Companions may come and go (and come back again, and go away again...) but the TARDIS is the one true constant through 60 years of Doctor Who, after the Doctor of course.
Some guidebooks have included it in the list of companions, since it isn't simply a machine that gets the Doctor from A to B.
The decision to make the TARDIS something more than just a mode of transport goes right back to the very beginning. David Whitaker, the first Story Editor, had to come up with a two-part story to bring the series up to 13 episodes - a marketable amount - in the likelihood that Doctor Who was to be cancelled on the orders of Donald Baverstock, who had been alarmed at the cost of the programme.
In the end, Verity Lambert was able to show how the costs of the TARDIS set were budgeted to be spread over the year, so the budget concerns were unfounded. The Edge of Destruction could therefore fulfil another role.
With no money for new sets, monster costumes or guest artists, Whitaker elected to focus on the ship as a means to bring the four regulars together and realign their inter-relationships for adventures yet to come. The first ever broadcast episode had already reconfigured the characters of Susan and the Doctor, making the first a bit more down to Earth and the latter less brittle and unlikeable than they had come across in the untelevised pilot.
We already knew that the Doctor couldn't operate the ship properly, even though he may have actually built the thing (implied in dialogue). The Edge of Destruction sees odd things happen within the ship, and it is up to the occupants to work out what is going on. The ship is giving them clues, and it is Barbara who first figures this out. Clocks and watches melt, to make them aware of Time. The scanner images coincide with the doors opening and closing - nice picture, door open = safe; bad picture, doors close = danger. It's all very cryptic, but the Doctor and companions work it out in the end. It's just a pity that the mystery turns out to be a stuck switch, which was going to send them hurtling back to the explosive birth of a solar system (with some early guidebooks claiming it was to the Big Bang).
Ian asks the Doctor if the TARDIS can think, and he responds "not as we do" but points out that it has a big bank of computers. The phrase hasn't been coined yet, but he's referring to some form of AI.
The Time Meddler lays to rest the idea that the TARDIS is unique and was built by the Doctor. They are standard craft that have been used by his people for at least 50 years. (It is still possible that the Doctor was involved in the development of the first TARDIS, as he did claim to have been a pioneer among his people, and Susan did claim to have devised the name).
By the time we get to Tomb of the Cybermen, the Doctor is telling his companions that the TARDIS is his home, or at least has been for a very long time.
The ship's bizarre way of warning its occupants is demonstrated once again in The Wheel in Space, when the scanner once again shows images of danger prior to another technical fault. Need we say that this story was also written by David Whitaker?
It is during the Pertwee era that focus is placed on the TARDIS once again - ironic, as this was the era in which the Doctor used it least.
Even before his exile was lifted by the Time Lords, we had an entire episode set within the TARDIS (or rather TARDISes, as the Doctor's is sitting within the Master's, and his within the Doctor's).
The Time Monster introduced us to the Telepathic Circuits - the first indication that the ship had a form of sentience beyond the mechanical / electronic. The TARDIS can read the Doctor's mind - allowing Jo to hear his subconscious thoughts. The Master is able to use his ship to intercept the Doctor's speech to render it backwards before he says it.
Later, in Planet of the Spiders, the Doctor has the following conversation with Mike Yates, regarding getting to Metebelis III -
Mike: "Yes, but Doctor, a planet's a big place".
Doctor: "Yes, well, I always leave the actual landing to the TARDIS herself. She's no fool you know".
Mike: You speak as if she were alive".
Doctor: "Yes. Yes, I do, don't I?..."
Note how the Doctor refers to the ship as "she", something his predecessors never did. Pertwee was a real petrol-head, and it has always been traditional to use feminine terms for most modes of transport. He and Barry Letts had both been in the Royal Navy, and all ships are called "she".
The Fourth Doctor will also refer to the TARDIS as a "she", in the same way he called K-9 a "he".
Script Editor Christopher H Bidmead had a fascination with the TARDIS, but he saw it in computer terms, likening its functions to his home PC. Not for him imbuing it with any form of personality.
In Trial of a Time Lord, we see evidence from the Matrix which is said to have been gathered by the TARDIS. That it can show scenes from locations where it wasn't even present is due to them being within the range of its telepathic field.
The TARDIS was eventually side-lined in the series. In the final season, there is only a single console room scene (in Battlefield) and even here we only see it dimly, as the main set had already been broken up.
The ship plays a significant role in the 1996 Movie, but in this it contains the Eye of Harmony, which appears to have all the strange powers - rather than the ship itself.
In The Masque of Mandragora, the Doctor told Sarah that her ability to understand foreign, or alien, languages was a "Time Lord gift" he shared with her. It wasn't until The End of the World in 2005 that this was confirmed as another attribute of the TARDIS' telepathic field.
As of Series 6 in 2012, the TARDIS was unique in the universe. The only other Time Lord to have survived the Time War was the Master, and he did not appear to have kept his TARDIS. He must have had one, in order to use its Chameleon Arch, but there was no sign of it.
In the 1980's JNT had used the story title "The Doctor's Wife", written up on his planning board, to root out spies in the Doctor Who production office.
In 2012 Neil Gaiman gave us a story using that title - and it didn't refer to River Song, who was all over the series at this time. The Doctor's Wife proved to be the TARDIS.
All the hints of previous decades as to the ship's sentience were personified in Idris, a young woman who has the TARDIS' matrix - its 'soul' - implanted into her body.
The story was a love letter to the series in general, and to the TARDIS in particular. Some of those old "Matrix Databank" questions from DWM - its version of Notes & Queries - were finally addressed. The main one concerned how the TARDIS could keep landing the Doctor in trouble every 4 - 6 weeks. Why did it not land somewhere nice and peaceful for a change? Apart from being dramatically boring, we learned that the ship took the Doctor not where he wanted to go, but where he needed to go.
We also learned that, whilst the Doctor was bored and craved adventure, so did the TARDIS herself.
It stole him, as much as he borrowed her.
For a few hours the Doctor was able to communicate directly with his oldest companion - the one true partner who doesn't move on after a while.
Sadly the TARDIS hasn't been explored much in recent years, but here's hoping that RTD2 gives it some of the attention it deserves.
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