What we learned from The Doctor's Wife (spoilers)

[Psion]

...
5. Time Lords can change sexes. I'm sure a few people punched the air when we heard that one. I still don't want the Doctor to turn female, though I'll be honest Suranne Jones is now my choice if they ever do. And if he regenerates in the TARDIS again, that's actually feasible....

While that is indeed a possible read of the dialog as stated, I need to point out two alternatives:

5a. Time Lords might change sexes the same way humans do ... through hormonal treatments and sex-change surgery. I'm not suggesting that a regeneration can't change a Time Lord's sex, only that the dialog doesn't nail matters without wiggle room.
5b. "Rule #1, the Doctor lies." And so do other people. And they're just plain mistaken sometimes too. Anything said without being shown could be a lie or an error.

And that's really where this issue will most likely remain until the Doctor or other Time Lord is shown to change sexes immediately after regeneration, or we have a very boring scene involving a panel of experts on Time Lord physiology discussing the possible outcomes of a regeneration.

Now all of you hush up, I want to go back and give Starsuperion's post a very careful read

 

[Psion]

Okay, I read it.

Starsuperion ... can I have some more pictures, please? Draw them for an idiot, if possible. Not because *I'm* an idiot, of course, but because I ... er ... want to make sure others can keep up!

Yeah, that's the ticket.

 

[starsuperion]

Or, rather, we know what parts of a TARDIS look like divorced from their dimensionally transcendent shell.

actually I have found a pic of the junk yard, and am wondering if that is a tardis engine, or just an spaceship that crashed and all the tardis parts in that junkyard are just the walls and consoles?

here looks like a gutted spaceship that crashed with thrusters up in the air...which leads me to believe that the massive machine in the left corner of the image above may just be part of another spaceship..

here is the makeshift console...

on the plus side, we learned that the corridors of the Tardis still have that roundel panel look.. it seems to me that if parts of the ship are archived, they must be there for a reason.. like maybe if the ship is in distress, it can reconfigure itself to an earlier mode..

also from what Idris said, she archived 30 versions.. thus prompting the doctor to say that he has changed the tardis only 12 times, and that you can't archive versions that have yet to be in existence, and her reply is you can't.. basically stating that because she is a tardis, she exists in all times future and past through her connection to the time vortex.. which begs the question..

will the doctor wind up running into a future version of the console room? why were they hidden from the schematic of the ship (per Houses comments) is that to protect the doctor from seeing his future?

 

[Psion]

Besides, the TARDIS was already old when he was still young. She could have archived quite a few earlier console rooms before she and the Doctor actually crossed paths.

Also, I'm not sure how much trust I put into the visual identity of the stuff seen in the junkyard. The Confidential episode made it seem as though the production crew had the idea that individual components of a TARDIS could have their own chameleon circuits.

Yikes.

 

[starsuperion]

Besides, the TARDIS was already old when he was still young. She could have archived quite a few earlier console rooms before she and the Doctor actually crossed paths.

Also, I'm not sure how much trust I put into the visual identity of the stuff seen in the junkyard. The Confidential episode made it seem as though the production crew had the idea that individual components of a TARDIS could have their own chameleon circuits.

Yikes.

oh i didn't even know that.. haven"t yet seen the confidential.. so what does that mean? the internal parts of the tardis dimensional ship aren't present? that maybe all the tardis parts are hidden still? I am confused..

back to square one I suppose..

what art are you asking about?

 

[Psion]

Oh, you'd love the latest Confidential, Starsuperion, it's all about the TARDIS!

Anyway, the relevant point is Neil Gaiman's commentary at the 33 minute mark. He explains,

You have two things going on; you have a junkyard of TARDISes; the TARDISes that have landed on this planet over the years have been half-eaten, but there are still bits of them that haven't been consumed. But you also have chameleon circuits, so these were TARDISes that looked like other things in order to prevent Time Lord technology from falling into the wrong hands ... In much the same way the TARDIS looked like a big blue box, the other TARDISes might have looked like bathtubs. Or bits of them might have looked like old radios or whatever. So they'd actually taken these little bits of rather strange technology and bits of things that look like rubbish, but which are not rubbish, they are very, very important.

Emphasis mine regarding the part I think suggests individual components might have chameleon circuits.

As far as art work is concerned, I'm just joking around about the fantastic images you make in the hope you'd make some more for that lengthy post about TARDIS construction.

 

[JoeZhang]

I guess that's why the Starship Enterprise was in the junkyard.

 

[Gepard]

I guess that's why the Starship Enterprise was in the junkyard.

Wait, really?

 

[Checkmate]

The Confidential episode made it seem as though the production crew had the idea that individual components of a TARDIS could have their own chameleon circuits.

Yikes.

What's wrong with that? Why wouldn't the Time Lords use the same technology for the interior, which can be customized and modified to your heart's desire (from the console room to each and every individual room beyond it). Do you think they'd come up with some completely different technology for that, despite having already developed one that does the job perfectly?

 

[JoeZhang]

I guess that's why the Starship Enterprise was in the junkyard.

Wait, really?

Right hand of the screen in the first shop of the episode - there is a homage to the original NCC-1701 model - it's clever how they do it because as they pull closer, you realise that the saucer is nothing of the sort.

 

[Psion]

The Confidential episode made it seem as though the production crew had the idea that individual components of a TARDIS could have their own chameleon circuits.

Yikes.

What's wrong with that? Why wouldn't the Time Lords use the same technology for the interior, which can be customized and modified to your heart's desire (from the console room to each and every individual room beyond it). Do you think they'd come up with some completely different technology for that, despite having already developed one that does the job perfectly?

Oh, I have no problem with the idea that the inside is rendered using the same technology, but I've always assumed the chameleon circuit's purpose was to disguise the exterior. Now we learn that (possibly) every console and indeed, every component on each console, might have its own chameleon circuit too? That's ... a remarkable degree of complexity.

Or, perhaps, every component has a "chameleon circuit receiver" that lets it become part of the overall theme. Like the different gadgets in some operating systems can be uniquely controlled from the rest of the desktop.

I guess that's why the Starship Enterprise was in the junkyard.

Wait, really?

Right hand of the screen in the first shop of the episode - there is a homage to the original NCC-1701 model - it's clever how they do it because as they pull closer, you realise that the saucer is nothing of the sort.

That caught my eye as well and I was pretty sure that's just us picking out a pattern from random junk. Except they deliberately lit that particular patch of junk so our eyes were drawn to it.

 

[Gepard]

[That's ... a remarkable degree of complexity.

It's a living spaceship-time machine that's bigger on the inside and has the ability to rearrange its entire interior on a whim. I think we passed "remarkable degree of complexity" a loooong time ago.

 

[Checkmate]

Considering that we've seen the interior of the Doctor's TARDIS change many times over the year, clearly the 'interior' technology is working just fine. Considering that the Doctor either can't (quite possibly) or doesn't want to (more likely) repair it because he simply likes his "blue box" the way it is, it's safe to assume that the technology is either too advanced to be jury-rigged out side of a Human-TimeLord hybrid, or... well... the Doctor just doesn't want to fix it.

Either way, it's fine. The interior already has a "remarkable degree of complexity" as it is. How does giving the technology a name make it any more so? It's always been there.

 

[starsuperion]

by naming it we can rationalise it to ourselves better as fans..

I choose to think that the chameleon circuit also controls the material inside the ship, shaping it much the same way the exterior shell is done.. not by any transceiver or antenna of sorts, rather the material itself is susceptible to the chameleon signal

of course one must consider that it was Neil Gaiman who was reciting that bit, and only from what were comments made by the staff, and not directly stated by Moffat himself.. so I choose to take it with a grain of salt.

 

[irononreverse]

Or bits of them might have looked like old radios or whatever. So they'd actually taken these little bits of rather strange technology and bits of things that look like rubbish, but which are not rubbish, they are very, very important.

Emphasis mine regarding the part I think suggests individual components might have chameleon circuits.

I watched Neil Gaiman's little "lost scenes" section and from it, it seems that TARDISes will still be disguised, even after they're dead. Individual components will still be disguised under the blanket coverage given by the chameleon circuit.

Just like how that chunk of the TARDIS that the Doctor fishes out from the crack still looks like a piece of a police box.

 

[Psion]

So where does it stop? If I take the bit of the atomic accelerator that happens to be disguised as a pencil, can I write with it? Use the nub to erase? If I break it in half, do I see "lead" running through the center of wood? What does it look like under an atomic microscope -- or would it be a bad thing to look at an atomic accelerator under an atomic microscope even if it's disguised as an old #2?

What happens if I put it in the pencil sharpener?

I'm happy with the idea of the chameleon circuit disguising the TARDIS exterior. Using the same technology to disguise the interior isn't a surprising revelation. Using it to disguise the individual components as something else is surprising. And the idea that I can pull a knob off the dimensional drift stabilizer (that happens to be disguised as a 1930s radio) and the freaking nob still looks like bakelite because it has its own chameleon circuit is ... madcap!

 

[Sindatur]

So where does it stop? If I take the bit of the atomic accelerator that happens to be disguised as a pencil, can I write with it? Use the nub to erase? If I break it in half, do I see "lead" running through the center of wood? What does it look like under an atomic microscope -- or would it be a bad thing to look at an atomic accelerator under an atomic microscope even if it's disguised as an old #2?

What happens if I put it in the pencil sharpener?

I'm happy with the idea of the chameleon circuit disguising the TARDIS exterior. Using the same technology to disguise the interior isn't a surprising revelation. Using it to disguise the individual components as something else is surprising. And the idea that I can pull a knob off the dimensional drift stabilizer (that happens to be disguised as a 1930s radio) and the freaking nob still looks like bakelite because it has its own chameleon circuit is ... madcap!

Not having seen Gaiman's comments, I would see it more as the program written on it, for visual display doesn't stop working because the CPU stopped working. It's programmed that way, it doesn't stop looking like that when disconnected.

 

[Ar-Pharazon]

So where does it stop? If I take the bit of the atomic accelerator that happens to be disguised as a pencil, can I write with it? Use the nub to erase? If I break it in half, do I see "lead" running through the center of wood? What does it look like under an atomic microscope -- or would it be a bad thing to look at an atomic accelerator under an atomic microscope even if it's disguised as an old #2?

What happens if I put it in the pencil sharpener?

You would blow up the solar system!

 

[Starkers]

So where does it stop? If I take the bit of the atomic accelerator that happens to be disguised as a pencil, can I write with it? Use the nub to erase? If I break it in half, do I see "lead" running through the center of wood? What does it look like under an atomic microscope -- or would it be a bad thing to look at an atomic accelerator under an atomic microscope even if it's disguised as an old #2?

What happens if I put it in the pencil sharpener?

You would blow up the solar system!

Nah, you'd just blow up Belgium

 

[Ar-Pharazon]

Oh, well, that's OK then.