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The Doctor's TARDIS was an obsolete Mark I Type 40 TARDIS used by the Doctor as his primary means of transport.
Model and type
In his first incarnation, the Doctor implied that he had put his TARDIS together himself. (DW: The Chase) However, it seems that he did not build it after all. (DW: The Time Meddler) In fact, he had stolen it. (DW: The War Games)
- Since little is known of the Doctor's activities on Gallifrey early in his life, it is not inconceivable that he did help build the Type 40 line - perhaps explaining his fondness for it.
The Doctor's TARDIS was referred to by the Time Lords as being a Type 40. By the time of the Doctor's fourth incarnation, all Type 40s had been officially de-comissioned and replaced by newer, improved models. All models except the Doctor's had been accounted for. (DW: The Deadly Assasin)
- This would seem to contradict the fact that the Master and Mortimus also had a similar TARDIS, presumbably Type 40s. Perhaps they had, by then, given up their old models.
Mortimus claimed to have a Mark IV TARDIS, versus the Doctor's Mark I, developed fifty years after the Doctor left Gallifrey. (DW: The Time Meddler) The Master's dematerialisation circuit was a Mark II compared to the Doctor's Mark I. (DW: Terror of the Autons)
- The Mark I, II and IV designation may seem to contradict the Type 40 designation, although the marks could refer to different models of the Type 40.
Exterior
Almost all TARDIS's should be able to blend in with their surroundings thanks to a chameleon circuit which allows a TARDIS to change its form to fit in with its surroundings.
Police box shape
The chameleon circuit of The Doctor's TARDIS did not help it blend in particularly well when it resided in Totter's Yard in the year 1963. It had assumed the shape of a police box, a common sight in 1960s England, but not in a junk yard. To the Doctor's unease, it still remained as a police box when it traveled back in time and remained in that shape thereafter. Susan Foreman stated that the TARDIS had previously appeared as a sedan chair and an ionic column. (DW: An Unearthly Child)
The Daleks would later recognize the police box as the transport of their enemy (DW: Death to the Daleks), as would the Cybermen (DW: Earthshock) and the agent of the Black Guardian known as the Shadow (DW: The Armageddon Factor)
The Doctor tried to permanently fix the problem of the faulty chameleon circuit, not wanting old enemies to have such an easy way to recognize him, by measuring its exterior dimensions in relation to an actual police box and then by visiting the Logopolitans to complete the Block Transfer Computations they would have used to fix the faulty circuit. Due to interference of the Master, he never completed this task. (DW: Logopolis)
In his sixth incarnation the Doctor succeeded, however the TARDIS's ineptness at using the chameleon circuit showed itself when it appeared as first a cupboard, then an organ and a set of iron gates which not fit in with their surroundings on Telos. It shortly reverted back to the old police box shape. (DW: Attack of the Cybermen)
Interior
Periodically the TARDIS interior goes through various metamorphoses, changing and altering, sometimes through choice or because of other reasons. Some of these changes are physical in nature (involving secondary control rooms, etc.) but it is also possible to change the interior design of the TARDIS as one would change the desktop theme on a computer (DW: Time Crash).
Console or Control Room
There have been many variants of the Doctor's TARDIS main control room. They usually share common features such as a hexagonal control console, and a set of doors allowing access to the outside via the outer plasmic shell as well as to other rooms in the TARDIS and usually a scanner or some other means of observing the outside.
Main console room
First version
When the interior of the TARDIS was first viewed by humans (Ian Chesterton and Barbara Wright) the console was a bright white room, with roundels on the walls with a large computer bank taking up a major part of the 'back' wall. A few knick-knacks lay about the console room.
- These computer banks contain the fault locator along with various systems relating to navigational control and navigational piloting and plotting. (DW: An Unearthly Child, The Daleks)
This console was removed by the Doctor in his third incarnation during his exile on Earth and remained in his laboratory. (DW: Inferno) The Doctor returned it to its old place later (DW: Terror of the Autons)
The Doctor continued to rebuild the TARDIS console and the main interior of the TARDIS console room using "UNIT funds and equipment" throughout his exile as UNIT's scientific advisor. (DW: The Three Doctors)
The Doctor briefly changed the walls of the console room with what appeared like plastic furnishings appearing along the edges of the roundels. One of the roundels served as a replacement of the scanner, a picture appearing in its center. (DW: The Time Monster), however he soon reverted to the more traditional design (DW: The Three Doctors)
The Doctor rebuilt the console following its damage by Cyberguns. (DW: Earthshock). He later refurbished it completely, giving it a more sleek, high-tech appearance. (DW: The Five Doctors)
Second version
The whole TARDIS interior went through its most radical change seen following the TARDIS's entrapment inside the Doctor's family estate, the House of Lungbarrow (NA: Lungbarrow.) The console had assumed a more Gothic, Victorian appearance. Like the roof of an observatory or a planaterium, the ceiling of the control room "opened", revealing the Infinity Chamber which showed the outside and could display holographic images. The smaller scanner, which resembled an antique black and white television set, displayed other information. (DW: Doctor Who: The TV Movie)
Third version
By the Doctor's ninth incarnation, the control room had reverted to a more familiar form, although this newest design was far more organic than any previously seen. Hexagonal impressions on the walls had replaced the roundels, and the console itself incorporated many odds and ends ranging from a device resembling a bicycle pump to a mallet used for occasional percussive maintainence. (DW: Rose onwards) The current design is one of the TARDIS' "desktop themes" and is called "Coral" - a "leopard skin" theme also apparently exists. (DW: Time Crash).
Secondary control room
There exists a small secondary control or console room which the Doctor claimed was the original console room. It was far simpler than the main control room, with the console resembling a desk, no visible time rotor and all the controls hidden behind what appears to be wooden paneling. It had more subtle roundels, some of them framing stained glass windows. For a brief, period in his fourth incarnation, the Doctor used this as the main control room. (DW: The Masque of Mandragora, The Hand of Fear. The Deadly Assassin, The Robots of Deaththe invisable enemy)
Tertiary control room
There also exists a tertiary control room, which is cool and dark grey with a small mushroom shaped console. (NA: Nightshade, Deceit)
General Interior Appearance and Layout
Using the Architectural Configuration Unit, the Doctor was able to change and re-arrange the interior of his TARDIS with ease. (DW: Logopolis, Castrovalva, DWA: 2006 Doctor Who Annual)
The TARDIS interior walls generally consists of roundels; a circular indentation that line all of the TARDIS walls. Some roundels conceal TARDIS circuitry and devices (DW: The Wheel in Space, Logopolis, Castrovalva, Arc of Infinity, Terminus), while others function for viewing the outside. (DW: The Claws of Axos) The design of the roundels may vary depending on where in the TARDIS they are; a basic circular cut-out with black background, roundels resembling washing-up bowls stuck to the wall, recessed wood panelling with a few decorative ones in what appeared to be stained glass, translucent illuminated discs or hexagonal shapes with nodes in the centre.
Specific Control Systems
The TARDIS' controls are said to be isomorphic, that is, only the Doctor can operate them. (DW: Pyramids of Mars) However, various companions have been able to operate the TARDIS and even fly it. (DW: Four to Doomsday, The Visitation, The Parting of the Ways) The Time Lords are also able to pilot the TARDIS by remote control, usually, as the Doctor once bitterly noted, so he may take care of "some dirty work they don't want to get their lily-white hands on." (DW: Colony in Space, The Brain of Morbius)
The Second Doctor once used a portable Stattenheim remote control to summon his TARDIS to him (DW: The Two Doctors). The TARDIS is also vulnerable to diversion or relocation by the Guardians, Eternals, and other immensely powerful beings such as the Keeper of Traken. (DW: The Ribos Operation, Enlightenment, The Keeper of Traken)
For a brief time the Fourth Doctor installed a Randomiser in the navigational subsystems, though this was eventually removed. (DW: The Armageddon Factor, The Leisure Hive)
Other Rooms
- Many of the companions of the Doctor have their own rooms, though some will live in previously used rooms. (DW: Terminus) Some companions are seen to share accommodation. (DW: The Edge of Destruction)
- The Wardrobe is where the Doctor keeps some of the clothes from his previous regenerations, as well as clothing for other people. (DW: The Twin Dilemma, Time and the Rani, The Christmas Invasion)
- The cloister room in the TARDIS sounds the cloister bell when disaster is imminent. (DW: Logopolis) When the TARDIS interior went through a metamorphosis, the Cloister Room became a grand and gothic room with an interface with the Eye of Harmony. (DW: Doctor Who: The TV Movie)
- The Zero Room is a room which is unaffected by the outside world. It was used as a refuge for Time Lords undergoing difficult regenerations. This room was later jettisoned so that the TARDIS could escape from Event One. (DW: Castrovalva)
- There is also a library inside the TARDIS. (EDA: War of the Daleks, NA: All-Consuming Fire, NA: The Dimension Riders) Known book include Jane's Spaceships (EDA: War of the Daleks) and Every Gallifreyan Child's Pop-Up Book of Nasty Creatures From Other Dimensions (NA: All-Consuming Fire) and The Time Machine by H.G. Wells (DW: Doctor Who: The TV Movie). It probably also contained the book Black Orchid by George Cranleigh (DW: Back Orchid) At one point the console room also incorporated a library (DW: Doctor Who: The TV Movie)
- There is a laboratory which Ace used to create her Nitro-9. (NA: Cat's Cradle: Time's Crucible)
- A swimming pool area which was used by Leela. (DW: The Invasion of Time)
- The TARDIS at one point also had extensive utility areas and corridors, which along with the swimming pool area became battlegrounds during an attempted Sontaran invasion of the TARDIS. (DW: The Invasion of Time)
- The current (DW: Rose and onwards) configuration of the TARDIS includes a storage area directly below the main control console that variably appears large enough for someone to enter (DW: Army of Ghosts) or packed with storage containers (DW: The Unicorn and the Wasp).
- A food machine area located near (but not in) the console room. (DW: The Edge of Destruction and others).
- There is a zoo of endangered animals, a coffee machine and a jungle like room. (DWM: Changes)
Other Systems
Temporal grace
The interior of the TARDIS is said to exist in a state of "temporal grace", which is supposed to ensure that no weapons can be used inside its environs. This last function is inconsistent in its application (DW: Earthshock, The Parting of the Ways), though it's also possible the Doctor is able to disable it. (In some non-canon spinoff media, this function has been linked to the HADS, described below.)
Emergency Systems
The Doctor's TARDIS contains various emergency systems, one such is the jade pagoda, a 'life boat' of some description, which can in theory be piloted (NA: Iceberg), but in emergencies it will lock onto the nearest (spatially and temporally) planet with a breathable atmosphere and bearable climate. (NA: Sanctuary) The TARDIS also has a system which, when the TARDIS is left adrift in space unmanned, will automatically lock onto the nearest central gravity. (DW: Voyage of the Damned) The TARDIS is also capable of repairing itself after suffering a hull breach.(DW: Voyage of the Damned). The TARDIS has an alarm system known as the cloister bell that activates in extraordinary circumstances (DW: Logopolis, Children in Need Special, Time Crash, Turn Left, etc.). A TARDIS's cloister bell can also be activated remotely from Gallifrey (The Deadly Assassin).
Defensive Systems
Some of the TARDIS's other functions include the Hostile Action Displacement System (HADS), which can teleport the ship a short distance away if it is attacked. (DW: The Krotons)
- The TARDIS gains some offensive systems of a sort; although this could have been caused by its development into the Edifice. This weapon allowed the Edifice / the Doctor's TARDIS to destroy Gallifrey. (EDA: The Ancestor Cell)
It was temporarily given a defensive shield utilising a Tribophysical waveform macro-kinetic extrapolator. (DW: The Parting of the Ways)
Problems
As the TARDIS is one of the oldest in full service and given how much the Doctor uses his TARDIS many problems are going to occur; mechanisms that once worked only work sporadically or (or not) in times of extreme crisis.
- The TARDIS gravitational tractor beam has functioned only sporadically since it was used to pull a neutron star away from Chloris. (DW: The Creature from the Pit) Compassion was unable to use it to rescue the Doctor when he was trapped outside the TARDIS (EDA: The Taking of Planet 5), but it was functioning once more to enable the Doctor to rescue the rocket from Krop Tor. (DW: The Satan Pit)
- The chameleon circuit does not work; despite the Doctor's few attempts to fix it, he prefers it to look like a police box (DW: Boom Town). The Doctor felt so adamantly about it, that he purposefully smashed the functioning chameleon circuit with a mallet, so it would never work again. (NA: No Future)
- At the time he was using a TARDIS which had once belonged to a dead version of his third incarnation, which the main universe's Doctor later found. (NA: Blood Heat)
- The TARDIS pool leaked and was jettisoned, (DW: Paradise Towers) but the TARDIS gained two new ones following its regeneration after the Doctor's second exile on Earth. (EDA: Escape Velocity)
Personality
TARDISes are sentient creatures grown for use by Time Lords. The Doctor's TARDIS has been called "sentimental" (by the Eighth Doctor in Doctor Who: The TV Movie) and "stupid" (by K9). It has also displayed a stubbornly depressed nature when abandoned by the Doctor (refusing to assist Rose in The Parting of the Ways) and a prejudicial fear of Jack Harkness (in Utopia). Anyone who travels in it (or, perhaps, anyone of whom it approves, whether they travel in it or not -- such as Harriet Jones and her staff in The Christmas Invasion) is telepathically connected to it, thus giving them the ability to understand almost any language in the Universe. (DW: The Edge of Destruction, Doctor Who: The TV Movie, Boom Town, The Fires of Pompeii). The TARDIS also appears to be able to lock-on to the presence of another Time Lord, particularly the Doctor's family. (DW: The Doctor's Daughter) Alternatively it would block access (to seemingly create a situation) whereby another linked Doctor would be created. (DW: Journey's End)
Although the Doctor was reluctant to believe it possible, the TARDIS seems to have such a strong affinity for the Doctor that it will open and shut its doors when he snaps his fingers (DW: Forest of the Dead).