Movie Gadget Friday: The Doctor's TARDIS from Doctor Who
posted Mar 11th 2005 6:32PM
Movie Gadget
Friday is back! Yeah, we'd been jonesing for Josephine Fraser's weekly dose of movie gadget goodness, too, and for
this new installment she checks out the Doctor's TARDIS from Doctor Who:The TARDIS was featured in the Doctor Who series beginning with the first episode that was aired in the UK
in 1963, and in both of the Peter Cushing Doctor Who films. It's familiar design and function has remained a
constant of the stories right through to the Doctors impending ninth regeneration.
There are a couple of key things that make the TARDIS so beloved of fans:
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The TARDIS comes with a chameleon circuit that allows the ship to appear in any outward form – a pyramid or a filing cabinet for instance. Except it doesn’t - handily enough for the BBC’s famously under-funded props department, the circuit went haywire in the first series, and is stuck as a blue 1950s/60s Police Box – the little blue shed that used to house a telephone for official use, and a light on the top that lit up if the phone was ringing.
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TARDIS stands for Time and Relative Dimensions in Space, and has a huge advantage over other sci-fi craft, since it can move through space, time and matter, and can also opt out of the space-time dimension altogether. My eight-year-old son can’t have been the only one who found it a little convenient that the time machine in The Time Machine didn’t come to a standstill in a cement wall.
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The inside of the TARDIS is in a completely different dimension from the outside. This means while Bill and Ted got all squished up with their time travelling guests, the Doctor and his endless stream of young lady assistants get to live in an extensive interior that includes libraries, gardens, swimming pools, a cricket pavilion, the cloister room, the wardrobe room and the pink room. Inexplicably however, the interior shakes when you attack the outside.
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It breaks down constantly because it’s old and the technology running it is obsolete, although it does s
eem to get upgraded from time to time. Hitting it usually makes
it work again.
More than just a home and vehicle for the Doctor, his TARDIS also seems to have some kind of sentience and telepathic ability. It exists in a symbiotic relationship - except in emergencies, when the script calls for someone else to take over the controls. This does go some way to explaining the mystery of why the alien Doctor repeatedly dies and comes back as a white middle-aged guy.
Love me some Dr Who!... er.. I loved that show and the Tardis machine. Why it hasn't shown up with a bit with a Doc look-a-like in some slap stick movie for some serious inside laughs is unknown. I guess they still had contracts back then.
OH MY! Romano, ROMANO take K-9 and lick my behind!
Didn't the Tardis show up on Red Dwarf one time?
BTW Alan isn't my real name, it's Admiral from the Big Butt Bandits. Now I fit in round here!
The tardis in the new series is sadly pretty different. While the outside looks the same, the design of the inside is far removed from the clean white visiage of previous serieses. there are cables hanging everywhere, and lots of green and black.
My personal belief was that the Tardis was actually constructed out of an array of wormholes, configured to give the illusion of a physical object.
Let's say you had a block of matter at some location, and opened a micro-wormhole from that block to, say, downtown London, 1962. If the Londoners would look away from the hugely engrossing sci-fi show about a gentleman who travels through time in a phone booth, they would see... well they'd need an electron microscope to do it, but they would see a single atom of that matter block.
So, do the same thing several billion times over, with each wormhole leading to just a few nanometers adjacent to another. You create the illusion of a piece of matter in London, 1962, whereas the actuall matter is off in some distant part of the universe. You could then have the illusion of a Police Public Call Box, which even appears to open and close, and then have a door-sized (and shaped) wormhole -at- the door, leading to a pocket dimension outside of time and space.
So, the TARDIS doesn't really travel through time, so much as it maps itself as being in a particular location in space time.
Yep. 12th level Nerd.
Nice.
And I was just going to make a Tom Baker comment.
Ah well,
Tom Baker RULEZ!!!!
sylvester McCoy was by far the best doctor, err...kind of.
Regarding the interior size vs exterior size, Tom Baker's Doctor explained it the best: Imagine two boxes. One large and far away, the other small and close by. Look at the two and it would appear to the eye that the large one would "fit" inside the small. That's what the Doctor's people - the Time Lords - accomplished. They brought the two boxes "together". And that's dimensional transcendentalism. Complete nonsense!
Yes, another Who fan...hooray for the Beeb and the return of the good Doctor!
It doesn't go where the Doctor wants it to go, it goes where the Doctor needs it to go. and I love the new one.
Fingers crossed for the new series, I recall catching some of the filming for the last Dr. Who TV movie. Kids love it on BBCKids.
Starts airing April 5 on the CBC in Canada, eh.
Paul Blake, I like the wormwhole theory you proposed---even though I'm only an 11th level nerd and can't fully understand it!
Everybody, check out the remix of Dr. Who's theme song. It's by "Orbital" Very techno-ish.
Glasgow is the only city in the UK that still owns some of the traditional public Police Boxes which were made famous as the Tardis in Doctor Who.
The original boxes in Glasgow were painted red, but thanks to the Glasgow Building Preservation Trust and the Doctor Who Society, four of the boxes have been restored as public landmarks and remain a source of interest for residents, Doctor Who fans and visitors to the city.
Earlier last year, the Police Box located on the corner of Great Western Road and Byres Road was converted into a small coffee outlet, much in the style of the boxes dotted around Edinburgh. (The ones in Edinburgh are wider, and don't carry the same 'Doctor Who' prestige).
I chatted to the propietor, Gavin Wright, and took some photos of his 'Coppuccino' outlet.
Gav also has permission to open up similar coffee outlets in other boxes around Glasgow, with various restrictions and clauses - including the guarantee that he would not permanently modify the facade of the boxes.
For more, go here:
http://www.copydesk.co.uk/archive/2004_07_06_index.shtml
and here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/cult/news/drwho/2004/07/15/12963.shtml
Not a TARDIS, but showing my own nerdiness, here's three pics of my own piece of Who memorabilia:
http://www.martinridgway.com/archives/2004/07/27/derek/
Click the pics for larger versions. His name's Derek.
none of you guys are getting into the Israeli special forces, that's for sure.
I like the new console room however I miss the old large doors they used in the telemovie version. It's a shame they couldn't make the console room more spacious in the new series it seems kind of crowded and too industrial.
Looking at the new "Green" console room it seems to more the Type 102 style with less organics to it - for those of you not familiar with type 102 TARDIS's they were the living TARDIS that were human like beings capable of time travel and yes had a very large interior; see the 8th Doctor range from Shadows of Avalon to The Ancestor Cell (actually they first appear in The Taking of Planet Five but you probably already knew that) ;-)
Two words
Adric lives!
Ok... Now i'm not a fan or anything but being kind of inspired by the last comment i thought i'd just share a little story. I'm 17 and my father (a fan) actually wanted to name me Adric for a while, but my mother refused to let him... So i ended up with Patrick instead.
Is this the same concept as Snoopy's doghouse?
What is it called when something is bigger on the inside then on the outside?
~Donavon
re comment #19 - answer - disappointing
If Paul Blake is a 12th level nerd, then which level is Martin (comment #13) on ?
I love the new series!!! I think the new Doctor is pretty cool. I was really worried for a long time about the new show. I though they were gonna kill it like they killed Battlestar Galactica.
To my surpise the first new episode was great. A little short, but still great.
My favorite Doctors are Tom Baker and Patrick Troughton. I do believe the new guy is going to be one of my favorite Doctors. I also think Jon Pertwee and Peter Davison were good Doctors.
And of course William Hartnell stands in his own category.
My least favorite Doctor was Sylvester McCoy. I think he should have never been chosen as The Doctor. I simply hated him! I stopped watching the show with him as the Doctor.
Well to say I rather like the new Doctor Who a lot. I hope the rest of the show is as good as the first episode. Also I wouldn't mind a little stoll thru the TARDIS to revisit all the other console rooms. I believe the white ones are still in there. The Doctor has many console rooms. He just chooses to use which ever one he feels like. Remember Tom Baker used the wooden one for a while. I like that wooden one!!!
Alright I'm outta here. Take care everyone! Thanks for reading my comments.
Doctor Who Rules!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Does anyone have an old photograph of an original 'Tardis' police box in situ, that I could copy/scan, along with information regarding it's original location? (Preferably originally located somewhere in the south-east though not necessarily). I'd be willing to pay a small fee for the right image. Someone must have one laying in a photo album somewhere! Or do you know where I could get one?
Thanks for any help.
Go and check out THE TARDIS REBUILDERS. There is a section titled "The original you might say", there could be a picture like you were after Ronald.
If not, then there are people on that site who might have one.
does anyone know how many police boxes are still out ther? There seem to be dozens still left in Edinburgh, most in pretty poor condition mind you.