Alan Kistler's Guide to the TARDIS
Monday, January 21, 2008 at 05:22PM 
TARDIS - "Time And Relative Dimension In Space"
"TARDIS" is a term used for the time travel capsules (or "TT capsules") created and used by the Time Lords of Gallifrey. It's been said that a TARDIS is not built but rather grown, which may have something to do with the fact that most of it is composed of validium, which the Doctor has described as a "living metal." The mechanics and devices within are presumably created and added later on. As technology progresses, newer and more advanced TARDISes are grown and engineered.
A simple TT capsule looks like a plain metal booth that from the outside appears large enough to fit maybe two or three adults within. The chameleon circuit of a TARDIS will give it a different outer appearance when activated (see CAMOUFLAGE AND CLOAKING further below).
The TT capsule is able to travel anywhere through space and time by shifting itself into the space-time vortex. The space-time vortex is a dangerous place filled with "time winds" that can carry you to any random destination. It is also inhabited by creatures such as vortisaurs, reapers (dragon-like creatures that feed off of chronal instability) and chronovores. Because of this, a TARDIS is equipped with powerful force-field generators. The force-field isn't indestructible however. Powerful missiles and other projectiles are capable of breaking through.
In the past, if the doors of the TARDIS were open while in flight, people could be sucked out into the vortex and the time winds could seriously injure people and machines who managed to stay inside ("Enemy of the World" and "Warrior's Gate"). In recent years, the Doctor has apparently made some modifications to his ship so that the force-fields will at least maintain the atmosphere even if the doors are open ("The Runaway Bride").
A TARDIS is often described as "dimensionally transcendental" due to the fact that its inside is significantly larger than the dimensions outside. The Doctor once explained that the science of
transdimensional engineering ("a key Time Lord discovery") is similar to the human concept of a tesseract, where a large portion of space is folded into a smaller dimension of space.
If the dimensional controls are messed around with, this can cause some troubling effects. The Doctor once sabotaged the TARDIS belonging to the renegade Time Lord known as the Monk and as a result the interior dimensions became too tiny for the criminal to fit inside his own ship. The Time Lord who calls herself Iris Wildthyme has a malfunctioning TARDIS and now her ship is actually somewhat smaller inside than the dimensions outside would leave one to believe.
The Seal of Rassilon
After a TARDIS is fully constructed, it still has to be "primed." This can only happen if the person who first pilots it is a Time Lord and thus possesses the "Rassilon Imprimatur", symbiotic nuclei that allow them to connect to the ship's systems and to better deal with the stresses of time travel (first mentioned in the TV adventure "The Two Doctors"). If someone without the Rassilon Imprimatur attempts to fly a TARDIS that has not yet been primed, the ship will not function.
A Time Lord is required for that first trip, after which the TARDIS is quite functional. It's possible that the lack of a Rassilon Imprimatur is also part of what makes it difficult for non-Time Lords to fully pilot a TARDIS. Perhaps the Imprimatur allows the Time Lord's thoughts to connect with the circuits, thus aiding in flight.
THE DOCTOR AND HIS SHIP
As a "Type 40" TARDIS, the Doctor's ship was considered to be an antique when he stole it from a repair shop. This, along with the fact that it wasn't fully repaired yet and the Doctor had to hotwire several circuits to get past the anti-thief security protocols, means that this particular ship is not the most reliable of time capsules. Parts of it are constantly breaking down or operating incorrectly (such as when the First Doctor noticed his "year-o-meter" had completely died in "The Unearthly Child").
It has been said that TARDISes are intended to be manned by a crew of six, which is why the control console is always hexagonal. With this in mind, and since the Doctor once admitted that he'd failed his exam on time capsule piloting ("The Shakespeare Code"), it's no wonder why the Doctor would have a tough time piloting the ship to full effect even if it weren't old and partially jury-rigged.
Despite this, the Doctor has now been piloting his ship for several centuries and thus has become a very experienced with its operation, so much so that he's been seen doing difficult maneuvers such as rotating his ship an exact 90 degrees without actually moving its location ("Fear Her"), transporting it to an exact spot only a few feet away ("Logopolis"), and even materializing it around a specific enemy so as to trap them inside ("Parting of the Ways" and the audio adventure "Neverland"). But all the other aforementioned factors still ensure that every now and then a screw-up will occur.
WHAT'S IN A NAME?
In the first Doctor Who TV episode "An Unearthly Child", the Doctor's granddaughter Susan claimed that she herself had coined the name "TARDIS" for time capsules as a way of referencing the fact that they had different dimension within than outside. Yet when we met other Time Lords and saw the Doctor return to Gallifrey on a few occasions, many of them referred to the ships as both "time capsules" and "TARDISes."
There are two explanations for this. One is that Susan was fibbing and simply wanted to show off to her teachers and seem impressive to them. The second was an idea presented in Paul Cornell's book The Discontinuity Guide. Writers Martin Day and Keith Topping suggested that Susan was either a public figure of sorts or at least had some influential friends when she was still living on Gallifrey and so when she coined the term 'TARDIS' it quickly spread through the planet and entered the vernacular.
THE HEART OF THE TARDIS
The TARDIS has been said to feed off of the general energies of the universe itself ("Rise of the 
Cybermen"). The Doctor can use different energy sources to recharge the "Heart of the TARDIS." The Doctor first mentioned the Heart of the TARDIS in the very third Doctor Who adventure "The Edge of Destruction", saying it was the main power source of the ship and indicated it rested beneath the control console. This was later confirmed in the Ninth Doctor adventure "Boom Town" when a panel on the console opened, revealing the light of the Heart of the TARDIS underneath.
In the Fourth Doctor adventure "The Deadly Assassin", our hero investigated the myth of the "Eye of Harmony", said to be a great power source buried beneath the surface of the planet Gallifrey itself. The Doctor later realized that the Eye of Harmony was actually a black hole that had been stabilized by the efforts of Rassilon and Omega, the founders of Time Lord society, and that it actually was the power source for all the TARDISes. Somehow, it extended its energies to each time capsule across space and time.
In the TV-movie, the Eighth Doctor saw the Heart of the TARDIS from another, much larger access point in
the Cloister Room (this room is mentioned below). In the movie, he referred to it as the Eye of Harmony. Some viewers were confused, wondering if perhaps the Doctor had somehow stolen the Eye from Gallifrey and hidden it in his ship. In the novels it was later explained that this eye-shaped access point was merely a remote link to the true Eye of Harmony, thus explaining how the Eye could extend its power to each time capsule as the Fourth Doctor had believed and also confirming that this energy well was actually the Heart of the TARDIS that had been referenced previously.
When the Heart of the TARDIS was opened from the access point in the Cloister Room, it released enough energy that after several hours the build-up was enough to risk tearing the Earth itself apart. When the energies of the Heart were released in "Boomtown" and "Parting of the Ways", they caused drastic effects on people who stood in its path. The Doctor said that since the TARDIS extends a telepathic field that translates language through thought, it's possible that these physical effects and changes were influenced by the subconscious desires of the people who were exposed to the energy. This may explain why the Heart of the TARDIS seemed able to ressurect two people who'd died aboard the TARDIS during the TV-movie. Perhaps it was reacting to the Doctor's subconscious desires.
Following the destruction of Gallifrey, the Doctor has been seen to recharge his ship's cells by drawing on energies released from stars and rifts in space and time. He also once recharged one of its cells by using a part of his own life force.
It was also said in the original series that the TARDIS derives some of its power from "Artron energy." The Doctor himself was said to possess an "unusually high level of Artron energy" and it was later revealed in the new TV series that Artron energy is actually "time radiation" that exists everywhere in the space-time vortex. It is harmless to living beings and simply clings to them when they travel through time. The aliens known as the Daleks later learned how to leach off Artron energy from other time travelers to help themselves recover from wounds (their own form of regeneration, if you will).
Although the main TARDIS power is drawn form these cosmic sources, certain machines inside the TARDIS rely on more conventional materials, such as mercury (as revealed in the First Doctor adventure "The Daleks") or an ore known as Zeiton 7 (shown in the Sixth Doctor adventure "Vengeance on Varos").
CAMOUFLAGE AND CLOAKING
Normally, a TARDIS is quite plain looking on the outside. But since the Time Lords do not like interfering with other races, they designed their time capsules to blend in with the surroundings of wherever it landed. Thus, the Time Lord could remain hidden within and thanks to the scanner screen they wouldn't even have to leave to observe the people and events happening around their ship.
This ability to blend in is due to the "chameleon circuit." Though this is its official name, the Doctor and others have sometimes used other off-the-cuff ways to describe it. The Monk called it a "camouflage unit." The Doctor and his later companion Rose Tyler both referred to it as a "cloaking device." Whatever you call it, the function of it is simple. The TARDIS computers check out what's around it and then adopts an appearance not likely to draw too much attention. For instance, if it landed in a forest it would likely assume the shape of an unusual looking tree. If it landed in ancient Rome, it may look like a free-standing column or a statue. When it is in the shape of something that does not normally have a door attached to it, the entrance is fairly-well hidden.
The limits of the chameleon circuit aren't really known nor is it known if these limits are different depending on the model and type of TARDIS in use. On different occasions, the Master's TARDIS has been able to look like a fire place, a large computer bank, a statue and a grandfather clock. In the audio play "Circular Time", the Fifth Doctor encountered a TARDIS that had disguised itself as a lake.
Of course, there is the chance that people will make a note to investigate the sudden appearance of a statue
or police box or what have you that wasn't there before. The Ninth Doctor remarked that people tend to ignore the sight and continue on their way. The Tenth Doctor later explained further that the TARDIS has a low level "perception filter" on it which causes most people to look away or feel that the TARDIS is beneath their notice (unless something happens to specifically draw their attention to it, of course, such as seeing a blue police box fly through the air or land randomly in the middle of an airport that would never have such a device there in the first place).
When the TARDIS landed in front of the Millenium Center in Cardiff, it parked itself over the area of a rift in space and time that ran through the city. The rift somehow reacted with the TARDIS's unusual properties and as a result the area where the TARDIS had landed now has its own self-contained perception filter, allowing people who stand on that one spot to suddenly find themselves beyond the notice of people around them. The Torchwood organization discovered this and hid an elevator on this spot.
ROOMS, ROOMS, ROOMS
The most famous room is, of course, the console room (originally called the "control room"). This was the first TARDIS room that the audience saw and is the room we most often find the Doctor in, since it is here where he controls the flight of his ship via the control console and can watch what's outside via the scanner screen.
The original TV program made it very clear very quickly that the TARDIS had various corridors and levels within. It had a library, a swimming pool, personal quarters for several people, and a multi-level wardrobe with clothing from various worlds and many different time periods. And here's a fun fact. If you watch the end of "The Christmas Invasion" and watch the Tenth Doctor adopting his new look, the costumes of the previous Doctors are all hanging up there.
Main Floor of the TARDIS Wardrobe
In the Big Finish audio plays, it's been said that there are rooms in the TARDIS where the holographic projectors and force-field generators are used to produce a variety of environments (similar to the holodeck on Star Trek: The Next Generation). In the audio play "Zagreus", the Doctor opened up a door at one point and saw what appeared to be a scene from the American wild west. In the audio play "No Place Like Home", the Fifth Doctor accidentally walked into a room that apparently possessed a rain forest. In the Seventh Doctor audio play "The Settling", the Doctor's companions Ace and Hex went into a room that possessed a snow-covered mountain range, which Ace insisted was real and that she'd actually climbed the highest range once.
However, the space within the TARDIS is not infinite. The Time Lady Romana once referred to the interior as having a specific and stable weight and the Fifth Doctor once had to jettison "25%" of the inner rooms in order to give his flight more thrust.
One of the more famous rooms aboard the TARDIS is the Cloister Room, which made its first appearance in the Fourth Doctor TV adventure "Logopolis." The Cloister Room looks like a great stone Cathedral and sometimes even has ivy. The Doctor has said he sometimes goes there to retreat and contemplate. There are bells in the Cloister Room that ring with a loud "Bong! Bong!" if the TARDIS is in immediate and direct danger of being torn apart. In the TV series, the bells can be heard ringing in the TV adventure "Logopolis", in the Tenth Doctor episode "The Sound of Drums", in the mini-episode "Time Crash", in the Eighth Doctor's TV-movie (subtitled "The Enemy Within"), and in the 2005 mini-episode done for the Children In Need charity.
ISOMORPHIC CONTROLS AND LANGUAGE FIELDS
In the Fourth Doctor adventure "The Pyramids of Mars", it was said that the TARDIS main controls were "isomorphic", meaning they had one person recognized as the pilot (the Doctor, naturally) and wouldn't work for others. Starting with the Fourth Doctor, we saw others who had some training and were very smart also occasionally operating some of the TARDIS's basic functions (though only Romana, being a Time Lord, was ever seen to successful pilot it by herself). So either the Fourth Doctor changed these controls sometime after the events of "The Pyramids of Mars" (and before Romana showed up in "The Ribos Operation") or the TARDIS simply allowed these later folk to pilot it because it sensed that the Doctor was okay with that.
It's possible the isomorphic controls have to do with the Rassilon Imprimatur. Perhaps it's possible for a Time Lord to program his TARDIS to respond only to his own unique set of symbiotic nuclei. Just a thought.
Which brings us to the fact that the TARDIS is equipped telepathic circuits. In a Fourth Doctor adventure, his companion Sarah Jane Smith asked how it was that she always heard people speaking English no matter what country or planet they went to. The Doctor simply said it was a Time Lord gift he was sharing with her. In a later adventure, the Doctor explained to his next companion Leela that the TARDIS extended a low-level telepathic field over its travelers. Many fans assumed that this was actually the reason why the Doctor and his friends could understand languages and be understood wherever they went, concluding that the telepathic field was patching the travelers into the TARDIS's memory banks concerning other languages.
This was finally confirmed in the new TV series when the Ninth Doctor explained that his friend Rose was "only hearing English" because his ship extended a telepathic field that "gets inside your head" and translates everything around you. There are a few exceptions to this, however. For instance, if a traveler has English as a native language and hears a word that doesn't have an English analogue, they may hear the actual alien word itself. Likewise, complex codes or languages that predate the TARDIS's records will not be translated.
Here's a fun example of how the TARDIS works. In the Big Finish audio adventure The Sirens of Time, the Fifth Doctor was speaking to a German submarine crew while in the presence of a British woman. When the British woman realized the Germans could understand the Doctor's words, she was confused why they couldn't understand her as well, since as far as she knew she and the Doctor were both just speaking English. Likewise, when the Doctor spoke to her, they heard him speaking in German and didn't understand why the woman understood him and not them nor why she responded to his words in English.
A LIVING SHIP
The Doctor's TARDIS has been said to be somewhat alive and occasionally it even showed signs of a personality. A few of the tie-in books published later said that all TARDISes were semi-sentient, but if you watch the TV series then you can see in the third adventure "The Edge of Destruction" that when it is suggested the TARDIS may have done something on its own, the Doctor at first scoffs at this, saying it is simply a machine and nothing more. Only later does he come to realize his ship is somewhat "alive." Therefore, as we must consider the TV series to have higher authority than the books, we have to conclude that a TARDIS showing signs of a personality is somewhat unusual.
How did it happen, though? As we learned more about the Doctor's people over the years, it was obvious that most of them barely ever traveled off their home world and didn’t always use the same TARDIS for each journey. Perhaps this particular time-ship developed a spark of life based on the Doctor's constant telepathic connection with its circuits over years of travel. As the show went on, the Doctor came to think of the TARDIS as the one constant companion in his life and would lovingly pat it at times as he called it "old girl."
Many fans have come to the hypothesis that because the TARDIS is slightly alive and telepathic, this is why the Doctor always seems to land in a place where everything was about to go to Hell or where evil was afoot. The TARDIS can sense his love of mystery and the thrill he gets from fighting evil and so it brings him to places and situations where there are villains to fight and people to save.
DIFFERENT CONTROL ROOMS AND KEYS
During the Fourth Doctor's tenure, we learned that some TARDISes at least have multiple control rooms, each of which can become the new main control room directly accessible to the entrance doors. The primary control room (or "console room") was only used during the Forth Doctor's career. The existence of multiple control rooms may also explain a remark the Doctor's former companion Leela made during the audio play "Zagreus", wherein she mentioned that the Doctor's TARDIS had a "back door." It's possible that when one control room is in use, the other is designated as a back-up and created a "back door" entry way hidden on the outside.
Primary Control Room
The rest of the time, the Doctor used the secondary control room during the original TV program stories. It was said on different occasions that he redecorated this room at times. In fact, it was stated by the Fourth Doctor that he could program the TARDIS computer to give the console room a different look and color. This was confirmed by the Fifth Doctor in an adventure where he met one of his future incarnations and saw that the console room was radically different in appearance, causing him to shout "You've changed the desktop theme!"
It's possible that the changes of the TARDIS console room are also what cause the Doctor's TARDIS keys to
occasionally change. At times, the keys have looked like simple Yale keys. At other times, it has looked like a flat key with strange triangles on one side and the constellation of Kasterborus on the other side. And during the Seventh Doctor's tenure, the key was decorated by the Seal of Rassilon (symbol of the Time Lords). The keys have been said to have perception filters just like the exterior of the TARDIS, so this may also be why they change shape from time to time.
Likewise, the exterior of the TARDIS changes every so slightly at times. True, it's been stuck looking like a police box for centuries, but at times the windows have become slightly larger (noticeably larger than real police box windows) and the sign on the door has altered in design. Sometimes it's been black with white letters, sometimes it's been white with black letters. Sometimes it's had white letters over blue. This may have to do with when the interior changes or it may be that the TARDIS chameleon circuit occasionally reasserts its effort to change shape and simply can't accomplish more than altering these minor details.
The reason for the characters mentioning these changes to the console room and the like was, of course, to explain away how the Doctor Who production team occasionally redecorated things. In one event, the set was changed by circumstances beyond anyone's control. When the "primary control room" was introduced, it was intended to last but later the set was terribly water damaged and had to be abandoned, forcing the show to rely on a look that resembled the previous set which had now retroactively been designated as the "secondary control room." Which is a shame, as I personally rather liked the look of the primary control room.
The primary and secondary console room both had walls decorated by "roundels" and had a video monitor on the wall that was referred to as a "scanner screen", which showed what lay outside of the TARDIS. Soon before the death of the Fourth Doctor, a computer display was added to the control console itself.
The control console in both the primary and secondary room was of an octagonal design. The primary control room, however, did not have the time rotor (or "time column" as it was sometimes called) in the center of the console.
In the TV-movie that introduced the Eighth incarnation of our hero, it was revealed that sometime before his death the Seventh Doctor had completely redesigned the console room and the console itself. The console room was now significantly larger and included a lounge area and a small library, as well as a holographic ceiling to help with navigation. The interior walls were also decorated by the Seal of Rassilon and was lit by a combination of low lights and various candles, which was certainly in keeping with the rather mysterious nature of the Seventh Doctor. It was never said whether this was the primary or secondary console room that had been redesigned.
This remodeled console room was the first one to have the time rotor actually attached to the ceiling. A similar design had been proposed during the original TV series but the show was cancelled before it could be realized.
In the audio play "The Settling", it was revealed that the Seventh Doctor's companion Ace had designed the new console controls to make it easier to operate the machine. The audio play "Excelis Decays" has the Seventh Doctor, now traveling alone, remark that he has just completed a complete overhaul of the console room. The Eighth Doctor audio plays and comic strips in Doctor Who Magazine both indicate that he kept this look for quite some time, perhaps not changing it until after he'd regenerated again.
In the new series, the Ninth Doctor was seen traveling with yet another new console room and it is this version that remains in use to this day. This console room brings back the roundels that decorated most of the console rooms from the original series, only this time they were now had round lights installed inside them. The time rotor is decorated by a variety of cables that connect to the ceiling. The floor is raised on a metal platform that has panels allowing access to various mechanics and certain cabinets where the Doctor keeps equipment and tools. This new console room is the first one to possess a control console that is round rather than octaganol. It is also the only console room we know of to possess hologram generator.
Although it has not been used in the live-action TV series, a cartoon episode adventure featuring the Tenth Doctor and his companion Martha Jones (entitled "The Infinite Quest") revealed that the current console room also has a holographic ceiling display to help with navigation.
And that about wraps it up. Hope you enjoyed this. If you didn't, you're a loser and should've stopped reading much earlier.
Until next time, cheers!
Reader Comments (1)
But how come all of the Aliens have British accents, huh? Explain that one, retconners!!!! (not you Alan, you're just reporting and compiling, I mean feel free if you want to, but....)
Although I did like the 9th Doctor's explanation:
ROSE
If you are an alien, then how comes you sound like you're from the North?
DOCTOR
Lots of planets have a North.
KISTLER'S RESPONSE:
Well, clearly you are not very well-versed in the evolution of language and vernacular. Had you read the "Sacred Laws of Rassilon" or the Doctor's "500 Year Diary" (the last 30 pages of which are a mixture of song lyrics and very poor haikus), you would have seen enough evidence to realize that, given enough time, all languages inevitably evolve to the point where they possess a British accent, partially because all life forms everywhere understand the basic fact this accent makes people simply sound more intelligent and diplomatic to those who do not possess the same accent.
Hmmm. Yes, I think I solved that problem very nicely. Now if only I could figure out how the characters in STARGATE: ATLANTIS always encounter cultures who have developed a form of English. I mean, they have no translation field or even universal translators like in STAR TREK. Witchcraft, I say!