Dr. Who's Tardis found on new Mars pictures

[Buddha12]

[R1D2]

I admit I don't like dr Who. Seen it a couple of times. So what's a Tardis? An this is "funny". A doctored photo...

[Jeeves]

It is funny. TARDIS (Time And Relative Dimension In Space) is an old-fashioned British phone-box on the outside, a kind of time-space-ship with weird machinery and lots of room inside. What Dr. Who travels around in. I recommend another look, preferably at the David Tenant series - it's very entertaining, especially if you like to see pretty girls run and blast monsters.

What's not funny - appalling, in fact - is a poster i saw recently for some religious revision of history lecture series that featured something very like a Tardis, sitting in the [presumably] Palestinian desert. They're poaching our imagery now!

[Stryder]

I admit I don't like dr Who. Seen it a couple of times.

Dr Who has been a long serving Scifi show which has obviously changed in it's pitch and flavour over the years. The modern form of Dr Who is somewhat different to the earlier version, every since the re-engineering of the series to be more family entertainment. (Rather than hardline Scifi)

So what's a Tardis?

Well you have all the pseudoscience related buzzwords that express it's meaning in the series, however If you were to rationalise the finer points of what would make one in the real world, it might not be seen quite the same way.

For instance a Tardis is obviously known to be larger on the inside than it's outside would reveal, in some fringe theoretic's, you could actually imply that our very universe could well be seen a "Tardis", since all of time and space has existed, is existing and will exist and it's external confines might well be "smaller" than we previously imagined. Of course there is then the problem of finding the right Doctor to work out how to open the door to see outside of it (Albeit might be a metaphorical door, to a metaphorical outside)

Why a "Police box"?
Well the simple reasoning in the Fringe theoretic's is if you've created your Maxwell's Demon hybrid, every event in the universe can potentially be known, such information could be misused and therefore obviously would require "Policing", however of course the problem is that the police we have often are under pressure by the countries which employ them and suffer the troubles and tribulations of life that can generally push them to more "Corrupt" uses of their powers. So "Anarchistic" policemen that are bound by their own standing of honour and conduct is likely the only way to stop such systems abuse.

I'm sure other people have their renditions of what one would be.

[Jeeves]

Hah! I just went back to the New Posts list, and directly underneath this thread title was "Exterminate the Taliban". I don't open anything that vile, of course, but i had a flash of arm-waving Daleks, chanting EX-TER-MI-NATE! EX-TER-MI-NATE!

[AlexG]

Why a "Police box"?

The camouflage function was set on police box when it broke and get stuck there.

[kmguru]

The camouflage function was set on police box when it broke and get stuck there.

So that the movie producers do not want to create too many designs in each doctor system...how sad....a little reprogramming is all that is needed...

[R1D2]

I don't reckon that a phone booth, or a police booth, or a out house for that matter, would blend in much. In today's world. They would have to program it to look like a van or something I would think. An since I mentioned a phone booth. Your "Tardis" reminds me of Bill an Ted's Adventure's movies, phone booth. The travel around time an function somewhat similar. I think.

[Janus58]

I don't reckon that a phone booth, or a police booth, or a out house for that matter, would blend in much. In today's world. They would have to program it to look like a van or something I would think. An since I mentioned a phone booth. Your "Tardis" reminds me of Bill an Ted's Adventure's movies, phone booth. The travel around time an function somewhat similar. I think.

The show first aired in 1963 and it is London in 1963 where we first meet The Doctor. Police boxes of this type were very common. As explained, it had disguised itself to blend in to the local environment (196O's London), and became stuck like that from then on.

The TARDIS predates Bill and Ted's phone booth by decades, and I wouldn't be surprised to find out that it was inspired by the TARDIS. (Oh, BTW the TARDIS also doubles as a spaceship.)

As a side note, Dr. Who did not start out to be the show we see today. Its original intent was to expose kids to history in an entertaining manner. Many of the early stories were "historicals", where the main characters just interacted with figures in history. They did mix in some science fictional types shows.( presumably to keep the Kids interest). As time went on, fewer and fewer of the stories were of pure history and those which did involve history became Pseudo-historicals, where the history was intermixed with a SF element. Interestingly enough, it was only the second storyline that set this into motion as it introduced the most infamous of the Doctor's foes: the Daleks.