Jonathan Bignell

The TARDIS is one of *Doctor Who*'s most distinctive iconographic
components and it performs as a space for narrative action, as a
vehicle, as an object within a setting, and as a place that is
inhabited.  In this post I want to link together some ideas about how
the TARDIS functions aesthetically, with ideas about how it enables and
constrains the production of *Doctor Who*.  That connection between
aesthetics and production practices derives from the work the "[Spaces
of
Television](http://www.reading.ac.uk/ftt/research/Spacesoftelevision.aspx)"
research team has been doing, and it led to my [previous
post](https://cstonline.net/cars-spaces) about cars in police drama.

The TARDIS is a vehicle for moving in time and space, and thus it is a
means for the series to explore a potentially infinite number of
story-worlds.  The materialization of the TARDIS announces the
here-and-now of the story, and it can appear consistently in a range of
different settings: in production it can be quite simply represented by
a prop deployed in the studio or on location.  It can also be
represented by models of different sizes, like the miniature TARDISes of
"[Carnival of
Monsters](http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/Carnival_of_Monsters_(TV_story))"
(pictured, 1973) or
"[Logopolis](http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/Logopolis_(TV_story))" (1981).

::: {.wp-caption .aligncenter style="width: 360px"}
![Tardis
Model](https://cstonline.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/TardisModel.jpeg "Tardis Model"){loading="lazy"
decoding="async" width="350" height="480"}

Tardis Model
:::

The way these props and models are shot will indicate scale and
establish a place.  Most often, the TARDIS is a police box in a time
where it does not belong, but "Logopolis" plays with this motif by
having the same police box represent three different things.  It is a
"real" police box that stranded air-hostess Tegan tries to use to ring
for roadside assistance.  It is also the Master's TARDIS, which he has,
unusually, configured to look the same as the Doctor's.  And finally
there is the Doctor's TARDIS which materializes in the same space as the
Master's, causing a recursive loop.  The same object (the same prop)
performed as three different objects, in the same place.

::: {.wp-caption .aligncenter style="width: 360px"}
![Tardis as Police
Box](https://cstonline.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/TardisAsPoliceBox.jpg "Tardis as Police Box"){loading="lazy"
decoding="async" width="350" height="200"}

Tardis as Police Box
:::

There are several ways in which the TARDIS works as a threshold between
spaces and places.  From a production point of view, it sutures two
different settings together so that separately shot sequences are
narratively connected.  As well as being a vehicle, it is also a sort of
doorway that opens so the Doctor, his companions and the viewing
audience, can experience a new place.  It contains further portals
within it, in the form of a monitor screen that can show the outside,
but primarily the Doctor exits through the doors to initiate the
exploration of an as-yet unseen world.  In production, that exterior was
often a set put up somewhere else in the same television studio.  But
when film was used for exteriors, leaving the TARDIS meant departing
from video onto film, and the exterior had a quite distinct visual
quality because of the different lighting styles and image quality that
film produced.  The space outside the TARDIS really felt like another
world because of this.

But the TARDIS is a setting with its own spatial characteristics too. 
One of the important consequences of the "bigger on the inside" motif is
that while exterior shots of the TARDIS represent a relatively small
object within a larger environment, the inside can be an environment in
itself.  [Control
Rooms](http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/TARDIS_control_room) were very
consistent in classic studio-produced *Who*; in the new *Who*,
single-camera shooting and the common use
of [Steadicam](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steadicam) mean that
although the new TARDIS is still a set, its creators aim to make it feel
more like a location than a studio.  Episodes of classic *Who* also
feature the very numerous spaces within the TARDIS.  The first episode
in 1963 introduced the spatial distinction between outside and inside,
and in 1978 in "[The Invasion of
Time](http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/The_Invasion_of_Time_(TV_story))" the
pursuit of the protagonists through the TARDIS by the Sontarans is the
occasion for representing many of its interior spaces, such as its
swimming pool, art gallery and numerous corridors.

::: {.wp-caption .aligncenter style="width: 310px"}
![Tardis Swimming
Pool](https://cstonline.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/TardisPool.jpg "Tardis Swimming Pool"){loading="lazy"
decoding="async" width="300" height="140"}

Tardis Swimming Pool
:::

 

::: {.wp-caption .aligncenter style="width: 310px"}
![Tardis
Gallery](https://cstonline.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/TardisGallery.jpg "Tardis Gallery"){loading="lazy"
decoding="async" width="300" height="140"}

Tardis Gallery
:::

Whereas TARDIS rooms had previously been constructed as studio sets and
shot on video, the "Invasion of Time" sequences were shot on film in a
brick building, so that these interiors have the same visual texture as
location exteriors, rendering the TARDIS an action space in a disturbing
and exciting way.  Within the fictional world, the TARDIS can undergo
expansions and contractions that make its space mutable and partially
unknowable.  While remaining a place, the dimensions of its space can
change.  And the technologies used to create and shoot the TARDIS give
it different moods and ambiences at different times.

The TARDIS was attributed with agency quite early on in the series, in
"[The Edge of
Destruction](http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/The_Edge_of_Destruction_(TV_story))"
(1964), when the odd behaviour and aggression amongst the Doctor and his
companions was explained as being the result of the TARDIS warning them
of its dangerous trajectory towards the beginning of the Universe.  Much
later, the new *Who* episode "[The Doctor's
Wife](http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/The_Doctor's_Wife_(TV_story))" (2011)
embodies the TARDIS as Idris, a human woman into which its essence has
been transferred.  It takes on a characterization.  I am working at the
moment on how long-running television programmes seem to give life to
things, whether they are props, vehicles or places, and I think the
TARDIS is a particularly good example.  When I was lucky enough to touch
a TARDIS recently, it was like shaking hands with a much-admired
celebrity.

::: {.wp-caption .aligncenter style="width: 360px"}
![Touching the
Tardis](https://cstonline.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/TouchingTheTardis.jpeg "Touching the Tardis"){loading="lazy"
decoding="async" width="350" height="640"}

Touching the Tardis
:::

------------------------------------------------------------------------

**Jonathan Bignell** is Professor of Television and Film at the
University of Reading.  He currently leads the AHRC-funded research
project "Spaces of Television: Production, Site and Style", and this
post benefitted from the *Doctor Who* expertise of "Spaces" colleagues
Victoria Byard, James Chapman and Billy Smart.  A longer version of this
post was presented at the "*Doctor Who*: Walking in Eternity"
conference, University of Hertfordshire, September 2013.


The TARDIS is one of
<em>
 Doctor Who
</em>
’s most distinctive iconographic components and it performs as a space for narrative action, as a vehicle, as an object within a setting, and as a place that is inhabited.  In this post I want to link together some ideas about how the TARDIS functions aesthetically, with ideas about how it enables and constrains the production of
<em>
 Doctor Who
</em>
.

Messaggi di Rogue Scholar

THE TARDIS AS PLACE, SPACE AND SETTING