The Doctor's Tardis

**The Doctor's TARDIS** — also called **the Ship**, **the Box**, and simply **the TARDIS** (PROSE: *Time and Relative*, COMIC: *Food for Thought*) — was the Doctor's primary means of transport. It was capable of travelling through space and time. The Doctor voyaged all across the universe in this vessel, from the Big Bang (TV: *Terminus*, *Castrovalva*, AUDIO: *Slipback*, PROSE: *Nothing O'Clock*) to the end of the universe, (TV: *Utopia*, *Listen*, AUDIO: *The Chaos Pool*, COMIC: *Petals*) and from the centre of the universe (TV:*Terminus*, *Twice Upon a Time*) to its outermost edges. (TV: *Planet of Evil*, *Underworld*) The craft was also capable of travelling between parallel realities, in spite of the fact that it was not specifically designed for inter-dimensional travel. (TV: *Inferno*, *Rise of the Cybermen*) Like all other TARDIS models, the Doctor's TARDIS was controlled via a central control console. (TV: *An Unearthly Child*, et al.)

Other Time Lords frequently characterised the Doctor's TARDIS as woefully out-of-date. (TV: *The Claws of Axos*, *The Ribos Operation*) Narvin called it "scrap", compared to his own Type 400. (AUDIO: *The Quantum Possibility Engine*) Indeed, by at least the time of the Doctor's fourth incarnation, if not much earlier, the model — called a "Type 40" — had been pulled from general service on Gallifrey, and replaced by more advanced models. (TV: *The Deadly Assassin*, *The Invasion of Time*)

The craft was prone to a number of technical faults, ranging from depleted resources (TV: *An Unearthly Child*, *The Wheel in Space*, *Vengeance on Varos*) to malfunctioning controls (TV: *The Edge of Destruction*) to a simple inability to arrive at the proper time or location. (TV: *The Visitation*, *Attack of the Cybermen*, *The Eleventh Hour*, *Victory of the Daleks*, *The Girl Who Waited* and many others) However, because the TARDIS was a living being, these "faults" may instead have been at least partially attributed to the manifestation of the ship's free will. Indeed, the TARDIS itself once told the Eleventh Doctor that while it may not have always taken him where he *wanted* to go, it had always taken him to where he *needed* to go. (TV: *The Doctor's Wife*)

As the centuries passed and all of the Doctor's companions came and went, the Doctor's faithful TARDIS remained their constant companion. They shared an unbreakable bond, and the Doctor came to feel that in the end, it was just the Doctor and their TARDIS, travelling the universe together. (AUDIO: *The Girl Who Never Was*, TV: *The Doctor's Wife*) Such was this bond, that, in an alternate timeline, the TARDIS eventually became the Doctor's final resting place, containing his personal time stream. (TV: *The Name of the Doctor*)

The Doctor's TARDIS was depicted in many cultures on Earth in a variety of forms, such as being depicted as the temple of the household "gods", the Tenth Doctor and Donna Noble, by Lobus Caecilius's family after they were rescued from the destruction of Pompeii, (TV: *The Fires of Pompeii*) being painted on a church's stained glass window after the Doctor "smote [a] demon" at a convent in the 1300s, (TV: *The End of Time*) and the Eleventh Doctor using the power of its image to counter the influence of the Prometheans. (COMIC: *Hunters of the Burning Stone*) According to the Moment, the noise the TARDIS made when it appeared brought hope to anyone who heard it, no matter how lost they were. (TV: *The Day of the Doctor*)

River Song was known to steal the TARDIS when the Doctor was out. (TV: *The Husbands of River Song*)