User:SOTO/Forum Archive/The Panopticon/@comment-188432-20121207092215/@comment-188432-20121209171310

Shambala108 wrote: While it may not be called "index file", the use of the name appears in the story more than "information system" does. Also, Tegan's use of "index file" leads to the revelation of recursion, which is what Castrovalva (the place) is all about and is important to the resolution of the story. So it's not an error and it is important.

I would say that if it's not called an "index file" then it *is* an error to call it one. We're supposed to be an encyclopaedia. It's the central job of an encyclopaedia to be a repository of facts — not near facts. And as the script quotation proves, the index file is merely a part of the TARDIS Information System — or, really, that it's just a general computing term that Nyssa is pulling from her own scientific background. That is, it's a standard part of any computing system that she imagines must be present in the Tardis Information System as well.

How do we know that the thing is actually called the "TARDIS Information System"? Because we have art. Below is the very first picture ever uploaded to this site, which makes it doubly confusing why the founders called this the "TARDIS Index File".