Doctor Who is incredible… that’s said. Now let’s dive in it.

Doctor What?

If you haven’t heard about this series before… where the hell have you been during the last 20 years?
But for those who still live in a cave, Doctor Who is a British TV show about an alien called the Doctor.
As a timelord they get a human companion then travel through the galaxy to save the universe with them.
The Time Lords is a specie capable of “regenerating” aka die with their actual face and continue their life with a brand new body. As such, the Doctor is “numerated”: The umpteenth Doctor being their umpteenth regeneration.

A last little bit of information, as Doctor Who is a show than ran from 1963 (yeah, the date wasn’t so great, the first episode was broadcasted just the day after a tragic event we know) to 1996. Then the series received a revival in 2005 and is still ongoing.
Thats why in this entry, the series from 1963 will be refered as Old Who or Classic Who whereas nowadays series will be listed as New Who or Modern Who.

As said before, traveling through the unenfing universe is not an easy thing to do, so for that they need a transport, a spaceship: the T.A.R.D.I.S. wich is, by the way, the main subject of this post.

T.A.R.D.I.S.? Tethered Aerial Release Developed In Style?

T.A.R.D.I.S. stand for “Time And Relative Dimension In Space” which is -oh god shocker- our privileged theme! The T.A.R.D.I.S. can be used to travel through the galaxy but also… it can travel through time.
T.A.R.D.I.S.es, also named TT Capsules, are… organic machines. It’s not obvious as they’re made out of plastic on some parts, of glass on others, of steel for the most. They have multiple computers, but as stated in the series they’re suprisingly grown from seeds.
Even as plants, they probably have more functionalities than a lot of phones this days :

• The distinctive trait of the TARDISes is the fact that

  “it’s bigger on the inside” - Every single companion the Doctor had and the Doctor themself

  or in more precise terms, a TARDIS interior is dimensionally transcendental (quote from the show, I couldn’t say if the terms are exact in our world physics).
• An other very known feature of TT Capsules is that they have a chameleon circuit, letting them to hide in plain sight. The Doctor said that the chameleon circuit of their TARDIS is broken and got blocked with the shape of a police box from 1963 London giving it its iconic look!
• As a spaceship, it has the ability to travel from a point to another in the universe, it:

  “disappear[ed] there and reappear[ed] here” - Ninth Doctor (played by Christopher Eccleston)

• Finally, with the ability to travel through space, why not add time travel?

For the rest of this blog post I will drop the use of the dots in the word T.A.R.D.I.S., it’s hard to put them at the right place… really!

Time machine is for time travel!

Time travel is done through the Time Vortex: a dimensional plane existing in the 5th dimension (I swear, I’m not crafting things up, that’s the description sourced from the Whoniverse).
That definition of the Time Vortex did stand for the Old Who and for a large portion of its come back.
However, the arrival of the Thirteen doctor added a new depth to it, it appears less like a vortex but more like an ocean with huge waves… yes it did recton with the “Old Who“‘s series and yes it was controversial when introduced (In fact, the entire era wasn’t really appreciated by the community but we don’t dwell into it). Let’s forget that and keep the tunnel/vortex vision.
The TARDIS is capable to get to that dimensional plane/vortex/tunnel/something with the help of the Time Rotor that compose its main console room. It is hard to describe, but take it as such : when the Doctor regenerates, the TARDIS kinda redecorates itself.

Funfact: yes the Doctor already got a vehicle accident with himself (the First and the Second’s TARDISes collided, creating an alternative reality where none of them arrived at the right place). Source: Audio story BBC

This post is already long

As I’m writing this post I’m realising that I can’t fit every thing I want to cover in one blog post, or at least, I can’t ramble much, as it is a gigantic rabbithole and this entry’s already a tad long.
So I took the decision to split this Doctor-Who-thing in a three-part series:

• covering the TARDIS in the first one (The one you’re currently reviewing dear traveler),
• presenting the “time” enemies of the Doctor in the next one,
• looking at some time paradoxes the Doctor encountered on its journey.

Stay tuned for my next blog post about Doctor Who!