temporary shut-down of features such as the translators,
preventing Rose from understanding alien languages until The Doctor
woke up. So far, however, its time with the Tenth Doctor has not
been easy; not only was it briefly transferred into a parallel universe
that caused it to shut down until The Doctor could 'recharge' it,
but it was also stolen by the newly-regenerated Master, who, unable
to pilot it anywhere but early 21st-century Earth and the end of
the universe - The Doctor had locked the coordinates, - cannibalised
it to create a Paradox Machine that created a massive rift above
Earth, before Jack Harkness destroyed the machine and The Doctor
subsequently restored the TARDIS to normal. (Although it did take
a brief knock when it collided with a younger version of itself and
a starship based on the Titanic due to The Doctor having forgotten
to turn the shields back on). Whatever it has gone through, however,
the audience can be sure that, out-of-date or not, the familiar old
Police Box still has several adventures in it yet... |
|
