Was the TARDIS a geriatic or a baby when One stole it?

[Guy Gardener]

I'm watching some of the Hartnel era, and it strikes me how 60s the super technology of the TARDIS is... Then when you considering how the first Doctor was able to do an accurate short hop in the 5 doctors that he wasn't completely a terrible pilot.

TARDIS' ARE ALIVE, They're not made, they're grown.

The easiest place to steal a TARDIS from would be the scrap yard/Geriatric home or the nursery... Maybe the insane asylum?

 

[Newspaper Taxi]

Maybe the Doctor already had a bond with this TARDIS before he stole it? If the TARDIS was willingly going along with the Doctor I imagine stealing it would be much easier.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Then why every week does it try to kill him and his compainions? Which is why I suggested that it might also be insane.

 

[Newspaper Taxi]

The TARDIS does put the Doctor and his companions into danger all of the time but the Doctor often times manages to rescue lives and cities, overthrow crazed tyrants, and what have you. I've often thought that maybe a deity or Fate itself was guiding the TARDIS to all of those destinations but maybe the TARDIS chooses to go there itself. Sort of like a Parallel to the Doctor. The Doctor wanted to go off and experience time travel and living history, as opposed to just observing. It could be that the TARDIS can sense people in need of help -- or already knows they're in danger -- and wants to go off and help people instead of just being an observation deck for Timelord Historians/researchers.

Damn. Now I want to see more episodes that explore the nature of what a TARDIS is and what it thinks/feels.

 

[C.E. Evans]

The Doctor's TARDIS was supposedly already a very obsolete model (Type 40, also known as a "Mark 1") by the time the original series began. Frequently the Doctor had no idea where (or when) he would wind up whenever the TARDIS was in flight. Only half the time it would cooperate with him, because it would otherwise just land at random points in space and time. Like the Doctor, the TARDIS seems to have a particular fondness for Earth though.

In the new series, the TARDIS has become much more cooperative and actually takes the Doctor everywhere he wants to go...for the most part, anyway...

 

[Haggis and tatties]

And remember it does take seven timelords to actually fly a Tardis correctly, that's probably why the Dr has so much trouble controlling where its going to, plus its possible the Tardis also has some built in feature that automatically detects changes or problems in the time lines and then whizzes off automatically to investigate and if need be stop whatever has changed or is being messed about with, be it Daleks or the Master.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Just because the Type 40 is obsolete, that doesn't qualify exactly how old relatively Our TARDIS was to other similar models that it could have been in service for hundreds of years more or less that other Type 40 TT Capsules, right up to the extreme point that it could have been autoredundent in the same vein as Regie Perrin's Grott line that the entire classification could have been mothballed just hours after it was born...

Isn't it insane that Archer's Enterprise was mothballed after 10 years in space while Kirk, Pikem April, Dekker and Spock's Enterprise was kept on the line for over 40 years?

Then again the TARDIS could be untold millennia old since most of it's prblems could as easily be understood to be teething issues as senility.

 

[C.E. Evans]

The actual age of the TARDIS is almost a moot point. It had already been presumably been surpassed by newer models by the time the First Doctor took off from Gallifrey with it (I would imagine it was sitting in a depository for outmoded TARDISes about to be decommissioned and dismantled at the time). When the Fourth Doctor ultimately returned to Gallifrey, security at the Time Lord Citadel had to go find a key that would fit a Type 40 because the model had been out of service for some time.

Isn't it insane that Archer's Enterprise was mothballed after 10 years in space while Kirk, Pikem April, Dekker and Spock's Enterprise was kept on the line for over 40 years?

Not really if we go with the idea that the NX-class was the end result of the original NX Program to simply develop a Warp 5 starship over a 30-year period. The mission of the NX-class may have been just to serve as a testbed for new technologies to be incorporated into later starships.

But back to the TARDIS, it is presumed that both the Master and the Rani had much newer models than the Doctor. How much newer--and how many models have passed since the Type40/Mark 1--is anyone's guess.

 

[Mark_Nguyen]

Excatly, and since the interior of the TARDIS can be reconfigured to look pretty much like anything they want (remember Chronotis' office-shaped control room?) it's tough to judge type or function from any that we've seen. The Meddling Monk's TARDIS was obstensibly identical to the Doctor's, and the Master's ship was generally the same set as well, often lit or painted differently.

Mark

 

[David cgc]

Isn't it insane that Archer's Enterprise was mothballed after 10 years in space while Kirk, Pikem April, Dekker and Spock's Enterprise was kept on the line for over 40 years?

Her acceleration curves above warp 2 were always wonky after that nuke hit at the Battle of Cheron. If she were a horse, she would've been shot.

 

[diankra]

In The Deadly Assassin (Season 13, 1976), it's stated (by the Time Lord's records computer, which ought to know), that of the 305 Type 40 time capsules built, the TARDIS is the only one that hasn't been 'decommissioned', and in Logopolis the Doctor says that 'she was in for repair when I borrowed her'.
Following on from newpaper-taxi's comment about the Doctor's bond with the TARDIS, a reasonable guess is that the TARDIS was like a 'company car' - the Doctor had used her on official business for the Time Lords before leaving Gallifrey (The Two Doctors implies this when referring to the Doctor and Dastari's firt meeting), but that didn't mean he had permission to just fly off in her permanently...

 

[Guy Gardener]

in Logopolis the Doctor says that 'she was in for repair when I borrowed her'.
.

.

Wow. Now there's a quote I can really get my teeth into.

Although just to be a complete bitch, once in for repair, and even when not in use, isn't it possible that a TARDIS would be put in stasis of some kind to make sure that no existing problems did not get any worse while the grease monkeys got their heads around the triage, that it could have been waiting for tune up for hundreds of years... Or only hours.

 

[auntiehill]

And remember it does take seven timelords to actually fly a Tardis correctly, that's probably why the Dr has so much trouble controlling where its going to, plus its possible the Tardis also has some built in feature that automatically detects changes or problems in the time lines and then whizzes off automatically to investigate and if need be stop whatever has changed or is being messed about with, be it Daleks or the Master.

Exactly. I always liked the idea of the Tardis seeing all of time and thinking, "Oh, there's problem over here!" and just depositing the Doctor there, as if to say, "There you are. Fix it!"

The Tardis knew more about Time and Space than the Doctor, and just sent him as the "errand boy" to tidy things up.

 

[Guy Gardener]

You'd have to wonder how the TARDIS would have dealt with these problems she knew how to find back when she was working for the time Lords with more merciless individuals at he controls?

A hammer rather than a scalpel... Perhaps even Temporal torpedoes?

 

[Garibaldi O'brien]

Now that we've established a proper TARDIS has several Timelords running it, could it be that the quantity of minds allow them to have more control over the desires of the TARDIS as well. I've always thought of the TARDIS and Doctor as pretty equal, as that's the why he likes it. The other Timelords not be in tune with the TARDIS' and as such they stress out their living machines and shorten their lifespan. The Doctor being sort of "The TARDIS Whisperer".

The TARDIS is truly one of the most interesting vehicles in SF.

 

[Iamnotspock]

in Logopolis the Doctor says that 'she was in for repair when I borrowed her'.
.

.

Wow. Now there's a quote I can really get my teeth into.

The Doctor: "She was in for repair when I borrowed her."

Adric: "I thought she was yours?"

The Doctor: "On a sort of 'finders keepers' basis. I should've waited until they'd done the Chameleon Conversion, but there were rather pressing reasons at the time..."

- Logopolis.

 

[Tom]

It woudl nice to learn or explore something new about the Tardis in the new series. How many tardis's are still out there that could be found, we know all the timelords are gone and Gallifry (and any tardis's on it) is gone but there could be another tardis or 2 out there.

 

[Allyn Gibson]

It would nice to learn or explore something new about the Tardis in the new series. How many tardis's are still out there that could be found, we know all the timelords are gone and Gallifry (and any tardis's on it) is gone but there could be another tardis or 2 out there.

I like what Grant Morrison did in The World Shapers; when the Time Lord dies, the TARDIS is recalled to Gallifrey. I imagine that, as the Time Lords died in the Time War, their TARDISes or WARDISes were returned back to Gallifrey, so that when Gallifrey went all kabloooey, the TARDISes went with the planet. I imagine that, just as the Doctor is the last of the Time Lords, so too is the Doctor's TARDIS the last of its kind.

Except possibly for Compassion. And she's so anti-social anyway...

The Doctor's TARDIS was supposedly already a very obsolete model (Type 40, also known as a "Mark 1") by the time the original series began.

Lance Parkin's The Gallifrey Chronicles reveals that the Doctor's TARDIS belonged to one of the Doctor's father's contemporaries, the Castellan Marnal. It was already old then.

 

[The Borgified Corpse]

Isn't it insane that Archer's Enterprise was mothballed after 10 years in space while Kirk, Pikem April, Dekker and Spock's Enterprise was kept on the line for over 40 years?

Not really if we go with the idea that the NX-class was the end result of the original NX Program to simply develop a Warp 5 starship over a 30-year period. The mission of the NX-class may have been just to serve as a testbed for new technologies to be incorporated into later starships.

Like the only-one-of-its-kind X-303 (a.k.a. the Prometheus) on Stargate SG-1? (After the Prometheus prototype, the next 4 Earth starships have all been X-304s, Daedalus class.)

Of course, it was always clear on Enterprise that the Enterprise was pretty crappy compared to what the Andorians & the Vulcans were using. Once the Federation was formed, Earth's Starfleet was absorbed into a unified service with the ships of the other, more advanced races. At that point, no way would a tin can like the Enterprise still be the pride of the fleet. The NX-class was supplanted by the new Warp 7 ships. Perhaps the other NX-class ships that had been built were phased into lighter, more local duties for a few more decades while the NX-01 was given the honor of being immediately decommissioned and turned into a museum.

I'd like to see a future Doctor Who story that shows us, if only in flashback, the fields where the TARDISes were grown in the first place. I imagine the natural form of a TARDIS looking kind of like the interior of the current TARDIS control room but turned inside out.

(Now I'm imagining a Farscape crossover where the TARDIS & Moya get busy!)

As for why the TARDIS always takes the Doctor to dangerous locations, I think it's to satisfy the Doctor's inherent wanderlust.

 

[FordSVT]

^I think a being of space and time would grow someplace more interesting than a corn field.

A stellar nursery, the core of a star, or a gamma ray burst perhaps?