The Doctor's TARDIS
- You may be looking for the Doctor's first TARDIS.
The Doctor's TARDIS — also called the Ship, the Box, and the TARDIS (PROSE: Time and Relative, COMIC: Food for Thought) — was the Doctor's primary means of transport. It was capable of travelling through space and time. The Doctor voyaged in his vessel from the Big Bang (TV: Terminus, Castrovalva, AUDIO: Slipback, PROSE: Nothing O'Clock) to the end of the universe. (TV: Utopia, Listen, AUDIO: The Chaos Pool, COMIC: Petals) The craft was also capable of travelling between parallel realities in spite of the fact that it was not specifically designed for inter-dimensional travel. (TV: Rise of the Cybermen)
Other Time Lords frequently characterised the Doctor's TARDIS as woefully out-of-date. (TV: The Claws of Axos, The Ribos Operation) Indeed, by at least the time of the Doctor's fourth incarnation, if not much earlier, the model — called a "Type 40" — had been pulled from general service on Gallifrey. (TV: The Deadly Assassin, The Invasion of Time)
The craft was prone to a number of technical faults, ranging from depleted resources (TV: An Unearthly Child, The Wheel in Space, Vengeance on Varos) to malfunctioning controls (TV: The Edge of Destruction) to a simple inability to arrive at the proper time or location. (TV: The Visitation, Attack of the Cybermen, The Eleventh Hour, Victory of the Daleks, The Girl Who Waited and many others) However, because the TARDIS was a living being, these "faults" may instead have been at least partially attributed to the manifestation of the ship's free will. Indeed, the TARDIS itself once told the Eleventh Doctor that it may not have always taken him where he wanted to go, it had always taken him to where he needed to go. (TV: The Doctor's Wife)
As the centuries passed and all of the Doctor's companions came and went, his faithful TARDIS remained his constant companion. They shared an unbreakable bond, and the Doctor came to feel that in the end, it was just him and his TARDIS. (AUDIO: The Girl Who Never Was, TV: The Doctor's Wife) Such was this bond, that, in an alternate timeline, the TARDIS eventually became the Doctor's final resting place, containing his personal time stream. (TV: The Name of the Doctor)
The Doctor's TARDIS was depicted in many cultures on Earth in a variety of forms, such as being depicting as the temple of the household "gods", the Tenth Doctor and Donna Noble, by Lobus Caecilius's family after they were rescued from the destruction of Pompeii , (TV: The Fires of Pompeii) being painted on a church's stained glass window after the Doctor "smote[d] [a] demon" at a convent in the 1300s, (TV: The End of Time) and the Eleventh Doctor using the power of its image to counter the influence of the Prometheans. (COMIC: Hunters of the Burning Stone) According to the Moment, the noise the TARDIS made when it appeared brought hope to anyone who heard it, no matter how lost they were. (TV: The Day of the Doctor)
Procurement
In his first incarnation, the Doctor implied he had built his TARDIS himself. (TV: The Chase) Whether there was some truth to this or not, he and others later stated that he had, in fact, stolen it. (TV: The War Games, Frontier in Space, Logopolis, Planet of the Dead, The Big Bang, The Doctor's Wife, The Time of the Doctor, Death in Heaven, COMIC: The World Shapers, AUDIO: Trial of the Valeyard) The TARDIS was once owned by the Time Lady Marianna (AUDIO: The Abandoned) and later by the Time Lord Marnal, and due to his exile at the time of the Doctor's procurement of the TARDIS, he claimed that the Doctor stole it. (PROSE: The Gallifrey Chronicles) Other accounts differ to this, and implied it came from the general, government-controlled "stockpile" of TARDISes after the model had been officially decommissioned. (TV: The Deadly Assassin, PROSE: The Exiles, COMIC: Time & Time Again) The Fourth Doctor told Adric that "it was in for repairs on Gallifrey when [he] borrowed it." When the Alzarian countered that he thought the Doctor outright owned the vehicle, the Doctor said, "Well, on a sort of 'finders, keepers' basis, yes." (TV: Logopolis)
When the Doctor first decided to leave Gallifrey, he had the chance to take a Type 53, but dismissed it as "soulless" in favour of the Type 40. (PROSE: Lungbarrow) The Doctor received a recommendation for this particular TARDIS from a version of future companion Clara Oswald. She actually stopped him from taking another TARDIS, saying that the navigation system on this one was "a bit knackered" but he'd have more fun with it. He took her suggestion. When the Doctor stole it, the TARDIS was in a repair shop and two Time Lords were surprised that anyone would want to steal it. (TV: The Name of the Doctor) The TARDIS itself said it was "a museum piece", though this may have been figurative. (TV: The Doctor's Wife)
None of these accounts precluded the possibility that he had somehow been responsible for its creation. Indeed, another account compromised between theft and creation. It claimed while the Doctor had not built the TARDIS from scratch, he had substantially modified/rebuilt it. According to this view he achieved control of the TARDIS without using a direct mental link. This let him bypass the feature on most TARDISes which sent a tracking signal to the Time Lords. (PROSE: The Taking of Planet 5) As a result, while the Doctor still had a significant mental link with the TARDIS early in his travels, such as when the ship assisted him with his first regeneration (TV: The Tenth Planet), he did not impose his will on it, allowing the TARDIS to go where it wished rather than exerting direct control.
These accounts notwithstanding, the most direct commentary on the Doctor's acquisition of the TARDIS came from the Doctor and the TARDIS itself. When the Doctor was summoned to be the defense counselor to the Valeyard in his trial he exclaimed to Inquisitor Darkel that he confessed to stealing a TARDIS and running away from Gallifrey (AUDIO: Trial of the Valeyard). At a later point in the Doctor's life, when House transferred the soul of the TARDIS into Idris, the TARDIS gave its side of the story. It confirmed it had been out of commission, a "museum piece", when the First Doctor met it. It also confirmed that the Doctor had stolen it, denying the Eleventh Doctor's attempt to characterise the action as "borrowing". It also stated that it had stolen him, and had no intention of ever giving him back. It was unlocked and had deliberately let him steal it because it wanted to explore the universe and sensed he would be an ideal match. When it asked the Eleventh Doctor what his first incarnation said upon seeing it, he recalled saying "you were the most beautiful thing I've ever known". The TARDIS was shown to be very fond of him, admitting as Idris that she had always wanted to say a proper hello to him, but was unable to. (TV: The Doctor's Wife)
Model and type
The precise model number of the Doctor's TARDIS was a matter of some confusion, particularly when it was compared to those of other Time Lords. The dematerialisation circuit of the Master's TARDIS was a Mark II, compared to the Doctor's Mark I. (TV: Terror of the Autons) When the Teselecta scanned the Doctor's TARDIS, its records stated the timeship was a TT Type 40, Mark 3. (TV: Let's Kill Hitler)
During a visit by the Fourth Doctor to Gallifrey, the Doctor's TARDIS was unambiguously called a "Type 40". At that time, it was made clear that all other Type 40s had long since been officially decommissioned and replaced by newer models. The fact that the Doctor's TARDIS was a Type 40 was not common knowledge, even to the Castellan. (TV: The Deadly Assassin) This designation was used with greater frequency afterward. It was even used by the Eleventh Doctor as an excuse to Winston Churchill for his tardy response to Churchill's summons. (TV: Victory of the Daleks) When the TARDIS had the opportunity to speak to the Eleventh Doctor in the body of Idris, it called itself a "Type 40" without any qualification. (TV: The Doctor's Wife) River Song defined it a "Type 40 Mark". (COMIC: Pond Life)
The Eleventh Doctor appeared to know his TARDIS' date of manufacture, as one chronicle indicated that he celebrated "her birthday". (PROSE: Dark Horizons)
Exterior
Almost all TARDISes were designed to blend into their surroundings by means of a mechanism usually called the "chameleon circuit", but occasionally the "camouflage unit". Some later models seemed to let the pilot choose a desired exterior, overriding what would have been "natural" for the surroundings. (TV: Time and the Rani, Time-Flight)
The Doctor's TARDIS would have had both abilities, were the chameleon circuit operational. Before he met Ian and Barbara, the First Doctor had landed on Iwa, where the TARDIS had posed as a boulder in that planet's desert. (PROSE: Frayed) On Quinnis, the First Doctor was unhappy when the TARDIS landed in a bazaar and chose to turn into a market stall, complete with a striped awning. (AUDIO: Quinnis) The Fourth Doctor showed Adric how the TARDIS could be changed to the shape of an Egyptian pyramid, implying he could override the chameleon circuit's "automatic" functionality. (TV: Logopolis) Susan mentioned the TARDIS had appeared as a sedan chair and an Ionic column. (TV: "The Cave of Skulls")
In any case, the defining characteristic of the Doctor's TARDIS was that its chameleon circuit had broken after assuming the shape of a police box in 1963 London. (TV: "The Cave of Skulls") The Eleventh Doctor sabotaged the chameleon circuit before the TARDIS left 1963 London as part of a plot to foil the Prometheans so that the blue box shape was imprinted into the race memory of humanity. (COMIC: Hunters of the Burning Stone) Not knowing this, the First Doctor and Susan expressed surprise that it had not changed form when they arrived at a new destination. (TV: "The Cave of Skulls")
By his eleventh self, the Doctor was telling his companions that the chameleon circuit was working, but due to a fault, invariably assumed its customary police box shape:
It's camouflaged. It's disguised as a police telephone box from 1963. Every time the TARDIS materialises in a new location, within the first nanosecond of landing, it analyses its surroundings, calculates a twelve-dimensional data map of everything within a thousand-mile radius and then determines which outer shell would blend in best with the environment.... and then it disguises itself as a police telephone box from 1963.
Friends and enemies could identify the TARDIS by its unvarying shape. The Daleks even used miniature copies of the TARDIS for target practice. (TV: Death to the Daleks) The Cybermen recognised it (TV: Earthshock), as did the Black Guardian's operative known as the Shadow. (TV: The Armageddon Factor) Sarah Jane also recognised it, which led to her reunion with the Tenth Doctor. (TV: School Reunion) Donna Noble was also on the look-out for the TARDIS. (TV: Partners in Crime)
On one occasion, an actual police box — namely, the last of its kind, which was situated on the Barnet by-pass — scared a group of invading aliens away from Earth when they mistook it for the Doctor's ship. (PROSE: Useless Things) Miss Kizlet's team faced "an embarrassment" when they thought the police box in Earl's Court the Doctor's space-time vehicle. (TV: The Bells of Saint John) Madge Arwell confused a normal police box for the TARDIS while helping the Eleventh Doctor find the TARDIS. (TV: The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe) After accidentally aiding the Trickster by preventing her parents' deaths, Sarah Jane sought out the TARDIS to get the Doctor's help; however, as she time travelled to the 1950s, Sarah Jane mistook a regular police box for the TARDIS since they were "everywhere" at the time. (TV: The Temptation of Sarah Jane Smith)
Captain Jack Harkness was on the look-out for "a version of" the police box throughout the 20th and early 21st centuries to avoid meeting the Doctor before their initial meeting. (TV: Utopia) Members of LINDA also knew of the outer shape of the Doctor's TARDIS, as did the Abzorbaloff. (TV: Love & Monsters)
Because the police box shape was relatively easily recognised, the Doctor made several attempts to change the exterior of the TARDIS. None were particularly successful. In the end, he forewent changing how the TARDIS' outer shell looked by his ninth incarnation, deciding that he liked it. When Mickey Smith questioned the wisdom of leaving the TARDIS parked in the middle of Cardiff, thinking the appearance of a police box would draw unwanted attention, the Doctor reasons that it was not a concern--people would see a blue box in the middle of the city and walk past it, taking no further notice. (TV: Boom Town)
- These attempts are chronicled at chameleon circuit.
The exterior of the TARDIS changed shape when it entered siege mode. In this form, it took the shape of a cube etched with Gallifreyan writing with no way of getting in or out. If the TARDIS had insufficient power, this mode could not be turned off. (TV: Flatline)
Door
Generally, the TARDIS had two doors along one of the craft's four sides. They could open inward and outward. (TV: Time-Flight, The Ice Warriors, The Eleventh Hour, GAME: The Doctor and the Dalek) By the time of the Tenth Doctor, the doors could be opened by the snap of the fingers. (TV: Forest of the Dead, The Eleventh Hour, Day of the Moon) The Eleventh Doctor's companion Clara Oswald also attained this ability. (TV: The Day of the Doctor)
The right-hand door usually had a lock, (TV: The Sensorites, Spearhead from Space et al) although the lock was sometimes on the left-hand door, even though normal entry was still through the right. (TV: most serials prior to The War Machines)
On the left-hand door was a panel in which was a replica of a telephone used in real police boxes to summon the police. (TV: The Empty Child, The Bells of Saint John, The Time of the Doctor) While the Second Doctor inhabited the TARDIS the emergency phone was sometimes on the right-hand panel, but by the time of his adventure on Dulkis, it had returned to the left-hand door. (TV: The Dominators) The TARDIS once communicated with Timothy Dean using it's phone. (PROSE: Human Nature) Although during the Doctor's ninth incarnation this phone was (usually) non-functional, (TV: The Empty Child) by his eleventh incarnation the phone could be used to send and receive calls. (TV: The Day of the Doctor, The Time of the Doctor,Time Heist) A sign on this small door offered instructions on use of the phone. (TV: Logopolis)
The Second Doctor once entered through the top of the TARDIS, by lifting a panel on which the roof lamp rested. (COMIC: Peril at 60 Fathoms) He also tried to enter through the back panels, the occasional cat flaps and once through the central beacon. It was indicated that these would usually work, but did not in this case. (PROSE: Heart of TARDIS)
On most occasions, the left-hand door was set to a fixed position. Likewise, the windows on the door were most often seen in a closed position, though the First Doctor sometimes opened them. (TV: The Dalek Invasion of Earth)
The left-hand door was sometimes used for egress and the right-hand one stayed in a fixed position. (TV: The Aztecs)
Sometimes both doors could be pushed (TV: Rose, Father's Day) or pulled open. (TV: The Runaway Bride, The Beast Below, The Christmas Invasion)
The windows on the doors and around the exterior could be opened, at least during the First Doctor's tenure. (TV: "World's End", "Desperate Measures", "The Centre")
During the Doctor's first incarnation, a faded St John Ambulance logo could be seen on the door, even though it was sometimes barely visible under a layer of paint. During his second incarnation, it was not present. (TV: The Dominators onwards) When the TARDIS regenerated itself at the start of his eleventh incarnation, a new St John sticker appeared on the door. (TV: The Eleventh Hour)
The exact wording on the sign on the telephone door varied slightly over time — once it, and the writing otherwise on the front of the TARDIS, was changed to read BAD WOLF. (TV: Turn Left) When the TARDIS "regenerated" consequent to the Tenth Doctor's regeneration, this sign became backlit. (TV: The Eleventh Hour onwards)
By the time he was going to have the chameleon circuit repaired by the Logopolitans, the Fourth Doctor had installed a handle on the telephone panel on the left-hand door. This remained a subtle, if functional, part of the design. (TV: The Empty Child)
At some point prior to arriving to his unexpected death in San Francisco, the Seventh Doctor affixed a small handle to the right-hand door. (TV: Doctor Who) This handle persisted after the "regeneration" of the TARDIS consequent to the arrival of the Eleventh Doctor. (TV: Rose onwards)
The Eleventh Doctor somehow fixed the TARDIS doors to accommodate his robotic T-Rex companion Kevin, although it was never explained how. (COMIC: When Worlds Collide)
If the TARDIS entered siege mode, the door disappeared entirely. (TV: Flatline)
Lock and key
- Main article: TARDIS key
Operation
Entry to the Doctor's TARDIS was usually effected by inserting a key into a lock, just as would be expected with a real police box. However, the lock did not respond to police-issued keys. (TV: Black Orchid, Blink)
Susan suggested that the key forced the user to insert it precisely or the lock would self-destruct. (TV: "The Survivors") Later, the lock had a metabolism detector, preventing Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart from using the key. (TV: Spearhead from Space)
It could be opened with the standard Gallifreyan key for its outdated model. (TV: The Invasion of Time)
Rare individuals managed to break open without a key. Among those, the companion Adric through lock-picking (TV: Logopolis) and the gastropod Mestor through its psychic power. (TV: The Twin Dilemma)
According to Clara Oswald, the Doctor kept seven separate TARDIS keys hidden throughout the TARDIS. (TV: Dark Water)
Design and features
The external design of the key changed over time. It usually appeared to be an ordinary Yale lock key. (TV: Spearhead from Space, Rose, and others) However, it occasionally appeared to have a more ornate, Gallifreyan motif. (TV: Planet of the Spiders, Ghost Light, Doctor Who)
The key could be modified to track and locate the TARDIS, allowing the Doctor to find the TARDIS if it was within a hundred years of his position. (COMIC: The Forgotten) The key was known to express a link to the TARDIS by glowing or becoming hot to the touch. (TV: Father's Day, The Eleventh Hour)
At one point, the Tenth Doctor installed a system that let him lock the TARDIS remotely using a fob (as a joke, the TARDIS roof light flashed and an alarm chirp was heard, similar to that used on vehicles on Earth). He could open the door remotely. (TV: The End of Time) He also discovered, with the help of River Song after their adventure in the Library, that the door would open when he snapped his fingers, (TV: Forest of the Dead, Day of the Moon) although this function was not used consistently until his eleventh incarnation. (TV: The Eleventh Hour, Day of the Moon, The Doctor's Wife) Clara Oswald also displayed this ability twice, (TV: The Day of the Doctor, The Caretaker) using the ability to shut the doors the second time after the Twelfth Doctor did it to open the doors. (TV: The Caretaker) The Doctor has also shown the ability to summon the TARDIS with the key in his eleventh and twelfth incarnations: the Eleventh Doctor used the key to materialise the TARDIS around himself and Clara Oswald to save them from the Weeping Angels, (TV: The Time of the Doctor) while the Twelfth Doctor used the key to summon the TARDIS to save him from a free-fall, skydiving through the doors once it appeared nearby. (TV: Death in Heaven)
If modified properly, the TARDIS keys exhibited perception filter properties of the TARDIS. (TV: The Sound of Drums)
Interior configuration and appearance
The TARDIS interior went through occasional metamorphoses, sometimes by choice, sometimes for other reasons, such as the Doctor's own regeneration. (PROSE: Invasion of the Cat-People, TV: The Eleventh Hour)
Some of these changes were physical in nature (involving secondary control rooms, etc.), but it was also possible to re-arrange the interior design of the TARDIS with ease, using the Architectural Configuration system. (TV: Logopolis, Castrovalva, AUDIO: Relative Dimensions) The Fifth Doctor called this changing "the desktop theme". (TV: Time Crash) When the "desktop theme" was changed, the control room would flash with light and the newly selected version would take its place. (TV: The Day of the Doctor) The TARDIS archived disused (and yet-to-be-used) control room configurations. (TV: The Doctor's Wife) The TARDIS could also create and modify rooms on its own accord; for example, to prevent part of the Architectural Configuration System from being stolen, and to preserve passengers from threats by creating copies of the control room to house them in. (TV: Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS)
Roundels
The TARDIS interior walls generally consisted of roundels — circular or hexagonal indentations that lined the TARDIS console room's interior walls and sometimes the walls deeper in the ship's interior. Some roundels concealed TARDIS circuitry, devices, or lights. (TV: The Wheel in Space, Death to the Daleks, Logopolis, Castrovalva, Arc of Infinity, Terminus, Enlightenment,Vengeance on Varos, COMIC: Kane's Story) At least one large roundel functioned as a scanner. (TV: The Claws of Axos, The Beast Below) On the whole, though, the Doctor had little clue as to their purpose, though his later incarnations (the Tenth, Eleventh and Twelfth Doctors) admitted to loving and missing them from the desktops of their TARDISes. (TV: The Day of the Doctor, Deep Breath)
Mass
The TARDIS' exterior was always lighter than the "true weight" of its interior. According to the Twelfth Doctor, "If the TARDIS were to land with its true weight, it would fracture the surface of the Earth." (TV: Flatline) The TARDIS was said by Romana II to weigh fifty thousand tonnes in Alzarius' gravity. (TV: Full Circle) "[S]eventeen thousand tons of thrust" was jettisoned for the TARDIS to escape Event One. (TV: Castrovalva) One time, when the TARDIS mapped its interior dimensions onto its exterior ones — making it the same size outside as inside — it was larger than Gallifrey. (PROSE: The Ancestor Cell) It was once described by the Eleventh Doctor as being infinite, as new areas could be created and therefore add more weight. (TV: Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS) The Twelfth Doctor once adjusted the TARDIS' relative gravity so that Clara could pick it up. This decrease of weight allowed the TARDIS to be light enough that the Doctor was able to, literally, move it by hand. (TV: Flatline)
Control room
- Main article: TARDIS control room
The control or console room of the Doctor's TARDIS was the space in which the operation of the craft was usually effected. It was dominated by a large, hexagonal console, typically in or near the middle of the room. The room held a scanner for viewing the outside and offered immediate access to the exterior through a set of doors. According to one source, the trip from the console room to the outside required the passenger to step through the real world interface at the heart of the outer plasmic shell. (TV: Logopolis) Many other accounts demonstrated that the doors were just doors, though the TARDIS was cocooned in a breathable atmosphere. (TV: The Runaway Bride, The Stolen Earth, The Beast Below, HOMEVID: Meanwhile in the TARDIS) On one occasion, when the TARDIS' exterior dimensions shrank, so did the door on the inside. (TV: Flatline) On another occasion, when the extrapolator shielding could easily be breached by the weaponry of the New Dalek Empire, who were "[e]xperts at fighting TARDISes", the Tenth Doctor described "that wooden door" at that point as being "just wood". (TV: Journey's End) Queen Elizabeth I once pointed out that while the Tenth Doctor's TARDIS was bigger on the inside, the door wasn't, and her head was nearly taken off when the Doctor rode out of the TARDIS with Elizabeth on a Zygon which took on the body-print of a horse. (TV: The Day of the Doctor)
There were many variants of the Doctor's control room. Indeed the Doctor's TARDIS had more than one control room. The TARDIS itself said it had over 30 different versions in storage; being a different kind of temporal being, it could "archive something that hasn't happened." Idris telepathically told Rory how to go to the old console room, which was the Ninth and Tenth Doctor's console room. (TV: The Doctor's Wife)
Other rooms
Accommodations
Some of the companions shared accommodations. (TV: The Edge of Destruction, The Doctor's Wife) Many companions had their own rooms in the TARDIS, decorated to their tastes. (TV: Meglos, Earthshock) Some of the companions were given previously used rooms; in the case of Turlough, it is most likely because Tegan didn't know where to find other rooms. (TV: Terminus) Romana's room was jettisoned. (TV: Logopolis) According to one account, the Doctor provided a room for each companion and stored it in a holding ring even after they departed from him. At some point, the Eighth Doctor deleted every room but one. (AUDIO: Relative Dimensions)
The Eleventh Doctor was asked if he had a room, but did not answer. The other bedrooms had also been deleted by House when it possessed the TARDIS, leaving Amy and Rory's the only one. (TV: The Doctor's Wife) Amy and Rory's original (pre-House) quarters were furnished with bunk beds, much to their consternation. Nevertheless, the couple quickly conceived River Song despite the less than optimal marital accommodations. They secured a proper bed after escaping from House when the Doctor agreed to give them one when reassigning them to a new room. (TV: The Doctor's Wife, A Good Man Goes to War) The Twelfth Doctor was implied to have a room (COMIC: Four Doctors)
Library
- See also: the Doctor and books
There was a library in the TARDIS. (PROSE: War of the Daleks, All-Consuming Fire, The Dimension Riders, AUDIO: The Witch from the Well) Its books included Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, (PROSE: The Wheel of Ice) Jane's Spaceships, (PROSE: War of the Daleks) Every Gallifreyan Child's Pop-Up Book of Nasty Creatures From Other Dimensions, (PROSE: All-Consuming Fire) The Time Machine by H. G. Wells, (TV: Doctor Who) Robinson Crusoe, (PROSE: Heart of TARDIS) The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie (signed first
