The Doctor left his home planet Gallifrey, bored of his people's stuffy and restrictive ways. He jumped in a TARDIS and ran away, to see the worlds and times up close and personal. He may have been a Time Lord but he was not going to live by all their rules.
The genius part of a TARDIS is its ability to change its appearance to blend in with its surroundings wherever and whenever it lands. Unfortunately for the Doctor, the TARDIS he ran off in was in a somewhat poor condition and the Chameleon Circuit was failing. This resulted in it getting stuck with the appearance of a mid 20th century London police box.
In real terms, this was a design feature for the show. It would produce an identifiable 'ship' for the Doctor and his companions to travel in, which of course could be marketed through publicity and toys. It would also keep production costs down because it only needed to be built once and would be used over and over again. The police box design was an approximation of the real thing which, in fact, came in many different designs all over the country. It provided a relatively small 'ship' prop to save on studio space and the added dimension (excuse the pun) of intrigue and fantasy of being bigger on the inside. In show terms, it was dimensionally transcendental, allowing its external appearance to represent anything as long as it was large enough to step into. A working Chameleon Circuit was first seen on screen when the Doctor encountered the Master's TARDIS. There was a prop that would only be used occasionally and the fact that it could be anything gave the Master an extra menace and kept viewers on the look-out.
TARDIS? Tardis?
So what's with the name? Well in a classic piece of heritage blurring it is an acronym for Time And Relative Dimensions In Space - hence all capital letters. Why the blur? Well it was introduced in 1963 as being named by Susan, the Doctor's granddaughter who was travelling with him. But in later stories it emerged that other such 'ships' were being used by other Time Lords and they were also called a TARDIS. Perhaps it is possible, given the age and long life of Time Lords (as we would later learn) that Susan did indeed come up with the name when they were first designed (maybe she won a 'Name the ship' competition!) or maybe the name TARDIS came first and she came up with the defining words... Either way, Susan actually used the singular Dimension but later references, until Matt Smith's relatively recent introduction, always used the plural. Surely the plural makes more sense anyway...What about the inside?
It's bigger.Simple really! Actually, it's far from simple and has gone through a number of redesigns over the years... details that will be added later.
