TARDIS

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The TARDIS is a fictional space-time machine from the British science fiction television series Doctor Who . The name is an acronym stands for T ime A nd R elative D DIMENSION (s) I n S pace (time and relative dimension (s) in the room). In the German synchronization (in the example. TARDIS sometimes for television film 1996 that) Backronym " T rips a ue r elativer D imensionen i m S tern tent" is used. The word Tardis comes from Latin and means slow .

In the series, the TARDIS is an entire type of space-time machine that serves as a time machine and spaceship at the same time. The inside of a TARDIS is much larger than its external appearance suggests. With the help of a “chameleon circuit”, a kind of camouflage device , it can adapt to its surroundings by changing its external appearance - similar to a chameleon . In the series, the time traveler "the Doctor" controls an unreliable, old-fashioned model Type 40 TARDIS , whose chameleon circuit has failed and got stuck in the camouflage setting of a British police cell in the style of the 1960s. The doctor had repaired the chameleon circuit, but it got stuck again. This model of the doctor is usually in the series as the TARDIS, in some of the earlier episodes just as the ship called ( "the ship").

Prop used in the series
A police booth with a modern surveillance camera in front of London 's Earl’s Court underground station .

The series found its way into British pop culture . The shape of the British Police Emergency Booth is more associated with the TARDIS than with its actual function. The word TARDIS is used to describe everything that appears larger inside than it looks outside.

The name TARDIS is a registered trademark of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC).

Conceptual story

When Doctor Who was developed in 1963, the production team was discussing what the Doctor's time machine should look like. Due to the budget constraint, it was decided to make it resemble a UK Police Emergency Booth. The reference to the series was made with a camouflage device generated by a chameleon circuit (“chameleon circuit”). The mechanism of the chameleon circuit is responsible for changing the outer shell of the machine. Another requirement was that the circuit was defective, which allowed the shape of the police booth to be retained.

The idea of ​​camouflage as a police emergency booth came from BBC copywriter Anthony Coburn , who rewrote the draft of the first episode of CE Webber . It is believed that Coburn got the inspiration for the shape of the machine when, while taking a break from writing on the episode, while walking, he saw a police 911 booth near his office. In that first episode, " An Unearthly Child, " the TARDIS was first shown in a junkyard in 1963; then the cloaking device fails and retains the shape of the police emergency booth in a prehistoric landscape.

At the start of the series in 1963, the police booth was part of everyday life in British cities, and with 700 police booths in London alone , it was appropriate to camouflage a space-time machine in this way. While the idea was initially a creative way to save time and money on props, it soon became a social insider joke in the science fiction genre and got its own raison d'etre when the old-fashioned form of the police booth was taken out of service. The anachronism of the word has become clearer now that few police booths remain in this old style in the UK. Because of changes to the other props in the series, the TARDIS has become the most recognizable visual element.

The trailing type of TARDIS police booth was typically made of concrete. The props for the television series were mainly made of wood, later of GRP , in order to ensure easy transport and construction at filming locations, but also within the film studio. The props have varied slightly in appearance and format over the years and do not exactly match their real counterparts.

The production team had to travel the TARDIS by them at one point broke up and another again materialized , although the ship in the series sometimes was able to cope with conventional space travel. The ability to travel to and from different locations by simply disappearing and appearing became one of the hallmarks of the series. This technique allows a great variety of scenes and stories without spending a lot of money on special effects . The characteristic sound effect - a recurring gasping or groaning sound - was originally designed by Brian Hodgson in the BBC Radiophonic Workshop . He achieved the effect by pulling a bunch of keys over the strings of an old cannibalized piano . The extracted sound was recorded and electronically processed with the help of echo and reverberation . The comic strip in Doctor Who Magazine traditionally describes the characteristic sound of the ship's disappearance with the onomatopoeic phrase "vworp vworp".

In 1996 the BBC applied for TARDIS to be registered as a trademark with the UK Patent Office. This step became necessary because the Metropolitan Police considered themselves the legal owner of the intellectual property of the police emergency call booth. The Patent Office found that there was no evidence that the Metropolitan Police or any other police force ever claimed trademark registration. In addition, the BBC had sold merchandise based on this image for over three decades without any complaints from the police. In 2002 the patent office made a regulation in favor of the BBC.

Usually, TARDIS is written in all capital letters. However, there are many examples in the media and occasionally in licensed publications that use the form Tardis . In the 2005 episodes, Rose Tyler's cell phone display reads “Tardis is calling” in the episode World War Three . This is the common usage in the current British press style , where only the first letter of an acronym is capitalized (e.g. Nato) while an acronym that is not a word (like BBC) is capitalized holistically.

general characteristics

TARDISse are bred, not made. In the episode The Impossible Planet (2006) it is indicated that they are born. They draw their energy from various sources, primarily from the center of an artificial black hole known as the Eye of Harmony ( 1996 TV movie Doctor Who ). In The Edge of Destruction (1964), the TARDIS power source (referred to as the "Heart of the TARDIS") is located under the main pillar of the terminal, with the rise and fall of the pillar indicating its status. However, it is also dependent on external energy. At the beginning of Utopia , the doctor ends up in Cardiff to “refuel” on the transdimensional gap that exists there. According to the 10th doctor, the TARDIS gets its external energy "from the universe" - so it crashes in Rise of the Cybermen in a parallel universe, since the energy generated by the parallel universe cannot be used ("like diesel in a gasoline engine").

Other elements that are required for the proper functioning of the TARDIS and which require occasional replenishment are mercury (in liquid aggregate state ), the rare ore Zeiton 7 ( Vengeance on Varos , 1985) and Artron energy. The latter is a form of temporal energy generated by the thoughts of the Timelords and which is also said to energize the TARDIS ( The Deadly Assassin , 1976; Four to Doomsday , 1982). The fact that in The Christmas Invasion the translation function of the TARDIS does not work as long as the doctor is unconscious (“as if he were part of the circuit”) speaks for the fact that the Timelords are necessary for the functioning of a TARDIS .

Another form of energy is "huon energy", which is located in the heart of the TARDIS and (apart from the activities of the Empress of Racnoss) is not found anywhere else in the universe ( The Runaway Bride ).

The TARDIS normally travels by dematerializing in one place, crossing the time portal, and then materializing again at its destination without physically traveling through the space in between. But she also flew physically through space, first in Fury from the Deep (1968), The Parting of the Ways (2005), The Christmas Invasion (2005) and The Runaway Bride (2006). As seen in the episode The Runaway Bride , this type of travel is very demanding on the TARDIS.

In addition to the ability to travel through time and space (and occasionally into other dimensions), the most notable feature of the TARDIS is that its interior is much larger than it appears from the outside. The explanation given for this is that a TARDIS is “dimensionally transcendent”, meaning that its outside and inside exist in different dimensions. In The Robots of Death (1977) the fourth doctor tries to explain this to his companion Leela by drawing an analogy between a large and a small cube, the larger one apparently fitting into the smaller cube, while the larger one is further away, the same But time is immediately tangible (see Tesseract ). According to the doctor, the discovery of transdimensional engineering was key to the Timelords.

The Doctor's TARDIS

In the television series, Doctor's TARDIS is an outdated Type 40 TT capsule (presumably TT stands for “time travel”) that he unofficially “borrowed” when he took off from his home planet Gallifrey. According to the story Eighth Doctor Adventures from the novel The Gallifrey Chronicles by Lance Parkin , it previously belonged to a "Time Lord" named Marnal, who, like the Doctor, is something of a renegade.

Originally there were 305 registered of a total of 306 produced (The Doctor's TARDIS was removed from registration by the CIA - the Celestrial Intervention Agency on Gallifrey) type 40 capsules, but all others have been decommissioned and replaced by new, improved models ( The Deadly Assassin ). Nevertheless, the appearance of the primary control room changed over the years and a statement ("Ah! I can see you've been doing the TARDIS up a bit. I don't like it.") From the second doctor in The Three Doctors ( 1972) suggests that the doctor updates the TARDIS system every now and then, suggesting that the ship's ability to reconfigure its internal architecture also affects the command room.

The TARDIS was old when the Doctor first used it, but how old it actually is can only be guessed; the offshoots of the series have made the TARDIS wait decades, even centuries (in relative time) for the doctor on various occasions. In the episode The Ribos Operation , the fourth Doctor says he has been traveling for 523 years. In The Empty Child (2005), the ninth doctor claims that he has already had 900 years of traveling in a phone booth, which means that the TARDIS is at least that old or has been stuck in this form ever since.

Outer shell

As already mentioned, due to a bug in the “chameleon circuit”, the TARDIS always retains the shape of a police booth (which it took on when it landed in 1963), although it was supposed to adapt to any environment inconspicuously. The exact reason for the malfunction has not yet been stated. The circuit is first mentioned in the second episode, where the first doctor and Susan notice that it is not working. In this episode, however, it is not given a technical name. It was first referred to in The Time Meddler (1965) as the "camouflage unit". The name was renamed "chameleon circuit" in the episodes rewritten in novel form in the Target Books , and this expression finally found its way onto the screen in Logopolis (1981).

Attempts to fix the circuit were made in Logopolis and Attack of the Cybermen , but the successful transformation of the TARDIS into the shape of an organ pipe and a carefully crafted entrance will be put back into the status quo in later sequels. The circuit is also repaired in the Virgin New Adventures novel series , but ultimately the shape of the TARDIS is reset to its default police booth setting. In the episode Boom Town (2005), the ninth doctor points out that he had stopped trying to fix the circuit for some time, having become a fan of this shape - thus making the eighth Doctor's statement in the television movie (1996) repeated.

Basically nothing has changed visually on the outside of the TARDIS police emergency booth, even if a few slight modifications have been made over the years. For example, on the sign on the door covering the police telephone, the black letters on a white background have changed a few times to white-on-black or white-on-blue. Other changes are the continuous jumping back and forth of phrases on the phone display, from urgent calls to all calls. The “POLICE BOX” sign was wider from season 18 through the 2005 episodes than it was in the TV movie. In early episodes, the TARDIS also had a sticker from the St John Ambulance at the main entrance, which reappeared in the new series and in the English original in the seventh season even gave the title for the episode The Bells of St. John's (with the ringing phone outside where TARDIS is meant) was. The episode The Empty Child revealed that the phone was not working outside because it was not connected to a phone line. Later, at the time of the eleventh doctor, however, it worked perfectly and was even able to make phone calls through the time, which the doctor often uses.

Despite the anachronistic form of the police booth, the appearance of the TARDIS in Britain today is hardly questioned. In the episode Boom Town , the doctor incidentally notes that people do not notice unusual things like the TARDIS, thus giving an impression similar to the seventh doctor in the episode Remembrance of the Daleks (1988), i.e. This means that people have an amazing ability to deceive themselves (“amazing capacity for self-deception”).

The outside entrance of the TARDIS can be locked and opened with a key. The doctor carries this key with him and occasionally gives copies to his assistants. In the television film (1996), the eighth doctor (and the seventh doctor in front of him) has a spare key in a "cozy hole" behind the 'P' of the police emergency booth sign.

The lock's level of security changes from story to story. In the first few episodes, it is said that it has 21 different keyholes and would melt if the key were put in the wrong thing ( The Daleks , 1963). The first doctor can also open it with his ring ( The Web Planet , 1965) and use the refracted light of an alien sun to fix it in the jewel of the ring ( The Daleks' Master Plan ). In the second part of Silence in the Library (2008), Forest of the Dead (2008), the tenth doctor can open and close the TARDIS with a snap of his finger, which is not explained in the following. This event was preceded by a statement by his future wife, Prof. Dr. River Song, who said that with a snap of his finger the doctor could open the TARDIS. In the first part of The End of Time (2009 Special) he can also lock the TARDIS remotely like a car with his key, and even the same tone sounds.

The changing design of the keys for the TARDIS also suggests that the doctor will redesign the security system from time to time and it will not always work the same way. In the episode Spearhead from Space (1970), the third doctor says that the lock has a metabolic detector so that even if an unauthorized person had a key, the doors would remain closed. This security measure in the novel series New Series Adventures ( Only Human by Gareth Roberts shown), in which it further developed as Mesonerkennungssystem is called ( "advanced meson recognition system"). The ninth doctor claims that when the doors are closed, even a horde of men from Genghis Khan could not enter them ( Rose , 2005), which did not prevent several people throughout the series from simply walking into the TARDIS with no problems, including those who later became assistants. However, this could be justified by the suggestion that the TARDIS is not a machine, but a living being, which therefore also has its own freedom of choice.

Inner area

Room in the TARDIS

Once through the doors of the police booth, there are a multitude of rooms and corridors inside the TARDIS: a living area, an art gallery (which is actually another energy station), a bathroom with a swimming pool, a medical facility and some with walls Brick-bound storage areas (shown in The Invasion of Time , 1978).

Despite the widespread belief that the interior of the TARDIS is infinite, there is evidence that it is not infinite. In the episode Full Circle (1980), the companion of the fourth doctor, Romana, notes that the weight of the TARDIS on Alzarius is 5 × 10 6  kg under Earth-like gravity . Presumably, this comment relates to the weight of the interior of the TARDIS, as several people have lifted the outer hull of the TARDIS on different occasions (as if it were really a police booth). Furthermore, every movement of the outer shell is transferred to its interior.

In the accompanying novels, the interior of the TARDIS includes an entire city ( Cat's Cradle: Time's Crucible ); used to get to a parallel earth ( blood heat ); and to shrink the planet Gallifrey when the interior of the TARDIS is carried out ( The Ancestor Cell ). It can also exist in multiple timelines.

A characteristic component of the interior design of the TARDIS is the “ roundel .” In relation to the TARDIS, the roundel is a circular formation that adorns the walls of the rooms and corridors, including the control room. Some rondels conceal switching systems and devices, as seen in the episodes The Wheel in Space (1968), Logopolis , Castrovalva (1981), Arc of Infinity (1983), Terminus (1983) and Attack of the Cybermen (1985). The appearance of the roundabout varies over the course of the series, from a simply cut-out round circle against a black background to a photograph depicted on insulation panels, which in later episodes allow illuminated turntables to shine through. In the second control room, the rondelles are mostly with elaborate wooden panels, occasionally with decorations that look like painted glass. In the reintroduced series (2005), the roundels from hexagonal cutouts are built into the walls of the new control room.

There is also a living area for the doctor's assistants, the doctor's bedroom has not yet been shown or mentioned. In the time of the fifth doctor ( Peter Davison ), the TARDIS also has a "zero" room, which is shielded from the rest of the universe and provides a relaxing environment for the doctor to recover from his " regeneration " ( Castrovalva ).

Although the inner corridors are almost not shown in the 2005 episodes, they still exist, as evidenced by the episode The Unquiet Dead when Doctor Rose gives very complicated directions to the TARDIS closet. The wardrobe is mentioned in many original episodes and offshoot novels, and featured in The Androids of Tara (1978), The Twin Dilemma (1984), and Time and the Rani (1987). The redesigned version from which the tenth doctor chooses his clothes can be seen in The Christmas Invasion (2005), which shows a huge multi-level room with a spiral staircase. The designer Ed Thomas pointed out that further rooms could be shown in the following episodes. Amy and Rory wander through the winding corridors of the Tardis in The Doctor's Wife (2011). In the same episode, the doctor also explains that the Tardis can generate new spaces or reject old ones almost at will; he uses this property to leave the universe and to enter it again later. The episode Journey to the Center of the TARDIS (2013) is elaborately devoted to the interior of the TARDIS and for the first time shows rooms that were only mentioned before, such as the swimming pool and the library.

Tax area

Control room

The most frequently shown room of the TARDIS is the control room, where the flight controls are located. The control room was designed by Peter Brachaki and was also the only set that was created by him for the series. It was built on a tight budget and tight schedule, causing disagreements with the production team and possibly a feeling that it was about to solve an impossible task, leading Brachaki to leave the production team. Although he left the series and there were mixed reactions to the set-up (producer Verity Lambert liked him, director Waris Hussein didn't), the basic design of the hexagonal terminal and the circular walls have been retained to this day.

The TARDIS has at least two control rooms - the futuristic white-walled main control room, which is mainly used in the series, and the secondary control room, which is used in Season 14 (1976–1977) and looks a bit antique with its wooden panels. Two more control rooms can be seen in the TV movie and in the 2005 episodes. The cave-like, steampunk- inspired control room in the television film could be a reconfiguration of either one of the control rooms mentioned earlier (as suggested first in the “New Adventures” novels and later in the radio plays by Big Finish Productions ) or a completely different one.

In the episodes with the third doctor ( The Time Monster (1972)) the control room of the TARDIS is drastically changed, including the circular wall. This new set was designed by Tim Gleeson and disliked by producer Barry Letts, who said the new rondelles looked like sinks stuck in the wall. It emerged that the set was damaged during storage during production breaks and should have been rebuilt, so this design can be seen in just one episode.

In the 2005 episodes, the control room is dome-like and equipped with organic-looking support pillars. The interior doors are no longer there, instead the doors of the police emergency call cell can now be clearly seen from the inside. How this configuration came about is not explained, but the interior of the TARDIS in The Gallifrey Chronicles is seriously damaged by an explosion during a cold fusion . In The Gallifrey Chronicles , written prior to the start of the series in 2005, Parkin comments at the Gallifrey outpost "fan fora" that the TARDIS repaired itself after this incident, which may explain the changes in appearance. (Here, too, the correspondence between the offshoot and the series is unclear.) In the short episode of the annual Christmas Children in Need Special 2007, Time Crash , this question is humorously resolved. The tenth doctor (played by David Tennant ) meets the fifth doctor (played by Peter Davison) in the current Tardis. He is indignant that the TARDIS “desktop theme” has been changed. When the TARDIS is rammed and damaged by the "Titanic" shortly afterwards, the doctor can repair the large hole in the outer shell with a few simple steps on the control unit ( Voyage of the Damned ). In the regular episode of the sixth season (6.04) The Doctor's Wife , the explanation is taken up again with the "desktop theme" by the personified TARDIS. The TARDIS says it has saved all previous (and some future) ones. So the doctor acts again in the control room of the previous 4 seasons.

The Virgin novels introduced a third control room, the exterior of which resembles a Gothic cathedral ( Nightshade by Mark Gatiss ). Another novel ( Death and Diplomacy by Dave Stone ) suggested that the "natural" configuration was so complex and irrational that the majority of non-timelord beings who witnessed it would go insane from the experience.

TARDIS terminal

The heart of the control rooms, for any known configuration, is the TARDIS terminal, which contains the instruments that control the functions of the ship. The appearance of the main control varies widely, but there are some similarities: hexagonal pedestals, bordered by a control panel and a movable column in the center that dances rhythmically up and down when the TARDIS flies. Although fan opinions differ, the layout of the terminal suggests that it was designed for more than one person. This is also confirmed by the Doctor in Season 4 of the new series, who says the TARDIS was originally designed for six pilots. Part of Fanon's mentioned both in the spin-off media and in the current production team, is that the controls of three to six Time Lords should be operated. This could explain why the Doctor tends to run wildly around the terminal while piloting the TARDIS, as well as the occasional difficulty controlling it.

The moving main column in the center is often referred to as the “time rotor”, although it has a different function in The Chase , where it appears for the first time. Since this term was common to describe the main pillar in fan literature, it was eventually included in the television series when the doctor in the television film (1996) referred to the time motor. The production team of the revived series also uses this term.

The second terminal is smaller in the original series, the control is hidden behind wooden panels and has no main column. The terminal in the 1996 television film also appears to be made of wood, and the main pillar is attached to the ceiling of the control room. The terminal of the renewed series is circular and divided into six segments, with the control panel and the main column glowing green, the latter again connected to the ceiling. These six segments exist because the TARDIS was originally intended to be flown by six people, described in the first part of "The End of Time" (2009 Special).

The revived series' terminal gives a far greater sense of clutter than previous ones: with items from different eras provisionally replacing controls, including a glass paperweight, small bell, and bicycle air pump; The latter is referred to as a vortex loop control in the interactive mini-episode Attack of the Graske with the tenth doctor . Two other controls, the dimensional stabilizer and the vector finder, were also identified in this episode, but since the stabilizer in the series was identified in previous episodes, the consistency of the mini-episode with the original series is uncertain. As can be seen in World War Three , there is a phone on the terminal as of this episode. Since the middle of the seventh season, accompanied by a further redesign of the control room, the terminal has again been characterized by conventional switches, levers and buttons and thus closer to the classic series.

Another feature of the TARDIS terminal is that it is apparently capable of making sonic screwdrivers for the doctor. Both the eleventh and the twelfth Doctor received their new model from the TARDIS after their previous sonic screwdriver was destroyed.

How many controls the doctor can use to operate the TARDIS is not shown consistently in the course of the series. The first doctor does not seem to be able to control the TARDIS accurately at first, but over time the subsequent doctors can control the TARDIS more precisely. The copywriters continue this trick in order to be able to accidentally land the TARDIS somewhere or to say that the TARDIS is "vulnerable" as it travels through space and time.

Then, in Key to Time (1978–1979) , the doctor built a random generator into the terminal, which saved the doctor from knowing where the TARDIS would land next. This device is eventually removed again in The Leisure Hive (1980). In the revived series, the Doctor controls the TARDIS by his will, occasionally making another mistake, such as: B. when he brings Rose to earth a year later than intended Aliens of London (2005) or lands in 1879 instead of 1979 ( Tooth and Claw (2006)).

In Boomtown , a part of the terminal opens, can be seen in the luminous vapor which is described by the doctor as the heart of the TARDIS ( "heart of the TARDIS"), again on the name of the episode The Edge of Destruction resorted becomes. In The Parting of the Ways (2005) it is connected to the powerful energies of the time portal.

TARDIS system

Since the TARDIS is very old, it tends to fall apart. The doctor is often shown sticking his head in a control panel while doing maintenance work. Probably the TARDIS secondhand structure is responsible for this. Efforts to repair, control and maintain the TARDIS are always tricks in the series, creating an amusing irony of a highly developed space-time ship, which is at the same time an outdated and unreliable piece of junk. Much of the unreliability is due to the fact that the TARDIS has a soul of its own. When she was temporarily banished to a human body in the episode The Doctor's Wife , she openly admits to the doctor that, although not always taking him to where he would like to go, but to where he is needed. In ep. 5.04 (dFS) The Time of Angels , the future companion of Doctor River Song tells us that the distinctive noise that the TARDIS makes when taking off and landing is not a technical necessity, but rather a (probably intended) operating error on the part of the doctor going back, never releasing the brakes.

Controls

The TARDIS has telepathic circuitry that the Doctor prefers to operate manually in the original episodes. In Pyramids of Mars (1975) the fourth doctor explains that the controls on the TARDIS are isomorphic , meaning that only the doctor can operate them. This feature seems to appear and disappear as it is needed, as many assistants were able to operate and even fly the TARDIS over the course of the series. It is believed that the doctor either lied or that the isomorphic feature is a safety component that the doctor can turn off and on at will. The latter was used by the eighth doctor in the radio play Other Lives by Big Finish Productions (2005) to enable his assistant C'rizz to operate the terminal.

Apart from the sound that accompanies the disappearance of the TARDIS in The Web of Fear (1966), there is also a light on the terminal that flashes continuously during landing. Usually, the more commonly used sign of the TARDIS flying is the movement of the main column. The TARDIS also has a scanner so the crew can examine their surroundings first before getting off the ship. In the 2005 series, the scanner display is connected to the terminal and can display television signals as well as various computer functions and occasionally what the production team calls Gallifreyan numbers and characters.

In the episodes of the first doctor, the terminal room also contains a machine that distributes food or units of food to the doctor and his assistants. This machine disappears after the first episodes. Since then, the TARDIS kitchen has been mentioned at times.

In the television film, access to the Eye of Harmony is controlled using a device that a human eye needs to open. What the doctor programs such a device for is explained retrospectively in the radio play The Apocalypse Element by Big Finish Productions , where a Dalek invasion of Gallifrey makes it necessary for the Timelords to code the security locks on the retinal pattern of the sixth doctor and his assistant Evelyn Smythe .

The sixth Doctor also used the TARDIS manual to fix it, represented by a large, thick book. The eleventh Doctor later claimed he threw the book into a supernova because they disagreed.

Defense system

Some other functions of the TARDIS include a force field and a "Hostile Action Displacement System" (HADS), which can teleport the ship away in an attack ( The Krotons , 1968). Presumably this force field does not exist in the renewed series, as an external device must be connected in The Parting of the Ways . The “Cloister Bell” sounds when a wild catastrophe or sudden calls to occupy the battle station are imminent ( Logopolis ). Another system of protection is to hide the TARDIS in a slot so that it is always one second ahead of the viewer and is therefore not physically there.

The interior of the TARDIS is said to be in a state of multidimensional temporal grace ( The Hand of Fear , 1976). The fourth doctor explains what this means: that when things are in the TARDIS, in a sense, they don't exist. This conveniently ensures that no weapons can be used within the TARDIS. In Earthshock (1982), The Parting of the Ways and Let's kill Hitler , however, shooting took place in the terminal room, which means that this function does not correspond to subsequent episodes either. In the episode Arc of Infinity , the Fifth Doctor plans to fix the temporal grace circuit, but is prevented from doing so due to what goes on in that story. In the episode Against Time (2011), the Doctor claims the impossibility of firing weapons was an intelligent lie .

Other systems

The TARDIS also ensures the crew's ability to understand and speak other languages. This is described in The Masque of Mandragora (1976) as a gift from the Timelords, which the doctor shares with his assistants, but is later attributed to the telepathic field in The End of the World (2005). Donna Noble tests the limits of this ability in The Fires of Pompeii by reciting a Latin proverb to a Pompeii citizen, which the latter irritably describes as Celtic (a forerunner to the English language). In The Christmas Invasion is opened, that the doctor is an integral part of this capability themselves. When the doctor is in the regeneration phase, Rose Tyler cannot understand the alien Sycorax. In The Impossible Planet (2006) it is said that the TARDIS can even translate writing; In this episode, the TARDIS was unable to translate an alien script and the doctor said it was because the script was impossibly old. In the ninth doctor's adventure novel Only Human , the telepathic field contains a filter that replaces unwanted or bad language with accepted terms. She is also able to generate an oxygen field around the entrance to the TARDIS, first named as such in The Beast Below (2010), in which Amy Pond wonders that she can breathe in space with the TARDIS door open. This field is consequently shielded from the outside from gravity, since otherwise the occupants of the TARDIS would have to be sucked into space. To protect its inmates, the TARDIS (As described in Big Bang (2010)) can put them in a time warp when they are about to experience a catastrophe resulting in death from outside in order to protect them from the same. This happens in that episode with River Song, who later becomes the doctor's wife.

There are times when the TARDIS seems to have a mind of its own. The television series implies that the TARDIS is alive and to some extent intelligent (first seen in The Edge of Destruction ) and associated with its crew; in the television film the doctor calls the TARDIS sentimental . In The Parting of the Ways , believing he will never return, the Doctor leaves a message for Rose Tyler asking her to let the TARDIS die. Later in the same episode, Rose repeats the doctor ( Boom Town ) and says that the TARDIS is alive. This peculiarity was further worked out in the offshoot novels and series. In the radio play Omega , the doctor meets a TARDIS who dies after her Timelord dies. In The Doctor's Wife (2011) the consciousness of the TARDIS is temporarily transferred into a human body, which for the first time makes the relationship between the doctor and the TARDIS more clearly visible. The occasional mislanding of the TARDIS is mentioned here from a different point of view, when the TARDIS replies to the accusation “You didn't always take me where I wanted to go” (“You didn't always take me where I wanted to go”) “No, I always took you where you needed to go” (“No, but I always took you where you needed to go”).

In the novels, a portion can be separated from the TARDIS and travel independently ( Iceberg by David Banks, Sanctuary by David A. McIntee). This part of the TARDIS looks like a small pagoda from Jade and has a short range and limited functionality, but is occasionally used in the original episodes, when the main TARDIS is out of service. (An electronic mailing list from the provider Yahoo dedicated the name "Jade Pagoda" to the discussion of the series' offshoot media.)

Other TARDIS

Other TARDIS also appear on the TV series. The "Master" has a further developed model of the TARDIS. Your chameleon circuit is fully functional and makes it appear in a wide variety of forms, for example as a filing cabinet, grandfather clock , fireplace , ionic column or iron maiden . While one TARDIS can materialize in another, the occupation of two TARDISs in the same place leads to total annihilation by a “time ram ” (“Time Ram” in The Time Monster ). In Logopolis the doctor outwits his opponent, the “master”, by materializing his TARDIS around that of the “master” and thus creates a “dimensionally recursive loop” , with each TARDIS appearing within the other terminal room . In Shada , the Timelord Professor Chronotis owns a TARDIS disguised as his home at Cambridge University . In the episode The Lodger (2010) an entire upper floor is generated by an unknown person as a camouflage for the attempt to build a TARDIS.

Other timelords who have TARDISse are the self-important monk ("Meddling monk") and the Rani. The war chief provides the extraterrestrial race of the “War Lords” with dimensionally transcendent time machines called SIDRAT ( Space and Inter-Dimensional Robot All-purpose Transporter ) after the one transferred into the novel form Story The War Games ) available. In The Chase script, the Daleks' space-time machines are called DARDIS.

Some comics, novels and radio plays also deal with Gallifreyan battle TARDISs, who freeze their targets in time with time torpedoes. The TARDIS of the renegade time lady Iris Wildthymes appears in the shape of the London bus No. 22 and is smaller on the inside than it appears on the outside. The adventure novels about the eighth doctor assume that the future model Type 102 TARDIS will have complete sentience and the ability to take on human forms (alien bodies) . The assistant to the eighth doctor, Laura Tobin, is the first Type 102 TARDIS (The Shadows of Avalon) and has enough firepower to destroy other TARDISSE (The Ancestor Cell) . The unofficial ninth doctor owns a TARDIS in the animated webcast Scream of the Shalka for the 40th anniversary , the terminal room of which looks similar to the steampunk version of the eighth doctor.

In the radio play The One Doctor , the impostor Banto Zame embodies the doctor. Due to incomplete information, the copy of the TARDIS (a short-haul transporter ) is called Stardis and looks more like a “Dixiklo” than a police emergency call cell and is also not dimensionally transcendental. In unregenerate! The Seventh Doctor and Melanie Bush stop a secret Timelords project to transfer the mind of a TARDIS into the bodies of various alien races. This transfer would have created living TARDIS pilots who would have been loyal to the Timelords and would have ensured that the Timelords had ultimate control over any use of other species' time travel technology. The creatures created before the project stopped took off themselves to explore the universe.

Since the destruction of the planet Gallifrey and the Timelords, as noted in the revived series from 2005, the Doctor believes that his TARDIS is the last one in the universe ( Rise of the Cybermen , 2006). The elimination of the planet Gallifrey - and consequently the Eye of Harmony - could also be the reason for the need to refill the TARDIS with space-time hole radiation (Boom Towm) . In Rise of the Cybermen , the doctor also states that the TARDIS draws energy from the universe, but is unable to do so in an alternate reality.

In a 2006 issue of the British television and radio magazine Radio Times , a picture of the Torchwood Institute headquarters identified a piece of giant coral on Captain Jack Harkness' desk as the early stages of a TARDIS. John Barrowman , who plays Jack in Torchwood and Doctor Who , confirms that Jack has probably been breeding a TARDIS for 30 years. It is believed that he can start fine-tuning in 500 years.

Further manifestations

Branch media

  • The TARDIS can also be heard in the offshoot series Torchwood , more precisely in the episode End of Days , where it materializes above the Torchwood Institute in order to "refuel", taking Jack Harkness with it.
  • Sarah Jane Smith has a diagram of the TARDIS in her attic, this can be seen in the offshoot series The Sarah Jane Adventures in the pilot episode Invasion of the Bane .

Pop Culture

The TARDIS has established itself outside of the series in the culture of everyday British life, with comparisons being made frequently. The TARDIS is pictorially often for everything surprisingly spacious (for. Example for small cars in advertising). Some examples are given below.

Movies

  • In the film Bill & Ted's crazy journey through time (1989) the two main characters travel in a time machine that is disguised as a telephone booth, which, unlike the TARDIS, is no bigger inside than it appears from the outside, which leads to a humorous effect, as it gets crowded.
  • In the 1995 comedy Against the Surf , JC, played by Sean Pertwee (son of third doctoral actor Jon Pertwee), says about his little trailer that it's much bigger inside than the TARDIS.
  • In the millennium production of Blackadder: Back and Forth (1999), the latest incarnation of the antihero of the same name and his servant Baldrick travel in a time machine designed by Leonardo da Vinci, which looks similar to the TARDIS, but is no bigger inside than it appears from the outside .
  • In the music film Spiceworld , the Spice Girls go on tour with a bus that is larger inside than outside and whose interior design is inspired by the TARDIS.

Series

  • The TARDIS appears in the background in the episode "Marooned" in the British science fiction series Red Dwarf (in a corner at the launch site of the Starbug spaceship).
  • An episode of the British sitcom Chelmsford 123 features a short scene in which the TARDIS appears in Britain in Roman times in 123 and the Doctor's silhouette rushes out and urinates in the woods.
  • A TARDIS terminal can also be seen on the bridge of the Terra Vernture in the Power Rangers: Lost Galaxy season of the TV series Power Rangers .
  • In the episode The Time Portal of the television series Star Trek: Deep Space Nine , Chief O'Brien uses, among other devices, a hexagonal terminal with an outward-facing control panel (visible in the background) in his efforts to get his daughter back from the time portal.
  • An episode from Star Trek: Enterprise entitled The Future (ENT 2.16) pays homage to the TARDIS, in which the crew of the Enterprise encounters a period ship that is larger inside than it looks outside.
  • In the sixth episode of the short-lived British series Crime Traveler , an old police booth can be seen (and is indirectly commented on).
  • The Fourth Doctor and the TARDIS appear briefly in an episode of Robot Chicken .
  • In the series Marvels Agents of SHIELD , Agent Simmons is asked in an episode what is in a box on the beach of a desert island, to which she replies with "The TARDIS ".
  • The TARDIS has been parodied many times over the years, e.g. B. in some episodes of the American cartoon series The Simpsons or in an episode of the American television series Alf .
  • In the eighth episode of season 7 of the Navy CIS series , Special Agent McGee mentions the TARDIS.

comics

  • The TARDIS appears parked and unnoticed in a corner of Doctor Strange's study in a Marvel Mangaverse novel story published by Marvel Comics in 2002. The main artist and creator of this comic series, Ben Dunn , is a Doctor Who fan and also has the shape of a character Fitted to the Doctor's moves at Comic Ninja High School .
  • In the webcomic player vs. Player of Scott Kurtz admits Brent Sienna his fiance Jade Fontaine that he had made against the agreement before the wedding a larger output. It's a TARDIS.
  • In comic number 10 Time Travel with Discord for the series My Little Pony - Friendship is Magic , Discord, wearing a fez , calls a square time machine and notices that it is smaller on the inside : " It's smaller on the inside ". When he opens the door, a pony named Time Tuner, who looks like the tenth doctor, stands in front of him. Discord promotes this with the comment “There are too many References in this Bit already ”.

music

  • In 1988 the band The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu (later known as The KLF ) released the single Doctorin 'the Tardis under the name The Timelords and became a number one hit in the UK. The song is a mix of Gary Glitters music rock and roll , titled Blockbuster by The Sweet and the theme music from Doctor Who , with a few of the Daleks inspired sounds and Harry Enfield's hit his character Loadsamoney , including an original samples of the theme music, composed by Ron Grainer . In their subsequently published book The Manual (How to have a number one - the easy way) , in which they used this example to describe in detail how to construct a number one hit from a handful of samples, The KLF also took on the role one that the enormous popularity of Doctor Who and the TARDIS had played for the chart success of the piece: The refrain "Doctor Who, hey Doctor Who / Doctor Who, in the Tardis ..." is nonsense, of course, but every young man in the whole country below a certain age instinctively linked to the content. The somewhat older ones needed some beers [...]
  • The TARDIS is also featured in the lyrics of How Long's A Tear Take To Dry? Mentioned by The Beautiful South (from their album Quench ) and in the lyrics All Things To All Men by The Cinematic Orchestra (with musical support from Roots Manuva ).
  • Kylie Minogue uses the sound of the TARDIS materializing on her "Showgirl Homecoming" tour as an introduction to the song "Light Years".
  • The British band Radiohead uses the TARDIS as a metaphor in their song Up On The Ladder , which appeared on the bonus CD for the album In Rainbows : I'm stuck in the TARDIS / Trapped in hyperspace / One minute, snake charming / The next in a motorcade

software

  • In the computer role-playing game Fallout, there is a TARDIS in an Easter egg that appears in a remote part of the desert and disappears again as soon as someone approaches.
  • The MMORPG Asheron's Call uses the TARDIS in a similar way.
  • In Cylon Attack , a computer game for the BBC Micro by A&F , the TARDIS now and then crosses the screen and is also invulnerable.
  • In the mid-1990s, Tardis was also the name of a time server program that used a police emergency call cell as an icon. A version of this timeserver is still available today.
  • In the street view of Google Maps , the police emergency call box, which is located in front of Earl's Court underground station in London on Earl's Court Road , can be entered by zooming in and shows a TARDIS interior view.
  • In the video game "Assassin's Creed Origins" (2017), which is set in ancient Egypt, a petrified Tardis can be found on the bottom of the Nile, with a severed leg sticking out of the doorway.

Working world

science

  • As part of the Foton -M3 mission that led ESA an experiment on survival of tardigrades ( "English. Tardigrades ") in open space through. This experiment was named "TARDIS" ( Tard igrades i n S pace ).
  • The TARDIS was immortalized in space: in honor of the TARDIS, an asteroid (3325) is called TARDIS .

Others

  • The similarity of the police emergency call cell to a mobile toilet often leads to TARDIS parodies (such as in the above-mentioned radio play The One Doctor ); In the British comedy tour Bottom Live 2003 , the character of Adrian Edmonson describes his invention, a time-traveling toilet, as "TURDIS".
  • While answering children's questions on an episode of the Blue Peter children's program in October 2006, when asked if his official residence at 10 Downing Street is larger inside than it looks from the street, Prime Minister Tony Blair compared the TARDIS to the he is also referred to as the TARDIS.
  • TARDIS is also the name of two radar displays : one for airports, whose acronym stands for Terminal Automated Radar Display and Information System , and another for the Panavia Tornado fighter aircraft , here an acronym for Tornado Advanced Radar Display Information System . It is unclear whether the finding of the acronyms was influenced by the Doctor Who series .
  • During the opening ceremony of the 2012 Summer Olympics in London , the Tardis could also be heard in the background as a contribution to British pop culture.

Merchandising

Since the TARDIS has the highest recognition value in connection with the Doctor Who series , it is used for many merchandise items. Scaled-down TARDIS models are made with Doctor Who dolls and action figures of various sizes, some with sound effects, and there are fan-built full-size police kiosks. Also have video games , play tents designed for children, toy boxes, cookie jars, bookends, keyrings and even a bottle of bubble bath in TARDIS form the doctor. The 1993 video release of The Trial of a Time Lord included a special canned edition similar to the TARDIS.

With the revival of the 2005 series, a Cod Steaks Ltd. (a model manufacturing company founded in Bristol ) launched a 55 cm high TARDIS-shaped DVD / CD cabinet including matching shelves. Other merchandise items in the renewed TARDIS series are a coin box and a TARDIS, which detect the ring tones of cell phones and flash when a call is detected, a TARDIS zipped wardrobe ("Zipperdrobe") (a wardrobe made of fabric) as well as a children's book that " TARDIS Manual ”, which contains information about the ship and a cardboard handicraft template. The DVD case for the entire season (2005) looks similar to the TARDIS.

A 1970s television production model of the TARDIS sold for £ 10,800 at auction in December 2005.

literature

  • Mark Harris: The Doctor Who Technical Manual. Random House, New York NY 1983, ISBN 0-394-86214-7 .
  • John Nathan-Turner: Doctor Who. The TARDIS Inside Out. Random House, New York NY 1985, ISBN 0-394-87415-3 .
  • David J. Howe, Mark Stammers, Stephen James Walker: Doctor Who, the Handbook. The first doctor. Doctor Who Bks., London 1994, ISBN 0-426-20430-1 .
  • David J. Howe, Arnold T. Blumberg: Howe's Transcendental Toybox. The Unauthorized Guide to Doctor Who Collectibles. Telos Publishing, Tolworth 2003, ISBN 1-903889-56-1 .

Web links

Commons : TARDIS  - collection of images, videos and audio files
German-language websites
English language websites

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ See en: Police box .
  2. ↑ In the two Dalek films the machine is called TARDIS , ie without the definite article .
  3. ^ Full record for Tardis-like adj. ( Memento from May 23, 2008 in the Internet Archive ). In: Science Fiction Citations, February 23, 2005
  4. ↑ http://www.patent.gov.uk/tm//legal/decisions/2002/o33602.pdf
  5. ↑ The circuit was called "cloaking device" by the eighth Doctor in the television movie Doctor Who (1996). Some fans criticize this as inaccurate or as a bait for the American viewers who are familiar with this term from the television series Star Trek . In a 2005 episode of Boom Town , Rose Tyler refers to the cloaking device, after which the ninth doctor clarifies that it is a chameleon circuit.
  6. ↑ Time Lord handed permanent home . In: BBC News, July 27, 2006
  7. ^ Ian Levine: Inside The Spaceship: The Story Of The TARDIS . In: BBC Worldwide. 2006
  8. ↑ Player vs. Player Webcomic ( Memento of the original from January 15, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. - Start of the strip row to the TARDIS @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.pvponline.com
  9. ↑ Archived copy ( memento of the original from January 5, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.klf.de
  10. ↑ Fallout Walkthrough ( Memento of the original from January 7, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . In: Quandary Computer Game Reviews, April 2002 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.quandaryland.com
  11. ↑ TARDIS . In: Maggie the Jackcat's Fabulous AC Guide, read on: January 6, 2006
  12. ↑ Explore the TARDIS via this amazing "Doctor Who" Google Maps easter egg
  13. ↑ Launch Photos July 2004 - Tardis Booth 1 ( Memento from May 13, 2005 in the Internet Archive ). In: Imaginingaustralia.blogs.com, July 2004
  14. ↑ Manuel Oetiker: All about TARDIS ( Memento of the original from April 24, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . In: ETH Zurich, Department of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering, June 13, 2006 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / computing.ee.ethz.ch
  15. ^ The University of Edinburgh Tardis Project . In: School of Informatics, University of Edinburgh, December 3, 2006
  16. ↑ http://tardigradesinspace.blogspot.de/
  17. ↑ No 10 'like Tardis', says Blair , BBC News Online, March 10, 2006
  18. ^ Schmer Releases FAA Evaluation of Stewart Airport . In: Senator Schumer Website: Press Room, November 29, 1999
  19. ↑ BAE Systems Receives $ 70 Million Contract for Radar Map Display Subsystem on UK Tornado Aircraft . In: BAESYSTEMS.com, February 9, 2004
  20. ↑ Miniature Tardis sells at auction . In: BBC News, December 15, 2005