Talk:TARDIS

TARDIS as companion

There have been several articles now - including articles featuring comment by Steven Moffat, Neil Gaiman and actors - that the TARDIS (or to be precise, the Doctor's TARDIS) is actually now considered a companion, rather than a vessel, due to the events of "The Doctor's Wife" confirming it to be a sentient being (or at least controlled by one). I'm not sure how to approach it in this article, but perhaps a subsection "Doctor's TARDIS as companion" might be able to cover this? Alternately, under the detailed discussion of the episode perhaps we add something like "In the aftermath of The Doctor's Wife, the Doctor's TARDIS is now considered a companion, as opposed to simply being a vessel", with a link to a Doctor Who Magazine or TV interview source with Moffat and Gaiman. 68.146.71.145 (talk) 13:22, 28 July 2011 (UTC)

I'd avoid any major change, partly for fear that it will dominate a longer-term perspective (see WP:RECENT). Also, what about Compassion, the TARDIS companion in the EDAs? --Cedders^tk 06:06, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

Weight of the TARDIS

A couple of weeks ago I merged two paragraphs both dealing with a factoid from the programme itself about the weight of the TARDIS. No problem with the merge, but I've just noticed errors in Cornell, Day and Topping's Discontinuity Guide that have propagated to the current text (it's always the way: pointing out solecisms you commit more yourself). It currently reads:

In Full Circle (1980), Romana stated that the weight of the TARDIS in Alzarius' Earth-like gravity was 5 × 10⁶ Newtons (the weight of 50,000 tonnes).[28] This presumably refers to its internal weight, as the external part of the TARDIS is light enough for it to be lifted or otherwise moved with relative ease[...]

Now the probably obvious thing if you stop for just a second, is that 5x10⁶ Newtons is the weight of 5,000,000 / 9.81 ms^-2 or thereabouts / 1 000 kg in a tonne = 500 tonnes. Reference 28 is to the BBC site [1] which faithfully reproduces the text of the printed DG (including its failure to superscript the "6"):

Romana says that the TARDIS weighs 5x106 kilos 'in your gravity' (i.e. 50,000 tonnes) [but, given that the marsh people can carry it, and that in other stories it clearly has a comparable physical exterior to a police box, Romana must be forgetting her temporal physics. This must be the weight of the full ('inside') TARDIS rather than its seeming weight on Alzarius].

Actually, the start of this quotation is accurate. Here's my transcript from the programme itself:

Romana: Adric, is there any machinery on your planet that could lift the TARDIS?

Adric: How heavy is it?

Romana: Erm. Five times ten to the six kilos in your gravity.

Adric: No.

So that's kilos, not Newtons, and exactly 5,000 tonnes. Possibly the novelisation says something different, but I don't have it to hand.

While we're at it, the second sentence in the article, suggesting Romana made a mistake, is unreferenced and sounds a bit like editorial speculation, but has a precedent in the DM quote above. It seems obvious to me that the point of the dialogue is that the marshmen have very quickly developed superhuman strength. A consistent weight range with the rest of the series would be that which requires a forklift truck (eg Time-Flight, Faceless Ones, Brain of Morbius dialogue), so perhaps 0.5 - 50 tonnes, although as pointed out it in the article it seems sometimes to be lighter than a real police box would be (and even floats in the water in Fury from the Deep). The Alzarians might perhaps only have handtrucks, but considering they are pretty technologically advanced, it does seem the TARDIS exterior is heavier in E-Space (I know this is pure speculation/OR). The exterior weight would almost certainly not be 50,000 tonnes because I'd guess it would sink through the topsoil. 5,000 is pushing it, but does serve the purpose

So, it's a mess. I'll get rid of the Newtons, because there's no matching source at all (although it would have been plausible in that bit of dialogue). Perhaps the best thing is to say that the exterior weight appears to be variable? --Cedders^tk 05:34, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

Further notes, this being the fourth talk section on this topic: Talk:TARDIS/Archive 1#Mass_or_Weight asks for a proper distinction in the article between mass and weight (I had phrased the existing text to distinguish just that). Now the writers of the programme may not have been as clever as they'd like to think, but I'm sure they were aware of the basic distinction. I think you should read Romana's line as "whatever 5 000 tonnes weighs in your gravity". And regarding "doesn't make sense because a few swamp creatures carry it" above, without bending anything too far to support the programme, in this story the weight and apparent mass of the TARDIS is such that it cannot be carried by machines, and yet the "few swamp creatures" clearly have some very special properties. --Cedders^tk 06:18, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

Source Engine TARDIS game

We have an anon IP who's adding an appearance by the TARDIS in a game that appears to be under construction using the Source engine, citing a Youtube video as evidence that it's under construction. A bot removed the initial link and I've been undoing the IP's edits because I'm not sure Youtube is considered a reliable source. It looks like a bit of an edit war's developing though, either bordering or already transgressing the three-revert rule so I'm just posting this here for community consensus as to what course of action to take - do we take down the Youtube source and provide a better one (eg; an official page by the developers stating that such a game is in the works or an article stating this) or just remove the content entirely and try convincing the IP that their edits aren't properly sourced? I did a quick look on Google for another source but I don't think there was anything that would really work as an alternative. Comics (talk) 08:31, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

I have reverted these edits as it looks like the level is a fan-made mod according to the creator's youtube comments and the website - I don't think fan-made creations such as this are notable enough for inclusion. Etron81 (talk) 13:59, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

As for Youtube in general; the uploader is the source. If ,for instance, the BBC puts a video on Youtube, it is considered a reliable source. — Edokter (talk) — 18:03, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

Well, that's fair enough Edokter. I just thought I'd raise it here on the talk page though. Comics (talk) 04:22, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

hi guys, im the anon, just saying that i dont disagree with any of this and i accept the deletes, just wanted to let you know im new to this, and i only cited the utube once. once comic mentioned it i changed it to my home page at krauterz.com. using that instead of youtube is obvious, dont know why i didnt before... anyway, cheerio, the edits are up to you, if you dont think its worth keeping than leave it deleted, however, there are many inserts of the tardis in game culture lately, so i ask if you can keep the section at least? cheerio, its in your hands. not citing youtube etc, the reason you cant find a second source is because the page/map has only been out for a few days and google hasnt indexed it yet :) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 121.223.2.137 (talk) 04:55, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

That's alright, but we're not looking for a second source - we're just after a source that isn't related to any of the games themselves. We're after somebody else talking about the TARDIS games is all, not the creator. Comics (talk) 05:27, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

ahah. alrighty, that makes sense :) in that case it might be a while. but i know there are many sources for second life tardis's etc. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 121.223.2.137 (talk) 05:30, 31 October 2011 (UTC)