TARDIS (video game)

TARDIS
Doctor:	Eleventh Doctor
Companion(s):	Amy
Main enemy:	The Entity
Main setting:	The Doctor's TARDIS
Key crew
Publisher:	BBC Wales Interactive
Developer:	Sumo Digital
Writer:	James Moran (script & story) Phil Ford (story) Sean Millard (story)
Director:	Sean Millard
Music:	Murray Gold
Release details
Platform:	PC, Mac
Genre:	Action-adventure
Release date:	27 August 2010
Official trailer
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The Adventure Games
← Previous	Blood of the Cybermen
Next →	Shadows of the Vashta Nerada

TARDIS was the third of The Adventure Games, a series of five games in which the player have the ability to play as the Eleventh Doctor and Amy Pond.

Set mostly inside the TARDIS, it gave players a chance to explore the ship in a way not previously offered by any other DWU video game to date. Nevertheless, it was by far the shortest of the five games. It was also only one of the games for which Phil Ford received no writing credit. Instead, writing chores were handled by James Moran.

Synopsis

With the TARDIS caught in a time riptide, it's up to Amy to save the day or leave the Eleventh Doctor trapped in the void forever. Meanwhile, a dangerous entity is roaming the TARDIS corridors and it hasn't been fed for a very long time...

Plot

The Doctor and Amy are inside the TARDIS, discussing where they should go next for a more peaceful outing - which is nearly impossible, considering the Doctor's long track record of holidays failing miserably. However, the TARDIS suddenly enters a "space riptide", and the Doctor is launched through the doors, out into space. After the TARDIS steadies itself, Amy looks outside and sees the Doctor hovering, still conscious and surrounded by a number of strange blue worms, a short distance away.

Through sign language, he manages to tell Amy that he is slowly suffocating, and she can save him by resetting the TARDIS air shell by using the red levers. Amy does so and the Doctor uses an earpiece to properly contact her through the scanner, telling her to use the tractor beam to retrieve him. The console needs an outside power source for that, so the Doctor sends Amy to his drawing room to retrieve a power source for the beam. Searching through the many knick-knacks in the Doctor's drawing room, Amy is, at first, unsuccessful in finding anything useful for powering the tractor beam. Another riptide strikes the TARDIS, and the interior shaking causes one of the clocks to move, revealing a safe. Amy finds the Master's laser screwdriver inside, but accidentally knocks over a glass vase next to it. Thinking she can just replace it, Amy hurries back to the control room. Unbeknownst to her, a orange glow escapes the shattered pieces of vase and follows quickly after...

After informing the Doctor via the scanner that she has found the laser screwdriver, the Doctor instructs her to insert it in the console. Doing so activates the tractor beam and the Doctor is pulled back into the TARDIS.

The Doctor explains that the blue worms that had been pestering him are known as Chronomites, somewhat harmless parasites, but they can make you "very itchy". Unfortunately, the Entity, an old enemy of the Doctor that survives by draining years from others, has arrived in the control room. The presence of the Entity, along with another space riptide, causes the TARDIS to send Amy away.

Amy is now in a future TARDIS with the Entity. Realising that Amy is in the TARDIS 1,000 years into the future, the Doctor sets about scavenging parts from the present TARDIS in order to create a tachyon feedback loop which will reunite Amy with him. The Doctor manages to scavenge three items from his drawing room; his biodata module fob watch, an Oscillator from the distress beacon he picked up in the GSO Arctic Drilling Station and the Kontron crystal used to make a chronal blocker on Skaro; using these, the Doctor is able to successfully make the feedback loop.

In the future TARDIS, the Entity begins attacking Amy, feeding on her time. A time-activated recording of the Doctor appears on the scanner, telling Amy that she needs to answer some trivia questions in order to prove that she's herself; then she can access and use the tachyon feedback loop to get back to her proper timeline. Amy answers the questions correctly and completes the loop on her end, allowing the Doctor to pull her back into the present TARDIS.

Once the pair are reunited, the Doctor threatens the Entity - telling it to either restore Amy's time or be imprisoned again (permanently) after it has finished her off. The Entity retreats into another vase that the Doctor takes out, and the Doctor proposes a deal: he will release the Entity into the timestream, where it can feed off of the limitless supply of Chronomites - but only if it restores Amy's time. The Entity finds this to be acceptable and gives Amy her time back; the Doctor then releases it from the TARDIS to fulfil his side of the bargain. Amy tells the Doctor that he forgot to mention that the Chronomites cause itchiness, but the Doctor simply says that he forgot (possibly meaning that he wished to punish the Entity for its past deeds).

The Doctor performs some checks on the central console, then sets course for Poseidon 8, built in London's previous location, following the great flood of the 23rd century. Exiting the TARDIS, Amy is amazed by the underwater base that they have materialised inside. However, her amazement is quickly replaced by fear, as the pair notice a gigantic alien shark attacking the base and heading towards them....

Cast

• The Doctor - Matt Smith
• Amy Pond - Karen Gillan
• The Entity - Sarah Douglas

Crew

• Writer - James Moran
• Story - James Moran, Phil Ford, Sean Millard
• Voice directors - Gary Russell, Charles Cecil
• Executive producers - Pat Phelan, Steven Moffat, Piers Wenger, Beth Willis
• Executive producers, interactive - Anwen Aspden, Charles Cecil
• Interactive producer- Richard Jenkins
• Senior producer - Mat Fidell
• Sound editor - Matthew Cox (as Matt Cox)
• Sound and music editor - Pat Phelan
• Quality insurer - Tom Barker
• Programming lead - James Sutherland
• Programmers - Phil Woods, Carl Dixon, Dan Mallinson, Henry Durrant, Sean Davies, Tom Sedden
• Design and Scripting - Nana Nielsen, Mike Welsh, Sarah Cook
• Concepts/Storyboards - Richard Jordon
• Art Lead - Michael Hirst (as Mick Hirst)
• Artists - Chris Pepper, John Hackleton
• Animation Lead - Ian Dreary
• Animators - Lee Taylor, Phil Hanks, Stephen Thomas (as Steve Thomas), Shruti Rao, Simon Wottage, Robin Butler, Simon Bradley
• Graphic Design Lead - Chantal Beaumont
• Creative Director - Sean Millard
• Core Tech Manager - Stephen Robinson
• Studio Head - Paul Porter
• European VP - Carl Cavers
• Casting Director - Andy Pryor 
• Original music by - Murray Gold

References

• The TARDIS has a drawing room, sun room and a lift.
• Things seen in the drawing room include:
  • Lots of clocks
  • The Fourth Doctor's scarf
  • A cricket ball
  • The Master's laser screwdriver
  • A Dalek eye stalk
  • A Cyberman chest plate
  • The Master's fob watch
  • An Ood translation sphere
  • A Time Lord staff
  • A Journal of Impossible Things
  • A sonic blaster
  • A Sycorax staff
  • The Chronon blocker
  • A recorder
  • Elizabeth X's mask
  • The Book of the Weeping Angels
  • A gramophone
  • A map of Medieval Venice
  • A distress beacon
  • A painting based on Jan Adam Kruseman's painting of Adriaan van der Hoop, however the painting has longer, darker hair and appears to be holding an object resembling The Master's laser screwdriver.
• Amy and the Doctor are both bad at charades.
• King Kong and Tarzan are mentioned.
• The Cloister bell is heard.

Story notes

• The story continues in GAME: Shadows of the Vashta Nerada.
• The day before TARDIS was released to download, a story (in script form) was posted on the Doctor Who website called Wish You Were Here, acting as a prelude to TARDIS.
• This is the first story to actually teach the viewer/player how to fly the TARDIS and what everything on the console actually does.
• A 'Who Fact' about Cybermen states the Eighth and Ninth Doctors never encountered them. However, it does note that there are some adventures "which we never get to see", and indeed it is clearly only covering TV stories. The Eighth Doctor encountered the Cybermen in COMIC: The Flood, AUDIO: Sword of Orion, The Girl Who Never Was, and Human Resources. The Ninth Doctor, though not shown to have met any living Cybermen in any medium at the time TARDIS was released, per se, did at the very least, come across the head from a Cyberman among Henry Van Statten's collection of rare alien artefacts in TV: Dalek. He was later seen to encounter the Cybermen in COMIC: Supremacy of the Cybermen, albeit in an alternate timeline, and COMIC: The Bidding War.

Promotion

• In a video posted on the BBC Doctor Who website, Karen Gillan promoted the game and announced the alien was called the Entity.

Production errors

If you'd like to talk about narrative problems with this story — like plot holes and things that seem to contradict other stories — please go to this episode's discontinuity discussion.

• The Doctor says "press red," but Amy pulls two red levers.
• The promotional image shows the front TARDIS doors, but does not show the "St John's Ambulance" sticker on the right-side door which the Eleventh Doctor's Tardis displayed after its self-repair (in The Eleventh Hour).

Continuity

• Items from previous games appear, such as the Dalek Eyestalk, Chronon Blocker, Distress Beacon and a Cyberman chestplate. (GAME: City of the Daleks, Blood of the Cybermen)
• The scene where the Entity breaks out of its small prison is very similar to the scene in the TV movie where the Master does the same. (TV: Doctor Who)
• The laser screwdriver is attached to the console. (TV: Last of the Time Lords)
• Amy uses the zigzag plotter. (TV: The Lodger)
• The Doctor and Amy both notice that he is rambling. (TV: The Vampires of Venice)
• The Doctor refers to the TARDIS as a female again. (TV: Rise of the Cybermen, et al)
• The Doctor refers to bad things happening at Brighton Beach, and Paris. (TV: The Leisure Hive, City of Death)
• The Doctor has a Gramophone in the Drawing Room. (TV: Doctor Who)
• The Entity is stored in a flask, much like Fenric. (TV: The Curse of Fenric)
• Though the Eighth Doctor is mentioned to never face the Daleks on-screen, his debut story features the sound of them shouting, "Exterminate!" at The Master's execution. (TV: Doctor Who) In his only other screen appearance,The Night of the Doctor, he crashes on Karn, leading to his regeneration, while fleeing the Time War between the Time Lords and Daleks.
  • He would also personally encounter the Daleks in PROSE: War of the Daleks, PROSE: Legacy of the Daleks, AUDIO: The Time of the Daleks, AUDIO: Terror Firma, AUDIO: Blood of the Daleks and AUDIO: X and the Daleks.