The TARDIS Antechamber

[Osric]

I've been reading through the Eighth Doctor Adventures book series, and they address it in various ways, so it's nice to see there wasn't any consistency in those books, either. There are some mentions of a void or transition space

Spoiler

(especially when Compassion becomes a Tardis, which has all sorts of odd descriptions of her becoming a door)

[close]

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In the Tom Baker era, there are a few occasions where he lands on planets and opens the interior doors and we see the outside (e.g., Pyramids of Mars), just like in the Hartnell era. So it's been used for dramatic effect.

I always liked being able to see right outside from the console room, and the new series did a nice job of doing that a lot with the new special effect that are available these days.

The Tardis seemed much more "mysterious" to me in the original era. When I was a kid I even wrote a letter to the DWFCA positing how the dimensional interface works, but that's been lost to time

[kert gantry]

Preferred the original series's disconnect of having two contradictory sets of doors myself. It gave entering the ship more of an illogical, 'doorway to Narnia' feel. I even enjoyed the inconsistencies in the way the doorway was depicted over time.

The Cushing/Nu Who thing of having the Police Box doors directly inside the control room felt a bit mundane to me. And having the telephone on the inside of the door (Did they? Correct me if I'm wrong there. I'm not that well versed in the Nu) was plain daft.




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[Vale]

I've been reading through the Eighth Doctor Adventures book series, and they address it in various ways, so it's nice to see there wasn't any consistency in those books, either.

I remember an early EDA explicitly stating that TARDIS had a "police box entrance" beyond the big interior doors, which sounds a lot like the current setup with the police box functioning as a sort of porch between the exterior and interior proper. But then I also remember different authors disagreeing on such comparatively concrete facts as how many legs the time rotor had and how many sides the console itself had

[Vale]

The Cushing/Nu Who thing of having the Police Box doors directly inside the control room felt a bit mundane to me.

Police box doors made sense for the Cushing TARDIS since it was actually built out of a police box and there was no indication it was ever supposed to change shape, but for the new series it does raise the faintly awkward question of what would happen if the chameleon circuit worked. Would the police box doors continually morph into a new form every time the TARDIS rematerialised? I like to think that the ribbing around the entrance in the Smith/Capaldi interior did at least suggest that the door could change shape and size and that foyer area could expand and contract around it to accommodate this, though of course they didn't quite manage to show this in Flatline.

[peted]

The pilot episode of An Unearthly Child had Police Box doors opening onto the console room doors behind. Barbara even throws these open in the scene where she and Ian barge into the Tardis. Copies of construction plans for this addition to the set still exist from that time.
This extra set of police box doors were used again occasionally as the front of the box if the actual prop was in use elsewhere - they also turned up in the photo shoot introducing Dodo as the new companion.

[kert gantry]

Love that second photo - a new one to me.

Never noticed those little 'shelf' bits at the bottom of the zig-zag doors before. Not a feature that lasted long, presumably.

[fivefingeredstyre]

Is the second picture real or a mock up? The only reason why I suggest it might be a CG mock up is because the Porch doors look weathered, whereas they don't look so distressed when seen from the outside...

[tony farrell]

It's CGI Steve.  

T

[fivefingeredstyre]

Thought so, you don't actually see the porch doors on the remounted final episode as you see Barbara disappear inside the TARDIS from the outside. As such I've always wondered if the porch was actually refitted during the second run.

The close up of the phone panel does a lot more to highlight the illusion that Ian and Barbara have moved inside the box, so I would never have not included it (if you know what I mean).

[peted]

Yes, 2nd pic is cgi recon of how the studio was laid out during the filming of the pilot - I forget who did the series of renders but they're so brilliantly accurate to the studio floor plans. I should have clarified that - Tony might recall who did them? I have no idea why they binned that shot in the remount, as I thought it was a brilliant way of showing how the exterior and interior interface. There's also a Hartnell era annual type book that contains a floor plan diagram of how the police box is a 'porch' with a 'dimensional gateway' to the control room (the console has 5 sides, I recall!) I'll see if I can find it.