The TARDIS is the spacecraft used by the Doctor in the long-running BBC science fiction series Doctor Who. TARDIS is an acronym for Time And Relative Dimensions In Space. It is a time-travelling device and its main distinction that regardless of its external size, the interior of the craft is the same size due to it inhabiting another dimension.
This knol only refers to the television series unless otherwise specified. Information from other sources outside of the televised canon is not included.
The Doctor's TARDIS is stuck in the shape of a 1950s Police Box. A Police Box could be used by members of 
the public to contact police or by beat police before the advent of two-way radio. The box itself could store helpful accoutrements or serve as an short-term lock-up for somebody under arrest.
The Doctor's TARDIS became stuck in this configuration after an extended stay in 1960s London while the Doctor's grand-daughter, Susan, attended school. The TARDIS was in a corner of a junkyard in the fictional Totters Lane and was discovered by Susan's teachers, Ian Chesterton and Barbara Wright after following Susan home from school one afternoon. After discovering them aboard the craft, the Doctor, in a rage, dematerialises the TARDIS and takes them back to the Stone Age. His explanation was that he feared Ian and Barbara would uncover his and Susan's secret.
Time Travel
The TARDIS was invented by the Time Lords of Gallifrey and feeds from the energy of the Eye of Harmony. The Doctor's particular TARDIS is referred to as a Type 40 TT capsule, an antique by the time the Doctor stole it to depart Gallifrey. The craft is theoretically able to travel anywhere in time and space, is virtually indestructible and can change shape to suit the surroundings.
To travel, the TARDIS dematerialises and enters the time vortex through which it travels in time and space. The TARDIS can travel in normal space and is often seen doing so in both series. The TARDIS is controlled by a six-sided console in the control room, which is also the entry point from the outside. The centre of the console (excepting Season 14's secondary console) hosts the Time Rotor or Time Column. When in flight, the column rises and falls and when stationary, so too is the column.
The Doctor has varying degrees of success in piloting the TARDIS. In the early episodes the Doctor has much trouble in accurately planning his travel and only seems to get the hang of it consistently during the Fourth Doctor series The Key To Time (all of Season 16). Following this season, the Doctor installs a randomiser to evade the Black Guardian. The randomiser remains on the TARDIS for Season 17 and is removed in the Season 18 opener The Leisure Hive (1980). In Logopolis (1981), the Doctor misses his mark by 1.6 metres but is able to quickly correct it, materialising around a real Police Box. The Tenth Doctor as able to turn the TARDIS ninety degrees with a quick dematerialisation/rematerialisation sequence in Fear Her (2005).
The New Series still sees the Doctor having trouble piloting the craft, often missing his destinations by thousands of miles (Tooth and Claw, 2006) or a hundred years (The Idiot's Lantern, 2006). In Aliens of London (2005), the Doctor returns Rose to her home, thinking it had been 12 hours since she had left with the Doctor but in fact it had been 12 months. He has better luck returning Martha to her flat, landing the TARDIS in her living room in The Lazarus Experiment as well as delivering her at the intended time, the morning after she left with him. In The Shakespeare Code (2006) the Doctor admits to having failed a TARDIS proficiency examination (or 'driving test'). In the past he had simply blamed the TARDIS for being temperamental.
The controls of the TARDIS are complicated but at no time does the Doctor seem to have trouble identifying controls in any of the console room's guises. In The Pyramids of Mars (1975), the Doctor tells Sutekh that the controls are isomorphic and therefore can only be operated by the Doctor. This concept is supported by the plot device known as the Rassilon Imprimatur, which states that the TARDIS is activated and bound to the Time Lord who first uses it. It has been suggested a number of the times that the TARDIS and the Doctor have both a telepathic and symbiotic link to each other, a concept repeated in the New Series when the Doctor tells Rose, through an emergency recording, that she should just let the TARDIS die.
It appears that the Doctor can, however, grant other people use of the TARDIS. Various companions have been seen operating the TARDIS and the TARDIS has also been piloted or controlled by remote method in a variety of manners, including a DVD easter egg in Blink (2007). The Doctor was able to disable the TARDIS controls at the end of Utopia, only allowing travel between the years 2007 and 100 trillion. This was to prevent the Master from wreaking havoc with the TARDIS after hijacking it. Why the Master was able to hijack the TARDIS was not made clear in the story but the sequence where the Master performs the hijacking features a number of shots where the Doctor's severed hand is prominent.
In Journey's End (2008), it is revealed that the TARDIS actually requires six people to pilot it efficiently and explains the haphazard and improvised methods the Doctor is seen using to fly the machine. These include a rubber mallet, a paperweight and the Doctor is regularly seen sprawled on the console, operating controls with his feet and hands at the same time and occasionally directing a companion to hold this or press that. Also in this story, Donna tells the Tenth Doctor that the chameleon circuit isn't really broken and could easily be reactivated, although this could be a result of her mind unravelling due to her experiencing metacrisis with the Doctor.
In the series, both Classic and New, the TARDIS has been to both ends of time, with varying results. In the third story in the program's history, Edge of Destruction (1964), the TARDIS is heading backwards in time due to a jammed control and almost reaches the beginning of time. The Doctor believes the crew will be killed but Barbara discovers the 'Fast Return' switch is jammed on and travel is halted.
In the 1982 serial Castrovalva, The Master again sends the TARDIS hurtling back to Event One, the precursor to the Big Bang, placing the craft and its crew in immense danger. This requires the Doctor to eject 25% of the TARDIS' interior mass in an effort get more thrust and return the TARDIS to safety. In the 2007 story Utopia, the TARDIS travels forward to the year 100 trillion, near to the end of the Universe.
The TARDIS has also travelled into another Universe, known in the program as E-space. Travelling through the Charged Vacuum Emboidment allowed the Fourth Doctor into E-Space. The TARDIS was also capable of travelling into The Void, a space between Universes where even time does not exist. In Rise of the Cybermen (2006), the Doctor says that the void had been locked after the Time War.
The Doctor's TARDIS was disabled by the Time Lords following the Doctor's capture in 1969's The War Games. They removed the dematerialisation circuit, in addition to wiping the Doctor's mind of the codes to operate the TARDIS.
The TARDIS is powered by a number of different energy sources. Most commonly referred to is the Eye of Harmony, a black hole created by Omega and Rassilon. In the New Series, the Doctor uses the Rift energy to recharge the TARDIS, 'parking' it over the Rift in Cardiff, near the Torchwood base.
Defences
In The Hand of Fear (1976) the Doctor says the TARDIS exists in a state of temporal grace, which explains why weapons cannot be used in the craft, although in Earthshock (1983) and Attack of the Cybermen (1984), the Cybermen are able to fire their weapons in the console room. K9 is able to fire his weapon but others are not in the story The Invasion of Time (1978) and in the New Series, weapons are fired within the TARDIS in The Parting of the Ways (2005) and The Last of the Time Lords. Nyssa, perhaps echoing the questions of the viewers, asked the Doctor in Arc of Infinity (1983) why the temporal grace appears patchy, the Doctor answers, 'Nobody's perfect...'
Captain Jack also destroys a Dalek that has infiltrated the TARDIS in The Parting of the Ways (2005).
From the outside, the TARDIS is virtually impregnable due to a extremely strong force fields which were occasionally augmented in various ways by the Doctor and in The Parting of the Ways the shields are strengthened by Captain Jack to withstand the Daleks. The Doctor also admits that the TARDIS is vulnerable to an attack from the Daleks when they are a fully-fledged empire (Journey's End, 2008).
The Doctor believed the TARDIS had been destroyed by a meteor shower in Frontios (1984) and at the conclusion of The Last of the Time Lords, while performing some repairs on the TARDIS with the shields down, a spacecraft crashes through into the internal structure of the TARDIS, which carried through to the 2007 Christmas Special, The Voyage of the Damned, the spacecraft turning out to be a replica of the Titanic. The reasons were explained in the 2007 Children In Need special Time Crash when the Fifth Doctor appeared in the console room.
In The Krotons (1968) the TARDIS is found to have what is known as a Hostile Action Displacement System (HADS) which teleports the TARDIS away from potential danger, seemingly a different action than a dematerialisation.
External Appearance
TARDISes are equipped with a chameleon circuit, allowing it to change shape to fit the surroundings. The chameleon circuit on the Doctor's TARDIS is inoperable, hence the continuing Police Box appearance. Any consideration by the producers to change from the iconic shape of the Police Box is met with a chorus of disapproval by ardent fans of the program but is often a mischievous attempt by the producers to drum up publicity for the coming season (as it was for the opening of Season 22).
Throughout the Classic series, the chameleon ciruit was referred to a number of times. In Logopolis (1981), the Fourth Doctor materialises the TARDIS around a real Police Box to get the correct measurements so the figures may be given to the mathematicians of Logopolis to enable him to reverse-engineer a fix to the circuit.
The Sixth Doctor story, Attack of the Cybermen (1985) sees the Doctor repair the chameleon circuit with a sonic lance. The TARDIS lands in the Totters Lane junkyard and changes into a stove with an amusing pattern, the Doctor remarking that the TARDIS was out of touch. Upon his return to the TARDIS, the Doctor has difficulty finding a door. The next landings see the TARDIS change to a pipe organ, a set of iron gates and finally returns to the Police Box form, the Doctor giving the ship an affectionate pat as he exits. It has not changed form since.
Other TARDISes in the series have chameleon circuits that work, most famously in The Master's. The Master first appeared in the Season 8 opener Terror of the Autons (1971), his TARDIS materialising as a circus vehicle. In later Classic serials, the Master's TARDIS would appear regularly as a Roman column and an oddly out-of-place grandfather clock, as in The Keeper of Traken (1981).
Another TARDIS that made an appearance was that of The Rani's, specifically the control room, which is very modern and marking it out as of a different type to the Doctor's. The Rani's TARDIS appeared in Season 22's Mark of the Rani (1985) and Season 24's opener, Time and the Rani (1987). The first instance of another TARDIS in the series was the final story of Season 2, The Time Meddler (1965), the machine belonging to the Monk and found in the form of a sarcophagus. The Doctor disables this TARDIS by removing the dimensional control, shrinking the interior to the size of the sarcophagus exterior.
A TARDIS can materialise around another, the second TARDIS to be found within the control room of the first. This is supposed to cause a time ram, but this has not happened on either occasion the TARDIS has materialised around the Master's. The first such occasion was 1972's The Time Monster. In Logopolis (1981) it merely caused an endless loop as Adric and the Doctor stepped through a number of TARDIS iterations.
Internal Appearance
The TARDIS is operated from the console room and is the most commonly seen section of the TARDIS in both the Classic and New series. In An Unearthly Child (1963), the Doctor explains the effect:
The Doctor: Illusions, indeed? You say you can't fit an enormous building into one of your small sitting rooms?
Ian: No.
The Doctor: But you've discovered television, haven't you?
Ian: Yes.
The Doctor: Then by showing an enormous building on your television screen you can do what seemed impossible, couldn't you?
The first console room was used in various, lightly changed guises for the first thirteen seasons and then from Season Fifteen through to the final season of the classic series, with a major refit occurring at the start of the 20th Anniversary Special The Five Doctors (1983). In the tenth anniversary special, The Three Doctors, the Second Doctor remarks to the Third that he doesn't like the redecorating work that's been done.
The walls of the TARDIS have all featured either hexagonal or circular inserts of varying depths and sizes, including the interior doors in the Classic series. In the New Series, the interior doors are merely the inside of a Police Box's doors, including the non-working telephone behind the advisory sign.
The TARDIS appears to be extremely flexible both inside and out. When the Fourth Doctor and Sarah take to using the secondary control room (The Masque of Mandragora, Season 14), an antique-feeling, wood-pannelled space with a much smaller console, it is explicitly referred to as the second console room. When the doors are opened, they are able to step out and back in to the console room in use, despite the external appearance having only one entry point. It is unclear how many control rooms there are, although only the two have been mentioned in the television series.
A so-called steampunk-inspired look was introduced for the 1996 telemovie, and a considerably larger, darker interior was introduced in the 2005 relaunch. In the 2007 Children In Need special, Time Crash, the Fifth Doctor demands to know what the Tenth Doctor has done with his TARDIS, exclaiming 'You've changed the desktop theme!'
A number of stories have been set largely or exclusively within the TARDIS. The 1964 serial Edge of Destruction (which followed The Daleks) was set entirely inside the TARDIS. The Doctor believing the machine crippled or sabotaged by Ian and Barbara, fails to notice the Fast Return switch is jammed on, sending the TARDIS back to the Big Bang. The 1978 story Invasion of Time saw the Doctor and a small entourage are chased through the TARDIS corridors by Sontarans and Castellan Kelner. In the 1981 story Logopolis, a peaceful area of the TARDIS called the Cloisters was revealed along with the troubling Cloister Bell, a signal of impending doom. In Frontios (1984) the TARDIS was damaged, with sections of the interior visible in the caves below the surface of the planet.
The 1982 story Castrovalva introduced the Zero Room, an area of the TARDIS cut off from the rest of the Universe and in which the Doctor could recuperate after his troubled regeneration. Unfortunately for the Doctor, the Master intervenes yet again, sending the TARDIS hurtling backwards in time to Event One, the period even before the Big Bang. To escape destruction, the Doctor has to eject a quarter of the TARDIS' mass to create extra thrust but the Zero Room was part of that quarter, leaving only the doors. The first episode of Castrovalva was something of an extended tour of the TARDIS, taking in the rooms of the companions and a large number of corridors.
Examples of passing references to other parts of the TARDIS include the ejection of the swimming pool in Paradise Towers (1987) due to the pool developing a leak. It is not explained how the water stays in the pool, considering the TARDIS has variously been tipped on its side, the movement translating to the interior. Also in Logopolis, the Doctor believed the Master was hiding in the TARDIS and intended to materialise the TARDIS in the River Thames to flood the TARDIS. A common sight for viewers is the TARDIS wardrobe room, particularly in the first episode of a new Doctor as he chooses a new look.
Anthropomorphisation of the TARDIS
The TARDIS is often referred to as 'she' and 'old girl' by the Doctor. TARDISes are allegedly grown rather than built and the Doctor's TARDIS does indeed appear to have a personality.
In the 2005 story, The Parting of the Ways, Rose is sent back to her own time by the Doctor, who remains on the Game Station that has been invaded by the Daleks. A recorded message from the Doctor is played to Rose by the TARDIS, the Doctor exhorting her to let the TARDIS die. Rose refuses to accept that her time with the Doctor is over, remembering the heart of the TARDIS is telepathic.
She enlists the help of Mickey to try and tear open the TARDIS console so she can try and communicate with the heart. The result is her exposure to the entire time vortex and the ability to return the TARDIS to the Game Station and defeat the Daleks by using the enormous power of the vortex. The idea that the TARDIS actually had the time vortex flowing through the craft itself had been hinted a number of times but never demonstrated until this episode.
The 2005 epsiode The End of the World revealed the reason why almost everyone in Doctor Who speaks English - the TARDIS telepathically translates for anyone that travels in her. In The Christmas Invasion (2005), the Doctor appears to be a crucial link (referred to as a 'Time Lord gift' in 1976's The Masque of Mandragora) as Rose is unable to understand the Sycorax while the Doctor experiences regenerational crisis. Once he emerges from crisis, the humans on the Sycorax ship are able to understand them.
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