In recent months, the Tennants have become staunch trans allies, as one of their children is reportedly non-binary. TARDIS is an acronym of "Time And Relative Dimension in Space". The word "Dimension" is alternatively rendered in the plural. [nb 1] The acronym was explained in the first episode of the show, An Unearthly Child (1963), in which the Doctor's granddaughter Susan claims to have made it up herself. [6] Despite this, the term is used commonly by other Time Lords to refer to both the Doctor's and their own time ships.

The TARDIS didn't change much until the Doctor’s people sent him to live on Earth to keep him out of mischief, removing a vital bit of the TARDIS so he couldn’t actually use it! The TARDIS got a darker, slightly greyish repaint in season twenty, and the door-sign changed from "urgent calls" to the incorrect Newbery revamp version which said "all calls". (The wording was normal again the following season, but wrong again in The Two Doctors!) A number of legacy police boxes are still standing on streets around the United Kingdom. Although now no longer used for their original function, many have been repurposed as coffee kiosks, and are often affectionately referred to as TARDISes. [43] [44] A police box in the Somerton area of Newport in South Wales is known as the Somerton TARDIS. [45] In science and computing [ edit ] Let’s start with what it’s called. That’s “the TARDIS” which stands for “Time And Relative Dimension In Space”. Or sometimes “Time And Relative Dimensions In Space”. The name was coined by the Doctor’s granddaughter, Susan, although also we’ve seen people refer to TARDISes by the name before Susan could have come up with it. The Big Finish audio “The Beginning” tries to reconcile this by having Susan come up with a name herself that coincidentally is also the name Time Lords used for them anyway.

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Article introducing Episode 1 of 'The Daleks' ("The Mutants"). From the Radio Times. Volume. 161. Issue No. 2093". The Doctor Who Cuttings Archive. 21–27 December 1963. Archived from the original on 19 June 2006. When we first met the Doctor, the inside of his TARDIS was a brilliant white marvel. It had a magnificent, hexagonal control console, originally designed to be flown by six pilots. At the centre of this is the dazzling time rotor, which moves up and down when the ship is in flight. Everything was bright and gleaming, and the controls were a mix of knobs, levers and dials. As he got older, the Doctor became quite nostalgic for this version, and often mentioned missing the “round things” on the walls. Exiled! All TARDISes (or whatever they’re called) come equipped with a Chameleon Circuit as standard. As the Doctor explains in one of the TARDIS minisodes from the Season 5 DVD box set, “Every time the TARDIS materializes in a new location, within the first nanosecond of landing, it analyzes its surroundings, calculates a twelve-dimensional data map of everything within a thousand mile radius, and determines which outer shell would blend in best with the environment… And then it disguises itself as a police telephone box from 1963.” This iconic piece of equipment is arguably a greater companion to the Doctor than even his longest-running companions. Moreover, The TARDIS is a more consistent character than the Doctor himself, who has the ability to alter and regenerate his body 12 (now 13) times instead of dying. Since the '60s, the TARDIS has retained its image to be that of a blue police box, occasionally getting somewhat noticeable face-lifts along the way.

In 1996 the BBC applied to the UK Intellectual Property Office to register the TARDIS as a trademark. [39] This was challenged by the Metropolitan Police, who felt that they owned the rights to the police box image. However, the Patent Office found that there was no evidence that the Metropolitan Police – or any other police force – had ever registered the image as a trademark. In addition, the BBC had been selling merchandise based on the image for over three decades without complaint by the police. The Patent Office issued a ruling in favour of the BBC in 2002. [40] [41]

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Howe, David J.; Walker, Stephen James. "Doctor Who Classic Episode Guide: An Unearthly Child". BBC. Archived from the original on 30 March 2007 . Retrieved 30 January 2011. TarDisk: MacBook Storage Expansion That's Bigger on the Inside". tech.co. 18 February 2015 . Retrieved 30 September 2015. Fan-favourite companion Sarah Jane Smith asks this question in “The Masque of Mandragora”. The exchange goes: Meighan, Michael (15 October 2011). Glasgow with a Flourish. Amberley Publishing Limited. pp.34–35. ISBN 978-1-4456-1261-4. The latest TARDIS glow-up has a similar look to the Doctor’s new sonic screwdriver, full of honeycombed crystal pillars that buzz with golden energy. Round, glowing shapes and bashed-up metal rings decorate the impossibly high walls, like a vast techno-cave that’s old-school and totally modern all at once. In the middle is the usual hexagonal bank of controls and gadgets arranged around a beautiful, golden central column. There’s also a tiny, spinning Police Box, to show the Doctor what the ship looks like on the outside.

There is some disagreement over whether the "D" in the name stands for "dimension" or "dimensions"; both have been used in various episodes. The first story, An Unearthly Child (1963), used the singular "Dimension". The 1964 novelisation Doctor Who in an Exciting Adventure with the Daleks used "Dimensions" for the first time and the 1965 serial The Time Meddler introduced the plural in the television series - although the script had it as singular, actor Maureen O'Brien changed it to "Dimensions". [3] Since then both versions have been used. It is singular in Frontios (1984), and in " Rose" (2005), the Ninth Doctor uses the singular (although this was a decision of actor Christopher Eccleston— [4] the line was scripted in the plural). [5] The Tenth Doctor uses the singular in " Smith and Jones" (2007). The plaque set on the TARDIS console in the 2010–12 design also uses the singular form. In the 2011 episode " The Doctor's Wife" the TARDIS herself uses "Dimension". In " The Zygon Inversion" (2015), Osgood mentions hearing "a couple of different versions" of what TARDIS stands for. The Twelfth Doctor responds with a new acronym: "Totally and Radically Driving in Space". Despite the availability of the newer box, it only appeared in Time and the Rani, Paradise Towers, Dragonfire, The Happiness Patrol and The Curse of Fenric. The original, battered Mk 1 box is used in the other seven stories including the final episode of the 'classic' series of Doctor Who; Survival. The name of the TARDIS is actually an acronym that stands for Time And Relative Dimension In Space. On some occasions, it is referred to as a TT Capsule, but is known as a TARDIS an overwhelming majority of the time. It’s generally believed that the acronym was first created by the Doctor’s original companion, Susan Foreman. Susan claimed she thought of it the first time she traveled on such a ship. Despite this, there is no decisive explanation for the origin of the term, TARDIS. Following the deterioration and ultimate alleged collapse of what remained of the original, a new prop was created by Barry Newbery for the start of season fourteen, and it featured from The Masque of Mandragora up to and including The Horns of Nimon.

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a b Sibley, Anthony. "Doctor Who A History of the TARDIS Police Box Prop and its Modifications". www.themindrobber.co.uk. Archived from the original on 2 March 2022 . Retrieved 5 July 2022. Due to the significance of Doctor Who in popular British culture, the shape of the police box is now more strongly associated with the TARDIS than its real-world inspiration. The name and design of the TARDIS is a registered trademark of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), although the design was originally created by the Metropolitan Police Service. [1] [2] Name [ edit ] In film, the TARDIS makes a cameo appearance in a number of productions, including Iron Sky (2012) [58] and The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part (2019). [59] The TARDIS has also featured within the gameplay of a number of popular video games, including Lego Dimensions [60] and Fortnite: Battle Royale. [61]