Preface

`[The Type 40 is an ] overweight, underpowered museum-piece, might as well try to fly a second-hand gas stove.'

`This doesn't roll along on wheels, you know.'

`I know that free movement in time and space is a scientific dream I don't expect to find solved in a junkyard.'

The Doctor's timeship, the TARDIS, has been an enduring element of the Doctor Who mythology, present almost invariably throughout the entire televised series, as well as in comics, fan fiction and original novels. Although this book is not the first to contain research and documentation on the inner workings of the TARDIS, it is my opinion that it is the first significantly sized publication to devote its entire pages to the subject.

Before reading any of this manual I would like to briefly justify some major `design decisions' which have shaped the resultant text more than any other. I would also like to explain some blatant inconsistencies between the televised show and this manual.

This manual provides exhaustive detail on the workings of the TARDIS Type 40 Mark I, otherwise known as the Doctor's TARDIS...because all the others were recalled long ago! However, it is my opinion that the Doctor's TARDIS has been upgraded on a number of occasions. This can be inferred from the numerous upgrades the interior decor and control console have benefited from throughout the show's history, and also from a continual improvement in the ship's capabilities, technological or otherwise.

The original control console as introduced in An Unearthly Child in 1963 was last seen in Inferno, where it was seen galivanting about without the rest of the TARDIS. The next story, Terror of the Autons, sees the first Time Lord visiting the Doctor. I postulate the following:

• that the console was not designed to travel separately, and that the Doctor engineered it to do in an attempt to break the locks and mechanisms which the Time Lords had put in place to prevent the Doctor using his TARDIS; the journey to and from the parallel dimension in Inferno therefore irrepabely damaged the console.
• that the Time Lords/CIA wanted the Doctor to have a semi-operational TARDIS, so that they could send him on covert missions, and deal effeciently with the new threat of the Master. Hence the Doctor was given a new Type 41 Mark I console (in Terror of the Autons), along with associated parts and machinery, to ensure he could still `use' his TARDIS when they saw fit. The heart (central computers, etc) of the TARDIS remained, hence it still was the Doctor's TARDIS, and in some ways still dilapidated; i.e. many compatible Type 40 parts remained. The TARDIS interior also looked different because the Type 41 introduced the first interior remodelling function.
• that the Doctor was largely unware of this upgrade, due to mental blocks which the Time Lords had placed in his mind concerning the operation of his TARDIS. Once these mind blocks were removed, it is assumed the Time Lords informed the Doctor of the upgrade.

Later in the show's history, the TARDIS was upgraded again. In fact, I theorise the TARDIS was upgraded a total of four times, with the TARDIS control console and decor introduced in The Five Doctors being what I have called a Type 44.

Throughout the series there have been minor modifications to the control console on a per-story basis, usually to replace a part broken during storage, or to add a part required for the current script. I explain this by insisting the Doctor must have made these changes. Certainly in The Image of Fendhal, the Doctor claims to have replaced, worked on, or to be familiar with nearly ever part of his TARDIS.

So what of the other upgrades to the TARDIS? A radical new roundel design was introduced in The Time Monster, which incorporated the scanner in one of the roundels. This was a new set introduced for that story, but the production didn't like it, and therefore returned to the original set. I explain the new decor by suggesting this was a result of an architectual reconfiguration, automatically activated by the TARDIS's somewhat quirky central computer.

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