The TARDIS (; acronym for "Time And Relative Dimension(s) In Space") is a fictional hybrid of a time machine and spacecraft that has, since 1963, appeared in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who and its various spin-offs. While a TARDIS is capable of disguising itself, the exterior appearance of the Doctor's TARDIS typically mimics a police box, an obsolete type of telephone kiosk that was once commonly seen on streets in Britain in the 1940s and 50s. Its interior is shown as being much larger than its exterior, commonly described as being "bigger on the inside". Due to the significance of Doctor Who in popular British culture, the shape of the police box is now more strongly associated with the TARDIS than its real-world inspiration. The name and design of the TARDIS is a registered trademark of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), although the design was originally created by the Metropolitan Police Service.
Name TARDIS is an acronym of "Time And Relative Dimension in Space". The word "Dimension" is alternatively rendered in the plural. The first story, An Unearthly Child (1963), used the singular "Dimension". The 1964 novelisation Doctor Who in an Exciting Adventure with the Daleks used "Dimensions" for the first time and the 1965 serial The Time Meddler introduced the plural in the television series – although the script had it as singular, actor Maureen O'Brien changed it to "Dimensions". Both continued to be used during the classic series; in "Rose" (2005), the Ninth Doctor uses the singular (although this was a decision of actor Christopher Eccleston—the line was plural in the script for the episode) and the series has continued with the singular from that point forward. The acronym was explained in the first episode of the show, An Unearthly Child (1963), in which the Doctor's granddaughter, Susan, claims to have made it up herself. Despite this, the term is used commonly by other Time Lords to refer to both the Doctor's and their own time ships. Generally, "TARDIS" is written in all uppercase letters, but may also be written in title case as "Tardis". The word "Tardis" first appeared in print in the Christmas 1963 edition of Radio Times, which refers to "the space-time ship Tardis".
Description
In the fictional universe of the Doctor Who television show, TARDISes are space- and time-travel vehicles of the Time Lords, an alien species from the planet Gallifrey. Although many TARDISes exist and are sometimes seen on-screen, the television show mainly features a single TARDIS used by the show's protagonist, a Time Lord who goes by the name of the Doctor. He noted in Episode 3 of The Chase that he had built it himself. TARDISes are built with a "chameleon circuit", a type of camouflage technology that changes the exterior form of the ship to blend into the environment of whatever time or place it lands in. The Doctor's TARDIS always resembles a 1960s London police box, an object that was very common in Britain at the time of the show's first broadcast, owing to a malfunction in the chameleon circuit before the events of the first episode of the show, An Unearthly Child. The Doctor has attempted to repair the chameleon circuit, unsuccessfully in Logopolis (1981) and with only temporary success in Attack of the Cybermen (1985). In "Boom Town", the Doctor reveals that he has stopped trying to repair the circuit as he has become fond of its appearance. The other TARDISes that appear in the series have chameleon circuits that are fully functional. The TARDIS is famously "bigger on the inside". A much larger control room lies inside the police box, at the centre of which is a console for operating the TARDIS. In the middle of the console is a moving tubular device, typically referred to as the time rotor, which moves in sequence with the flight sound effects. The presence of a physically larger space contained within the police box is explained as "dimensionally transcendental", with the interior being a whole separate dimension containing an infinite number of rooms, corridors and storage spaces, all of which can change their appearance and configuration. The TARDIS also has a telepathic feature/translation circuit that allows the Doctor and others to communicate with people who speak languages other than their own, as well as turn all written languages to English. The translation circuit has been explored in comparison with real-world machine translation, with researchers Mark Halley and Lynne Bowker concluding that "when it comes to the science of translation technology, Doctor Who gets it wrong more often than it gets it right. However, perhaps we can forgive the artistic license if we recognise that, as in other science fiction works, the presentation of some type of ubiquitous translation tool is necessary to explain to the audience how people from other countries, time periods, and even other worlds, can understand each other and indeed appear to speak (mostly) flawless English." The TARDIS is also able to generate a "perception filter" that causes people to ignore it, thinking that it is normal.
Conceptual history
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