Before it gets too old, here's a thought on desgin variants, or perhaps a challenge:
1) In "Castrovalva", the gang jettisons about 25% of the overall superstructure, basically by cutting rooms loose randomly. In your setup, what would this look like?
In the newer design, the rooms that were cut loose would be dropping from the interior of the ring of rooms from the center of the tardis.. imagine that the center of the Tardis is open to the top and bottom of the ship where the Time vortex is drawn and exits the ship.. the rooms are in a revolving state. In the schematic below we see the Top section of the Tardis which shows the massive machine that manipulates the Time/space Vortex. Communications through the vortex, and materialization and re-materialization machines are located on the larger ring.. the rooms would have dropped from the top of the ship and bottom into the vortex, and would provide the extra power needed to thrust the ship out of a particular bad spot.. the overall look might show a few less rooms in a ring around the center of the ship, with the rings being much less in length, but still all connected for use..
2) Assuming the interior of the TARDIS is reconfigurable to an extent beyond just changing the desktop theme (which in your setup probably would not affect the external look of a TARDIS at all), what would the Doctor's ship look like after centuries of travel, reconfiguration, damage recovery, and so forth?
well with the current configuration, it would look just
like it is, no change, only you see once the doctor jettisoned 25% of the ship, the tardis can reconfigure the rooms, by drawing matter from the vortex or space and creating new sections and adding them to the ring of rooms around the center of the machine..it does this by using the arton energy from the Artron Mainframe..the veins of life of any Tardis..remember how in season 1, "dalek" when Rose touched the Dalek and it began to repair itself, pushing the dented sensor ball on it's side out and back into shape by itself.. that is sort of how the rooms are reconfigured and sometimes built..
the rooms are reconfigured through matter manipulation and can be moved by a complex gravity beam system which is used to shuffle rooms to different departments if needed.. due to the size of the tardis, it was necessary for the Time Lord researchers (cosmic Chronologists) to have access to certain experiment rooms without having to walk too far, being the ship was very massive, and was used for the purposes of categorizing entire star systems from their beginnings to the present day Gallifreyan time Line..
Here is the Type 40 Tardis as seen within it's own Dimension:
this design shows how the ship retained a certain victorian old world style to it's design and housed an inferior communications array. the massive shield generators, and gravity beam system was adorned with a giant seal of Rassilon, and was one of the few ships he personally had a hand in the conception of before he was imprisoned in the tower of the death zone..In those days his seal was planted almost everywhere, as was that of Omega, who was once hailed for his legacy..
If you were to apply the logic from "The Eleventh Doctor" et. al., the swimming pool has moved from wherever it was as part of the repair process. If you took your exterior design, ripped up all the pieces, and told the TARDIS to rebuild itself from them, what would this look like?
actually
again, it would remain the same.. the ship's interior section may change, but it basically ends up being a long road of blocks and corridors of rooms and decks..rings of which go around and around and wind downward till they reach the central core, which within that central section resides the power-source of the Tardis, a block matrix recreation of the eye of harmony from Gallifrey..
when the Doctor's New Console room was constructed it was a new fresh room, which was then configured through matter transfer into the current console, using the brainwave pattern of the new doctor, the ship chose a design that it estimated fit the persona of the pilot best.. hence the look of the Tardis..they are psychically linked, and as such the Tardis takes on traits of the pilot in it's design..the older Tardis console rooms are still kept as part of the ship and are located in other various focal point spots (cradles) near the shield generators around the ship..
I'm having fun just looking at your work and speculating on the above scenarios. Have you put any thought into anything like this?
Mark
EDIT - And I just realized your newer thread covers part of this. Please ignore what isn't relevant - my bad!
Oh yes, I sure have much thought in the last 2 1/2 years of studying all the materials I could get my hands on, and try to compile that data, and style of the Time Lords into a machine I think would be the epitome of what a Tardis would look like in it's own dimension.. it has been a long road, but a road I would love to travel again..
Thanks for taking the time to check out my progression to this stage.. it has been nerve racking for me, but I finally know what the ship should be like, and I am confident that no new designs outside of what i have placed here are necessary to define the ships..
the basics are here.. massive rings which funnel the vortex through the gravity derived from the artificial eye of harmony, and the rooms which rotate in a clockwise direction around the center, which draw energy and act like a suction for particle flow.. theses rooms are jettisoned through the center of the ship into the tardis vortex pathway to produce additional thrust which is then used to force the ship out of problem areas, or speed the ship's travel through the vortex of time/space.. the shield generators, and gravity beam system holds the configuration in place and can be used to move sections of the ship to other areas if desired by the pilot
at the top of the ship's ring are rooms, of those rooms is a console room which locks into place below the shield generators, and is the focal point which is the gateway to the normal universe of space..each room set in a cradle has access to the outside world.. some are secondary, and others are the primary console control rooms.. if you look at the scale of the ship you can get an idea of how many decks, levels and rooms there are on this ship, much more then a Federation starship would have..
Here is the Type 80 Tardis as seen in it's own Dimension..
Now the Type 80 Tardis would be the last series of ships to be built in the standard size of most Tardis ships, with the exception of the Proto-Tardis Type Zero, and the Type 7 Rassilon's personal behemoth Tardis, most ships were about the same size, and over the eons of time became more advanced as Time Lord technology surpassed the previous models..
Design Fun Fact: if the Default mode of this Type 80 Tardis looks familiar it is because it was a mode shown in the back story of issue #4 of the old Marvel comics Doctor who comic-book.
it is important to note that not all Tardis Models were in use, some had only 1 ship built, and then a new model was done, some were only released in 5 ships.. most however were produced as a new line of ships after the first ones were assigned sectors of the Universe to chronicle through time..
At the most Tardis ships topped out at 305, depending on the mass production capability and potential of the design..this however was not the case during the time war, where a thousand war Tardises were in use at a time..
I hope your questions were answered Mark, and any other people reading this, if you have questions I can explain how this new design addresses certain things in the Tardis lore..
up next a SIDRAT!
I really hate not being able to draw.
