Bigger on the inside...

Sitting here in my living room writing this post I look around me and see 3 TARDIS toys located in various spots. Believe me, we have more in the house than that, its just that only 3 of them are in this room. (My house is like a toy showroom...though more on that in a later post.)

                                                       (rather dark but Amy Pond is inside)

                                                        (the 7th Doctor guards the videos)

                   (the TARDIS after its materialized in the adventure of the windowsill Foo Dog)

  Thinking about traveling in the TARDIS with the Doctor was mentioned in my earlier post and then the one that you wrote as a response Michael, the actual traveling was mentioned but not the mode of travel.

I want to give some thought to that. One of the amazing and mysterious aspects of the Doctor's existence and my fascination with the show, is the interior of the TARDIS...or Time And Relative Dimension In Space.  Through the miracle of Gallifreyan technology, the ability to place an infinite amount of space inside a small shell. The Exterior of the TARDIS has been stuck in the shape of a 1960's Police Call box for most of the duration of the show, with a few quick exceptions. The TARDIS contains a chameleon circuit that allows it to blend in with its surroundings the instant it dematerializes. After being on Earth for an extended period of time, the TARDIS was locked in this form.

The interior of the TARDIS is infinite, it's a maze of rooms and corridors and wonder. Every person who walks through the doors of the Police Box is instantly awed by the fact that it is Bigger on the Inside. Most say this, or attempt to say this. Some deal with it amazingly well, others are dumbfounded. I was always fascinated with this idea. Growing up and having my earliest memories be Tom Baker episodes, I became familiar with the white console room, the hexagonal control panel and the roundels decorating the walls.

I remember being confused and then delighted when the Doctor and Sarah Jane uncover the secondary control room in an episode. This control room was wood paneled, darker and full of atmosphere. The console was wooden and nautical in appearance and there was stained glass on the walls.

 What the heck was this? How could this control room be there? How the heck could this room that was located in a completely different part of the ship have an exit door that led to the exact same place as the control room that I was familiar with? I think at this point I was probably too young to grasp why this was but I guess after a moment I just accepted that it was the way it was and moved on from there.
Later in the same Doctor's era we get to see more of the interior with the medical bays, some labs, the swimming pool and a sort of power station/area. This was shown to us not as the roundel covered walls and sterile white but as brick and stone, some of it looking like it was tunnels made of concrete and steel.
I always thought this was really pretty cool.

As an adult, having read numerous Doctor Who books and watching all the episodes, I really got fascinated with the interior of the TARDIS. Its vast and ever changing. I know that technically the reason that it was ever changing is because of production issues, cost, storage and a million other things...but the act of having to change a set because of those issues did not detract from the show, quite the opposite. It made the show richer in history and mystery.
 Over the years the TARDIS has been hinted at being sentient and having its own sense of person, we have seen a physical manifestation of the TARDIS in the current series(Idris), we have seen one of the companions actually become the TARDIS and then her own TARDIS in the books(Compassion), we have learned that the TARDIS changes her interior when it suits her, or to assist the Doctor or even to foil an enemy.
 The TARDIS has changed her interior from an intimate white console room, to a very Edwardian/Victorian/Nautelous feel of the 8th Doctor to the feeling of enormity of the 9th,10th and 11th Doctors. Heck, we have even seen that the TARDIS has a room in it that is comprised of a grassy hilltop with thousands of butterflies in it. ( the BBC 8th Doctor Adventures novels)
How can this not be something to delight and fascinate a child or an adult?

In the 5th Doctor's tenure we did see a lot of the interior of the TARDIS, we got to see more of the Doctor and his companion's "home life" so to speak. For the first time, we really got to see that this was not just a mode of transport for them, but it was home, it was where they lived. We get to see companion's bedrooms and see a bit into their private lives. The first Doctor's companions seemed to just sleep on some  diagonally raised couches in the same room, very 60's future-ish sci-fi, never really having their own space or privacy.

I just find the entire idea of the infinite space of the interior to be amazing, I want to see more. I always liked it when a new Time Lord such as the Master or the Rani or the Meddling Monk was shown, it was another chance to see what the interior of a TARDIS looked like and how it differed from the Doctors.

I wish that someone would publish a book just on the interiors of the TARDIS, detailing what we have seen, pictures of the various rooms, schematics, listings etc...I know its hard to make a map of an infinite space...but someone should try.

I remember thinking that as an adult it would be really cool to decorate a room as if it was a room in the TARDIS by creating back lit roundels for the walls, or for a hallway. Dorky?...yeah, Geeky?...yeah, Cool?...Hell Yeah!  Have I done it yet? nahhh, not yet...but that doesn't mean it will never happen.

For me, traveling in the TARDIS would be a really amazing experience, I would love to get to explore the mysteries, the corridors, the rooms and every nook and cranny that it had to offer. Of course, since its an infinite space(and a fictional space as well) that would be an impossibility, but the adventure would be worth the time. So yeah, I guess this answers my previous question of would I be a companion, given more thought, yeah, I would.
-Bill