History
The TARDIS (the letters stand for Time and Relative Dimension in Space) is a dimensionally transcendental sentient space/time craft grown on Gallifrey, the planet of the Time Lords. Officially designated a Mark One Type 40 TT Capsule (presumably, the TT stands for "time travel") it was apparently designed to allow a crew of six to traverse time and space observing and recording events, but the TARDIS grew bored with this and stole the renegade Time Lord known as The Doctor, using him to embark on a new life of adventure and exploration. The fact that the Doctor completely misinterpreted this sequence of events and believed that he had stolen the TARDIS just goes to show the arrogance and stupidity of men carbon-based lifeforms which exist in a linear relationship with time.
The Doctor and the TARDIS now have what amounts to a symbiotic relationship: he tells it where he wants to go, and it takes him where he needs to go. It's a little one-sided at times (and not always in the most obvious way) but it's an arrangement that has served them well for several centuries.
Powers and abilities
Powers
Extensive, mostly uncatalogued. They include a perception filter; invisibility (not often used because it drains power) and the ability to telepathically beam translations of almost any language in the universe into its travellers' heads.
Abilities
It can go anywhere in time and space, and its internal dimensions seem to be potentially infinite and infinitely variable. It can also reroute telephone calls (e.g., Winston Churchill phoned the TARDIS from London in 1941 AD and ended up talking to River Song in the Stormcage Containment Facility in 5145 AD).
Strength level
Supposedly indestructible.
Weaknesses
Arguably, curiosity.
Paraphernalia
Equipment
It is equipment.
Transportation
Itself.
Weapons
Doesn't have, need, or want any.
Notes
- The TARDIS was, of course, created for the TV series Doctor Who, and it has appeared in comics wherever The Doctor has, which is in a lot of places, including TV Comic, Countdown/TV Action, Doctor Who Annual, Doctor Who Adventures, Doctor Who Magazine, Doctor Who Comic, Doctor Who Classic Comics and Doctor Who-Battles in Time.
- Another version of the TARDIS was used by the human scientist Dr. Who, but this appears to have been a mere machine and almost certainly not sentient.
- The TARDIS contains a "chameleon circuit" which in theory should allow it to change its shape in order to blend in seamlessly with its surroundings. Unfortunately, the circuit got stuck in London in 1963. As a result, on arrival in any new location the TARDIS instantaneously scans the immediate surrounding environment, recalls all local history, extrapolates from these the perfect form to take on in order to pass unnoticed and then, in the space of a nanosecond, immediately assumes the shape of an obsolete Metropolitan Police telephone box.
- The Hostile Action Displacement System (HADS) allows the TARDIS to automatically relocate or redistribute itself if attacked. If it's switched on. Which it usually isn't.
- The TARDIS has only ever been played on television by one human actor: Suranne Jones.
Trivia
- The Doctor's granddaughter Susan once claimed she made up the TARDIS's name, but this seems somewhat unlikely with hindsight (unless Susan is a Time Lady who has been alive for an extremely long time, which is a possibility).
- The TARDIS contains, among other things, several bedrooms, a kitchen, a choice of bathrooms, a secondary control room, a number of archived control rooms (some of which haven't been built yet. It's a time machine, just go with it), a library, a swimming pool, a laboratory, a power room disguised as an art gallery, a gigantic boot cupboard containing a Victorian drawing room and a pair of wellington boots, a medical bay, an empty dimension containing one of the Malevilus, several warehouse-sized store rooms, a rubber dinghy, and uncounted miles of corridors. The internal architectural configuration changes more or less continually, seemingly on the whims of the TARDIS itself.
- The Doctor once noted that the TARDIS liked his companion Leela because her "simple thought processes" appealed to it. It has a rather more frosty relationship with Clara Oswald, however.
- According to the Big Finish audio drama Fairytale of Salzburg, it takes a highly intelligent human thirty to forty years to learn how to fly a TARDIS by trial and error.
Links
- Appearances of TARDIS
- Character Gallery: TARDIS
- Images that feature TARDIS
- Fan-Art Gallery: TARDIS
- TARDIS quotations
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