User:Cousin Ettolrhc/Sandbox/TARDIS console room

For a gallery of images depicting Cousin Ettolrhc/Sandbox/TARDIS console room, see Cousin Ettolrhc/Sandbox/TARDIS console room/Gallery.

Cousin Ettolrhc/Sandbox/TARDIS console room
Main aliases:	TARDIS console room / flight deck
Made by:	Time Lords, The Doctor
Used by:	Time Lords, Iris Wildthyme
First appearance:	An Unearthly Child

A TARDIS console room, also referred to as a controle room, was any place on a TARDIS that contained a functioning control console. This flight deck also functioned as a point of exit. If the Doctor, the Master, the Monk and the Rani's TARDISes were any indication, control rooms were typically circular and featured relatively open floor plans, in which the control console was vaguely, but rarely precisely, in the middle of the room. Control rooms also usually contained walls with roundels, scanners for viewing the TARDIS exterior, and fairly sparse furnishings; no known TARDIS control room allowed for the operation of the console itself from a seated position.

Other than those generalisations, the shape, size and ambience of a control room, even within just the Doctor's TARDIS, was highly variable.

A control room's look could be changed over time, to suit one's tastes and personality. (AUDIO: Songs of Love) The process by which an operator could transform a control room was fairly simple, once compared by the Fifth Doctor to changing a "desktop theme". (TV: Time Crash) On some occasions, a TARDIS was shown to manage the change itself. On two instances, the Doctor regenerated with extreme violence, destroying much of their control room; the TARDIS was able to completely redesign its interior and console room without the Doctor's assistance. (TV: The Eleventh Hour, The Ghost Monument)

According to River Song, a TARDIS normally had multiple console rooms. (AUDIO: The Lifeboat and the Deathboat)

The Doctor's TARDIS console room

Main article: User:Cousin_Ettolrhc/Sandbox/The Doctor's TARDIS_console_room

By the time of the Eleventh Doctor, the TARDIS console room had gone through at least twelve redesigns, though the TARDIS revealed that she had archived thirty versions. Once the control room was reconfigured, the Doctor's TARDIS archived the old design "for neatness", effectively "curating" a museum of control rooms — both those in the Doctor's personal past and future. (TV: The Doctor's Wife)

The Machine

Main article: The Machine

Patience's husband used the Machine, dating back from before the TARDIS themselves, which was dimensionally immanent: smaller on the inside than the outside. (PROSE: Cold Fusion) The Machine, notably, had an interior similiar to Dr. Who's TARDIS (PROSE: Cold Fusion, TV: Dr. Who and the Daleks)

The Monk's TARDIS

The Monk looks through his TARDIS doors at his now shrunken console room. (TV: The Time Meddler)

Main article: The Monk's TARDIS

The Meddling Monk used a Mark IV TARDIS, retaining the same white TARDIS interior as the Doctor's but with the console stood on a dais. (TV: The Time Meddler)

The Master's TARDISes

Main article: The Master's TARDIS

The Master's TARDISes had varied interiors. Some interiors seemed to mimic the Doctor's re-designs of their own TARDIS at the time of the encounter. At one point, it was entirely similar to the Doctor's except with different furniture. (TV: Colony in Space) Later he decorated the walls of the console room with concave "bowl" shaped structures instead of the regular roundels, with edges that jutted out from the wall, and featured shallower, non-backlit roundels for the half-roundels at the tops and bottoms of the walls. One of the roundels served as a scanner with a picture appearing in its centre. The only visible difference from the Third Doctor's TARDIS was the time rotor. (TV: The Time Monster)

The Master's putrescent incarnation adopted a "new ship" with black wall interior and black opaque roundels. The controls were not on a central console but at a desk in front of the wall with two video screens linked to the exterior Melkur's eyes. A second TARDIS was hidden as a grandfather clock inside the control room. It also had white glass walls which led to the outside. (TV: The Keeper of Traken)

Peri in the Master's TARDIS. (TV: Planet of Fire)

After stealing Tremas's body, the Master's TARDIS matched the grey interior of the Doctor's TARDIS, with black walls instead but keeping the roundels white. (TV: The King's Demons) It used the same console pattern of the Fifth, Sixth and Seventh Doctors' TARDIS. (TV: Planet of Fire, The Ultimate Foe)

Chronotis's TARDIS

Professor Chronotis' TARDIS. (TV: Shada)

Professor Chronotis changed the interior of his Type 12, Mark I TARDIS (PROSE: Shada) into the interior of a Cambridge office with the controls hidden inside the bookshelves. (TV: Shada)

Omega's TARDIS

Omega operated a TARDIS with an interior similar to the Fifth Doctor's but with green roundels. It did not have a console, instead having its controls on the wall. (TV: Arc of Infinity)

The Rani's TARDIS

The Sixth Doctor in the Rani's TARDIS console room. (TV: The Mark of the Rani)

In place of a central column, the Rani's TARDIS had a rotating pair of metallic rings. The console also had interfacing controls in addition to buttons and switches. It used a holographic scanner which popped up from the main console. The walls of the console room looked like dark marble, with large, opaque roundels. It was linked to a Stattenheim remote. (TV: The Mark of the Rani)

At some point on the planet Lakertya, the Rani's TARDIS went under a new control room, much couldn't be seen other than its walls being plain white walls and there being no control panel in sight. (TV: Time and the Rani)

Kairel's TARDIS

Lord Kairel had a TARDIS with an unique time rotor design set in a circular room with its wall covered in hexagons. Some Greek pillars were set in the room but not inside the walls. (COMIC: The Stolen TARDIS)

Cargan's TARDIS

Academy's graduate Cargan had his TARDIS fiited with the "bowl" design used by the Third Doctor and the Master. (COMIC: Minatorius)

Tubal Cain's TARDIS

Tubal Cain commanded a complete CIA team inside a TARDIS more akin to a command centre than the usual TARDIS designs. (COMIC: The Stockbridge Horror)

Celestial Omnibus

Main article: Celestial Omnibus

Iris Wildthyme's TARDIS control room looked like a modified double-decker bus, though with a few hints of its true nature. (PROSE: Old Flames) The controls were on the dashboard and resembled those of the Victorian parlour. (PROSE: The Scarlet Empress)

Junk TARDIS

The Eleventh Doctor once built a control room using the remains of dead TARDISes. (TV: The Doctor's Wife)

The Gestalt's timeshi=

During Kady Williams's time as host of the Gestalt, the Gestalt's timeship's control room was a candle-lit circular room with stone walls reminiscent of a medieval castle's. In addition to the console, it was furnished with two sofas, and the walls were adorned with portraits of Kady's past companions. (PROSE: Ring Theory)

Others

The control console of a Time Lord. (COMIC: The World Shapers)

By the time of the Sixth Doctor, new TARDISes had psycho-sculpture in their inside, including the console. (COMIC: The World Shapers)

After the Last Great Time War, the Twelfth Doctor and Hattie Munroe found a dying TARDIS which led those who found themselves inside it to its damaged control room, a design that resembled a visual composite of the Eleventh Doctor's control rooms. When the Twelfth Doctor made his way to the room, he found the console in the process of breaking apart but managed to trigger the dematerialisation sequence, sending the TARDIS to die peacefully in the heart of a star. (COMIC: Playing House)

Imitations

The Dalek's central mechanism. (TV: The Chase)

The Dalek time machines controls looked quite similar to that of a TARDIS. (TV: The Chase)

SIDRATs also used a unique design of control rooms. (TV: The War Games)

The Silents attempted to create a TARDIS. (TV: The Lodger, The Impossible Astronaut/Day of the Moon)

Behind the scenes

• When introduced in the script for TV: An Unearthly Child, the control room used in the First Doctor's TARDIS was described as having "panels of instruments and the paradox of comfortable chairs."
• For Prime Computer advertisements, the Fourth Doctor was using a console room made of Prime Computers in a white space.

Sylvester McCoy in his "brand new" TARDIS. (DOC: Doctor Who: Endgame)

• After the original series cancellation, Doctor Who Magazine commissioned Mike Tucker to draw a what-if design for a would have been season 27 (DWM 255) For the 35th anniversary event The Take: 35 Years of Doctor Who, he constructed a 4 feet sized model (DWM 272) According to the TARDIS Type 40 Instruction Manual, this was stored in the TARDIS memory but never used.
  • The TARDIS console later seen in COMIC: The Armageddon Gambit had the console attached to the ceiling akin this "season 27" console.
• The Victorian parlour console was the first to have the time rotor connected to the roof. (TV: Doctor Who onward)
• For Doctor Who Night, a future incarnation of the Doctor used an exclusive TARDIS interior design.
• The coral console room was the first in which the exterior doors resembled those of a police box on the inside as well as the outside.
• TEDW 2 names the two Eleventh Doctor's design as the "Copper" and the "Toyota" ones.
• The copper console room was the first to have several levels, and more than 2 exit doors. (TV: The Eleventh Hour onward)
• The War Doctor's console was made by reusing the Here for you! exhibition's one instead of building it from scratch.
• Every TARDIS console room had contained a coat rack or umbrella stand, up until the Eleventh Doctor's neon console. (TV: The Snowmen to The Time of the Doctor) Though this was rectified after the Twelfth Doctor's redecoration. (TV: Mummy on the Orient Express) The Thirteenth Doctor doesn't appear to have a special place for coats or umbrellas in her console room.
• Every console room that the TARDIS has had bore circles and/or hexagonal panels on the wall.
• A select few television stories have featured more than one version of the TARDIS console room. Technically, the first would have been TV: The Two Doctors, had the same set not been simply reused for both the Second and Sixth Doctor's TARDIS interior. The first true case of more than one different TARDIS set being used in a single story was TV: The Eleventh Hour, in which the Ninth and Tenth Doctors' console room appears in the opening scene, and the first of the Eleventh Doctor's console rooms is introduced in the final scene. The two sets also make a joint appearance in TV: The Doctor's Wife. The Ninth/Tenth Doctor's returned for a third time in TV: The Day of the Doctor, this time featuring alongside the Eleventh Doctor's second console room as well as a third TARDIS console room set, for the War Doctor. The console rooms used by the First to Eighth Doctors can also be seen on the screens connecting them to the War Council. Most recently, TV: Twice Upon a Time featured not only two console rooms, but two versions of the Doctor's TARDIS as a whole - those of the Twelfth Doctor and the First Doctor, respectively.
• The neon console has since been made a LEGO set, featuring mini figures of the Eleventh and Twelfth Doctors (sonic screwdriver included), Clara Oswald, two Daleks and a Weeping Angel.

Doctor Who Magazine TARDIS control room. (DWM 532)

• The Eleventh Doctor's Titan comics TARDIS appears to be based on Rob Semenoff's 2002 fan concept, as updated in 2010.
• The rotating wheels above the neon console are referred to as "time coordination wheels" in the audio description track of TV: Twice Upon a Time.
• For DWM 532, Gavin Rymill designed a GC reconstruction of the TARDIS control room seen in Doctor Who Magazine stories starting with COMIC: The Chameleon Factor.