The Infinite Debate...

[starsuperion]

I am starting this thread because I want to share something with the rest of the fandom..and get feedback

as many of you know, I have spent about 2 1/2 years trying to quantify what exactly the Tardis is, and what it can be in the dimension in which it exists..

there are some theories which suggest that the ship is nothing more then a large room, in which thousands of rooms are floating around free and link up dimensionally..

this I believe is false..

Still others would have you believe that the Tardis center is kinda like a staff, a sceptre which is surrounded by rings of orbs which link up, and are accessed dimensionally, with a core central vortex spinning below..

Some say it is like the hypercube of the movie the cube, and can be enlarged infinitely..

Still others contend that it is simply just bigger on the inside.

Again, I believe these statements to be a false depiction of the ship..

and here is why.. in many descriptions from the show itself, it has labeled the Tardis as a Ship, a Space/Time Ship, not a series of floating rooms..not a tesseract.. though it does resemble a tesseract being the outer shell is larger then the doorway, which is then considered the outside, and the outer shell is never seen within it's own dimension..only the interior.

lets take each assertion one at a time and dispel the differences..

1.

the ship is nothing more then a large room, in which thousands of rooms are floating around free and link up dimensionally..

the reason this is false is because the Tardis is commonly referred to by the doctor is a ship, we know it comes with corridors, and pathways that lead to rooms..if there were just rooms floating all around and all were dimensionally linked, it would be a considerably unstable series of places..none having control over the other, and seems to me that it would be very unlikely that the time lords would want such chaos in a ship they use for travel. considering their pension for law and order..not to mention what we have already seen in the classic series..

2.

the Tardis center is kinda like a staff, a sceptre which is surrounded by rings of orbs which link up, and are accessed dimensionally, with a core central vortex spinning below..

this would seem likely another variation of the floatig box theory, and yet again, we are left without the vast corridors, and pathways that lead to each room, and decks, or levels of the Tardis..if this design were to be utilized in the newer series, it would contradict what a Tardis was from the classic show. I can understand why that concept art was not used for the show during the RTD seasons..still that would not be a Tardis in my mind.. as it isn't truly a ship, just a series of rings with orbs on them.. also the vortex is not something that just sits there in space swirling below the ship, it is the Tardis itself that must create a link to that vortex..and utilize it to traverse time and space..

a theory which until Recently, I have now grasped even better..

3.

the hypercube of the movie the cube, and can be enlarged infinitely..

okay let's be honest here, the cube in the movie was a hypercube and yes it was infinite.. it was a quantum theorists wet dream with a horror flick thrown in for good measure.. however did you not notice one particular fact about the hyper cube?? all the rooms were the same,structurally..no corridors, no engine rooms, no oxygen generators, nothing that would indicate that a hypercube could be more then a box which was dimensionally split into thousands of billions of other realms and dimensions..

why would the Time lords want to walk around a tardis, and not know where they would end up, or if that section or room was stable enough to visit?? To another point, why would the Time lords want to have a ship that could extend itself to infinity? think about it..

what would be the purpose of building a ship that could extend itself so vast that as to become it's own planet or solar system? what is the point of that?

I contend that the tardis is massive, and yes can infinitely produce rooms, but it can not expand infinitely beyond it's defined boundaries.. to produce rooms, it must also jettison old ones if the space is not there.. Now I can see a room being larger on the inside then the outside, this would be due to the expansion of the dimension on a subatomic level via it's access to the cloister core.. but those rooms would need constant energy to keep that extra dimension open, and would probably be the first to go if additional power were needed to travel..

4.

it is simply just bigger on the inside.

How can this be a proper ship if it is just bigger on the inside? what engines propel the ship through space and time? how does the ship gain access to the vortex if it is just bigger on the inside? it wouldn't be a spaceship, in another dimension..

when the doctor describes to Leela that the ship interior is in another Dimension, he is saying that the interior structure is on its own.. now if the outside were in this reality, and a separate structure were in another dimension, then logically it follows that, that structure must have a shell of some kind to maintain itself..further more if you were to just have a structure be large ron the inside, then what would you see if you were able to expand yourself outside of that interior? what would you find? would it be a massive blue police box? or just a box? which is more likely a box, or a ship?

in the Iphone application there is a game called hipercubo, it is fun, and interesting. based on the 4th dimensional tesseract.. however.. these colourful shapes may shift and infinitely fit together in cool neato ways, as a game it certainly works, but to make something like that a spaceship doesn't make sense, and would be impractical. It is not a space ship by any means, and to the point why woudl there be different model types of Tardises designated then?

would they all just be the same then? Only different upgrades to the interior tech? so then it would just be a type 1, mark 1 billion..LOL

this is why I say that the Tardis must be a massive ship, with the capacity to funnel and create a vortex, and have access to a gravity well to bend space-time, and a set of modular rooms which can be jettisoned into that vortex funnel pathway, and can generate new ones if needed..

but a ship that grows infinitely?? yes it can but only if other rooms are jettisoned..to grow in mass infinitely, no..I can't see it being practical..why would a Time lord want or even need that?

A SIDRAT can be a series of a few expandable rooms.. with an engine and a central control center.. it can dimensionally expand a room to make it bigger on the inside or shrink based on computations input into the matter conversion generators.. it can expand too to accommodate troops.. and hold a limited supply of oxygen atmosphere.. these ships are prone to power failure as they are limited in lifespan not being a full fledged Tardis.. and not being as complex as a Tardis to maintain an engine section and a core central control network and relay systems..

A Dalek Prison ship is a massive barge of sorts which is similar to the SIDRAT only it is self contained and doesn't have access to the massive vortex engines like the Tardis, it just basically hovers in it's own dimension..with a power source that keeps the ship in constant place tied to this reality via a door, and with a force field around the entire structure..infinitely feeding off residual particles of background radiation in the dimension which it rests...

all in all I just can't see the Tardis as just being bigger on the inside.. likewise, I can't see it being a series of floating rooms that dimensionally link up (just would take too much power to maintain that type of structure..) on top of that, I can't by into the theory that the Tardis is just a massive hypercube, because it has many other levels and sections which are not the same, and the entire structure is not a duplicate of the same rooms repeated over and over again..

nope in my mind, the Tardis is a ship.. a massive and fantastic ship, with default set of rooms and corridors, and then additional rooms and corridors with similar functions added on by a complex materialization-matter conversion system.. similar to the food processors on the enterprise only manufacturing rooms and parts, or engine conduits, and so on based on the technical data stored int he computer memory core, and the aesthetics of the mind of the time lord it is psychically linked to.

[Captain Pike]

<Head explodes>

[23skidoo]

I went with the Massive MODULAR Spaceship option, with emphasis on the Modular part. References dating back to the Tom Baker era to "jettisoning" of parts of the TARDIS, and even more recent references to the TARDIS rearranging itself (the moving swimming pool) seem to support some sort of modular design. And another key word is "massive", not "infinitely large" which is a bit of a misnomer. Again going back to the Baker/Davison era there were references to jettisoning a certain percentage of the TARDIS' rooms, and you can't have a percentage if it's infinite.

I suddenly came over nostalgic for, of all things, Second Life. During my brief (and ultimately disappointing) involvement with the virtual community I came across a number of folks who had created their own TARDISes, in some cases using designs not too dissimilar to some of the speculation here (maybe not hypercubes, grant you).

Alex

[Cutter John]

Damn. I came in expecting a 'which was the best Doctor?' poll.

Leaves dissapointed.

[OmahaStar]

Cutter John wrote:

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Damn. I came in expecting a 'which was the best Doctor?' poll.

Leaves dissapointed.

Of course, the only answer to that is, Colin Baker's Sixth Doctor.

[captcalhoun]

it's a narrative construct allowing the principal protaganists to transit from story to story with ease.

[Starkers]

captcalhoun wrote:

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it's a narrative construct allowing the principal protaganists to transit from story to story with ease.

This

[starsuperion]

captcalhoun wrote:

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it's a narrative construct allowing the principal protaganists to transit from story to story with ease.

over simplification does not suite a person as smart as you..

[starsuperion]

Cutter John wrote:

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Damn. I came in expecting a 'which was the best Doctor?' poll.

Leaves dissapointed.

that is a can o' worms I DO NOT want to re-open..

on another note, those who voted and believe it is just bigger on the inside, can you please explain to me how it can possibly jettison 25% of it's rooms??

[The]

Damn! LOL! What a thread. While I don't believe a lot of people put as much thought into it as you starsuperion, I'll at least go along with the conceit of in-universe speculation. I would agree that the TARDIS is a time/space machine whose exterior is represented in our four-dimensional universe as a shelled doorway that can mimic the appearance of its surroundings...

[DWF]

Here you go.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pvnKXOGYKM8

[starsuperion]

DWF wrote:

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Here you go.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pvnKXOGYKM8

I love that clip..

but it only explains how the Tardis ship is so massive in it's own dimension, and why the outer box is so small..

if you extrapolate that by this,
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x9q...t-3_shortfilms

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x9r...t-4_shortfilms
then you know it is a ship and not just bigger on the inside..because it can jettison 25% of its mass to provide thrust

[Steve Mollmann]

How is it not just bigger on the inside? Given that is how characters have described it for 40+ years, I think the burden of proof is on you.

It can jettison its rooms because it can. Don't think so three-dimensionally.

[EnderAKH]

starsuperion wrote:

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that is a can o' worms I DO NOT want to re-open..

on another note, those who voted and believe it is just bigger on the inside, can you please explain to me how it can possibly jettison 25% of it's rooms??

Because it was convenient to the plot at the time to say so and needs no further explanation.

[starsuperion]

Steve Mollmann wrote:

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How is it not just bigger on the inside? Given that is how characters have described it for 40+ years, I think the burden of proof is on you.

It can jettison its rooms because it can. Don't think so three-dimensionally.

The statement it is bigger on the inside is an over simplification of what people first notice about the Tardis..I am not disputing that the ship is what it is and has been said to be over the last 40 years, I am only suggesting that is simply more then just bigger on the inside..

how is trying to figure out why it can jettison rooms considered 3 dimensional thought? if it can jettison rooms then it is not simply a big box, and therefore is some kind of modular ship.. it has been referred to as a ship by the doctor and numerous characters for the last 40 years as well, plus it has engines.. and so much more..

EnderAKH wrote:

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Because it was convenient to the plot at the time to say so and needs no further explanation.

I would by into what you say, except that it has been used by other doctors as well.. so it wasn't a one time event..