Anyone got an explanation for why the Eye of Harmony seen in Journey to the Center of the TARDIS was totally different to the one in the 1996 TV Movie? It used to be a singularity, but now it's a star perpetually on the verge of blowing up and collapsing into a black hole.
Maybe the 2013 version is the actual heart of the TARDIS and Eye of Harmony while the 1996 version was the outer shell of the eye. Personally, I was fucking disappointed with the 2013 version.
I don't think there is one, they are different because each was made by a different production team both with different ideas on how it should look. As brilliantly designed as the Cloister Room was, actually seeing a star in a perpetual state of decay at the heart of the TARDIS is pretty cool and drives home just how much bigger it is on the inside.
We never got an explanation as to why the Eye of Harmony was suddenly inside the T.A.R.D.I.S. in the TV movie, so I'm not expecting one to be given for the difference of appearance.
"All TARDISes built after a certain point, including the Type 40 the Doctor used, had a mathematically modelled duplicate of the Eye with all its attendant features." - BBC Novel: The Quantum Archangel (according to TARDIS Wiki) As for the different appearances, the answer is obvious: Desktop theme.
What we got in the TV movie might have just been a single access point to the main eye or a connection to the Eye when it was on Gallifrey. What we saw in 2013 might be a replacement for the original Eye after the Gallifrey Eye was time locked. Hell, maybe the big reveal in the 50th... Spoiler: Wild fan speculation ...is going to be the Doctor capture'd Gallifrey's star for use in the Tardis as a new eye.
Is there also an in-universe explanation for why the black hole located in space, from which the Time Lords draw their power, mentioned in The Three Doctors is seemingly replaced by the Gallifrey-bound Eye of Harmony, which no Time Lord even knows is there?
I'm going to posit this. The Tardis is a tesseact wrapped in a texture. Its arms are fractal branches like a mandelbrot set, with the tardis sensing where you want to go and shortening, changeing paths ahead of you like a haunted hause. It does have an arbitrary center, like the cold spot in ur own universe. This is the stellar eye. The 1996 movie is just the access port directly "above" its core.
The eye is supposed to be broken, which is why the TARDIS is now powered by Rift Energy... Unless the Eye is powered by Rift Energy and not the TARDIS' engines?
It would also appear that the TARDIS Eye no longer gives people images of the past, present or future. But yes, my personal theory is that it isn't the same Eye as in the TV Movie, but a replacement the Doctor got after the primary Eye on Gallifrey was destroyed.
It occurs to me that the Eye and rift energy may not be incompatible sources for the TARDIS. Rift energy could fuel the ship, but the Eye makes time travel possible, just like the plutonium (and later Mr. Fusion) powered the flux capacitor, but the DeLorean's engine still ran on gasoline.
And we can't count out the fact that the Tardis rebuilt itself during Eleventh Hour. Instead of just replacing the Console Room, she might have upgraded/repaired herself.
I wonder if Harmony was the name of a famous Timelord from yore, or if it does still mean as I had always assumed meant: Calm and peaceful. Although in music, harmony is about a lot of noise cooperating to sound nice, which might cover the continuity gap of their being many eyes operating in harmony until the trillions of eyes seem just like one eye?
Harmony, Melody, so that's where "River is the TARDIS" theory came from!! Yea, I think Harmony is balance, in thiis case
I believe The Deadly Assassin does strongly imply that the Eye of Harmony is a singularity, not a collapsing star. So sticking the name onto a supernova....doesn't really add up.