Type 40 - Conceptual History

Conceptual History

When Doctor Who was being developed in 1963, the production staff discussed what the Doctor's time machine would look like. To keep the design within budget, it was decided to make it resemble a police box. This was explained in the context of the series as a disguise created by the ship's "chameleon circuit", a mechanism which is responsible for changing the outside appearance of the ship in order to fit in with its environment. The Ninth Doctor explains that if, for example, a TARDIS (with a working chameleon circuit) were to materialise in ancient Rome it might disguise itself as a statue on a plinth. The First Doctor explained that if it were to land in the middle of the Indian Mutiny, it might take on the appearance of a howdah (the carrier on the back of an elephant). A further premise was that the circuit was broken, explaining why it was "stuck" in that form.

The idea for the police-box disguise came from BBC staff writer Anthony Coburn, who rewrote the programme's first episode from a draft by C. E. Webber. In the first episode, "An Unearthly Child", the TARDIS is first seen in a 1963 junkyard. It subsequently malfunctions, retaining the police box shape in a prehistoric landscape.

At the time of the series' debut in 1963, the police box was still a common fixture in British cities. It provided a direct telephone link to the local police station; the telephone was located behind a small, hinged door, making it possible to use it from the outside, while the box itself was used as a temporary office containing a desk. In "The Empty Child" (2005), the Doctor stated that the telephone is not connected to a telephone line, and in Logopolis (1981), the Master materialised his TARDIS around a normal police box while a police officer was using the telephone, causing the line to go dead.

While the idea may have begun as a creative ploy by the BBC to save time and money on props, it soon became an in-joke genre convention in its own right, as the old-style police box was phased out of use. Despite changes in the prop, the TARDIS has become the show's most consistently recognisable visual element.

The type of police box that the TARDIS resembled was constructed of concrete. However, the props for the television series were originally made of wood, and later on of fibreglass, for easy transportation and construction on location as well as within the confines of a studio set.

The dimensions and colour of the TARDIS props used in the series have changed many times, as a result of damage and the needs of the show, and none of the BBC props has been a faithful replica of the original MacKenzie Trench model. This was referenced on-screen in the episode "Blink" (2007), when the character Detective Inspector Shipton says the TARDIS "isn't a real . The phone's just a dummy, and the windows are the wrong size."

The production team conceived of the TARDIS travelling by dematerialising at one point and rematerialising elsewhere, although sometimes in the series it is shown also to be capable of conventional space travel. In the 2006 Christmas special, "The Runaway Bride", the Doctor remarks that for a spaceship, the TARDIS does remarkably little flying. The ability to travel simply by fading into and out of different locations became one of the trademarks of the show, allowing for a great deal of versatility in setting and storytelling without a large expense in special effects. The distinctive accompanying sound effect – a cyclic wheezing, groaning noise – was originally created in the BBC Radiophonic Workshop by Brian Hodgson. He produced the effect by dragging a set of house keys along the strings of an old, gutted piano. The resulting sound was recorded and electronically processed with echo and reverb. When employed in the series, the sound is synchronised with the flashing light on top of the police box. The comic strip feature of Doctor Who Magazine traditionally represents the ship's distinctive dematerialisation sound with the onomatopoeic phrase "vworp vworp". River Song informs the Doctor in "The Time of Angels" that it only makes this noise because he leaves the brakes on, and the Doctor defensively responds that he likes the noise. The sound itself was heard during a segment of the 2012 Summer Olympics opening ceremony in London as rock band Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody was played to the stadium. The Master is apparently an equally bad driver as the Doctor as his TARDIS makes the same sound in The Ultimate Foe (1986, "Part Fourteen", 6m30s). Other TARDISes have made the same sound throughout the years, calling into question the validity of River Song's statement, leading some to believe it was made tongue-in-cheek.

In 1996, the BBC applied to the UK Patent Office to register the TARDIS as a trademark. This was challenged by the Metropolitan Police, who felt that they owned the rights to the police box image. However, the Patent Office found that there was no evidence that the Metropolitan Police – or any other police force – had ever registered the image as a trademark. In addition, the BBC had been selling merchandise based on the image for over three decades without complaint by the police. The Patent Office issued a ruling in favour of the BBC in 2002.