The Edifice (The Ancestor Cell)
Standard dab term: The Edifice (The Ancestor Cell)
Talk about it here.
The Edifice was the name given to the Doctor's TARDIS after it restored itself following its apparent destruction in a dimensional tear. (PROSE: The Shadows of Avalon)
Description
The Edifice took the appearance of a gigantic four-dimensional Flower of Remembrance. It was composed entirely of bone. Its interior dimensions were mapped onto its exterior, making it the same side inside and outside.
In the Edifice's version of the butterfly room, the butterflies were pinned to the walls and crumbling to dust. In its version of the console room, the accumulated dust formed a temporal ghost of the Third Doctor. The corridors were shaped like a web and were filled with bone spiders, (PROSE: The Ancestor Cell) an echo of the timeline where the Third Doctor regenerated on Metebelis III (TV: Planet of the Spiders) rather than Dust. (PROSE: Interference - Book Two)
Since the Edifice was attuned to the Doctor's biodata, it responded to him uniquely. For instance, doors would enthusiastically open for him after staying locked for others. (PROSE: The Ancestor Cell)
History
Following the Third Doctor's regeneration on the planet Dust, (PROSE: Interference - Book Two) the Doctor's TARDIS recognised that the Doctor had been infected with the Faction Paradox biodata virus. To protect the Doctor, the TARDIS took the virus into itself to be contained. (PROSE: The Ancestor Cell) At the same time, the TARDIS began its plans for the War in Heaven by converting Compassion into a Type 102 timeship. (PROSE: Toy Story, The Shadows of Avalon, The Book of the War)
While the TARDIS was parked on Foreman's World, (PROSE: Interference - Book One) Lolita visited her and proposed an alliance for the upcoming War. When the offer was rebuked, Lolita warned that she would not survive the War. (PROSE: Toy Story) Soon afterwards, the TARDIS was caught in a dimensional rift. Though it appeared to be destroyed, (PROSE: The Shadows of Avalon) in reality it survived and began to recover by drifting in the Time Vortex. To continue containing the biodata virus, the TARDIS drew power from I.M. Foreman's universe-in-a-bottle, which the Time Lords had hidden in the Vortex.
After around five thousand years of recovery, the TARDIS reformed above Romana III's Gallifrey on the eve of the prophesied Event, which coincided with Romana's 150th year as President. The Edifice began to create temporal anomalies in the past and prsent so that the resultant temporal pulses would lure in the Doctor. These anomalies sent temporal waves washing over Gallifrey, turning it into a twisted and superstitious self-parody rife with civil disorder.
Unaware of the Edifice's true nature, a far-future militaristic sect of Faction Paradox tried taking control of it during their invasion of Gallifrey. By pretending to have given in to the biodata virus, the Eighth Doctor ensured that the Faction would send him and Father Kreiner to claim the Edifice; however, they were ambushed by Grandfather Paradox, who killed Kreiner for his betrayal. With the help of the ghost of his past self, the Doctor realised he could collapse the Edifice by removing its dimensional stabiliser and draining its power by firing its ancient weapons systems. This succeeded in destroying the Faction army and forcing the universe to "choose" which version of the Third Doctor's regeneration was "true", but it also destroyed Romana III's Gallifrey. (PROSE: The Ancestor Cell)
As a result of the power loss, the Edifice collapsed into a small cube, which Compassion and Fitz Kreiner left in the Doctor's pocket to regenerate while he stayed on Earth through the 20th century. (PROSE: The Ancestor Cell, The Burning) By 2001, the ship had regained his usual police-box appearance. (PROSE: Escape Velocity)
