Talk:Type 40/Article Archive

This is an archive of Type 40 as it existed on 24 November 2010. It was massively truncated for reasons given at Talk:Type 40.

Type 40 was the class of TARDIS to which the Doctor's TARDIS belonged.

History
Mortimus said that while the First Doctor had a Mark I, the Monk himself had a Mark IV. We do not know if the Type 40 belongs to a Mark I class of TARDIS or whether Type 40 had more than one Mark. Probably the latter, as the Doctor found the technology of his own TARDIS almost entirely compatible with the Monk's. Also, the central consoles of the two craft looked almost identical, although the Monk's ship had a slightly taller supporting column. (DW: The Time Meddler)


 * The Master also possessed a TARDIS of more advanced model, its type was unknown.

During the Doctor's third incarnation, the Master characterized the Doctor's Type 40 as "overweight, underpowered; a museum piece!" (DW: The Claws of Axos), and by the Fourth Doctor's era all other Type 40s had been decommissioned (DW: The Deadly Assassin). Romana also noted the fact of the Type 40's obsolescence and referred to the Doctor's TARDIS as an antique vintage vehicle. (DW: The Pirate Planet) In his eleventh incarnation, the Doctor himself noted the TARDIS' obsolescence while talking to Winston Churchill. (DW: Victory of the Daleks)

Desktop Theme
Alluded to by the Fifth Doctor, the desktop themes were what seemingly changed the interior design of the console room from time to time. (DW: Time Crash)

Primary function
The Type 40, of course, was designed for time and space travel via the Time Vortex. It used its dematerialization circuit to de-materialise and re-materialize at will into the Vortex. The Type 40 was actually designed to be operated by six pilots working as a team. When fully crewed, it was capable of remarkable feats, including towing an entire planet through time and space. (DW: Journey's End)

Conventional transport
The Type 40 could hover in the air (DW: Fury from the Deep, Logopolis, The Runaway Bride) or fly through space like an aircraft or spacecraft. While in this mode it often spun like a top. It could land and float on water (DW: Fury from the Deep), and take off by launching straight upwards like a rocket (DW: The Runaway Bride). It was also capable of overcoming seemingly any amount of gravity, up to and including that of a black hole. (DW: The Satan Pit)

Limits
A properly piloted and working Type 40 was capable of transporting its occupants to almost any point in space and time. Before the Last Great Time War, a Time Spiral corresponding to the end of the Humanian Era prevented craft from travelling too far into the future. (MA: The Well-Mannered War) Following the destruction of Gallifrey, some of the limits on travel seemed to be removed, as the Doctor's TARDIS managed to travel over 100 trillion years into the future, beyond where any Time Lord had been known to venture. On that occasion, Captain Jack Harkness had touched the TARDIS at the point of dematerialisation, which, according to the Doctor, caused it to jump to the end of the universe trying to escape him. (DW: Utopia)

A Type 40 could go out beyond the edges of the universe. (DW: Logopolis)

Unusual functions
Pressing an emergency switch, the Doctor found himself in the Land of Fiction. (DW: The Mind Robber) The Doctor believed that his TARDIS could materialize inside areas of the psyche. (DW: The Chase)

Before the destruction of Gallifrey, the Third Doctor, using the console of the TARDIS alone, found himself in an alternative timeline. (DW: Inferno) Later, the Doctor said that the death of the Time Lords in the Last Great Time War had made crossing between worlds almost impossible. (DW: Rise of the Cybermen)

Finally, though this happened by accident, the TARDIS could shrink itself and its occupants. (DW: Planet of Giants) In another, unrelated instance, it got inside a miniscope and shrunk on that occasion, too. However, this presumably happened because of the technology used by the miniscope itself. (DW: Carnival of Monsters)

Outer Plasmic Shell
The TARDIS' outer plasmic shell had the properties of a solid conventional object. (DW: Logopolis) With its chameleon circuit it could change shape. (DW: An Unearthly Child) The TARDIS seemed to weigh roughly the same as the object it was disguised as, rather than manifesting the immense theoretical weight the interior possessed. On several occasions the Doctor's ship was picked up and moved using only manual labour. (DW: Full Circle, The King's Demons, Time-Flight, Blink) While resting on an uneven surface it could relatively easily be blown over by high winds (DW: The Curse of Peladon) On the other hand, the TARDIS could be locked down, making it almost impossible to move. (NSA: The Monsters Inside) On one occasion it touched down onto the North Sea as if buoyant, presumably by design, after having already touched there like an aircraft or spaceship. (DW: Fury from the Deep)

The Doctor's ship was almost impervious to brute force attacks. The Doctor once stated to Rose that "the assembled hordes of Genghis Khan couldn't get through that door". (DW: Rose) It was effectively indestructible, likely due to the "shields". Without the shields, the TARDIS could be destroyed by intense heat. (DW: Journey's End) On one occasion, when these shields were down the TARDIS collided with both an earlier version of itself and the Titanic, the latter being seen to burst through the interior wall. (DW: Time Crash, Voyage of the Damned) A Graske was also able to get in when the shields were down. (DW: Music of the Spheres)

The immense gravity field generated by the Tractators on Frontios initially warped the TARDIS interior before actually ripping the vehicle apart. (DW: Frontios) A Voracious Craw would have been powerful enough to destroy the TARDIS completely. (NSA: Sick Building) Time Lord technology was also able to force entry relatively easily on a number of occasions.

The Doctor described his Type 40 on many occasions as sentient. Therefore some empathy must exist between the user and the machine. (PDA: Heart of TARDIS) During one crisis, the Doctor's ship caused its crew to panic and behave irrationally and to manifest clues as to the emergency, such as melting clocks. (DW: The Edge of Destruction)

Basic defenses and temporal grace
A hostile Zarbi could not enter the First Doctor's TARDIS, as if the ship itself would not allow it. (DW: The Web Planet) When the Shadow attempted to do so, the doors of the ship flooded with blinding light and stopped him. (DW: The Armageddon Factor)

The Doctor claimed that the interior of the TARDIS existed in a state of temporal grace where the Doctor's enemies could not hurt him. The exact nature and area of this effect has varied. One account claims that within a TARDIS it is literally impossible to die from unnatural causes, with anyone so killed being instantly resurrected. (PDA: The Infinity Doctors) More commonly, energy weapons were simply rendered inoperative (DW: The Hand of Fear, The Invasion of Time) and even then the effect seemed limited only to the console room.

On many other occasions it seemed that no such defence existed. Cybermen (DW: Earthshock, Attack of the Cybermen) and a Dalek, for example, have discharged their guns in the TARDIS. (DW: The Parting of the Ways) It was possible that the device causing the effect often malfunctioned. When asked about this exact situation, the Fifth Doctor simply remarked that things don't always work as they're supposed to. (DW: Time-Flight)

Lock
The Doctor initially stated that there were multiple tumblers within the single TARDIS lock presented to the outside world. There were a total of 21 tumblers, and insertion of the key into the wrong ones would cause the entire assembly to melt, barring access to the TARDIS entirely. (DW: The Daleks) Later in his tenth incarnation he claimed that the lock was a triple-curtain trimonic lock and had 27 tumblers in four separate dimensions. (NSA: Prisoner of the Daleks)

The opening mechanism of the TARDIS was very important. Without it, the door were permanently locked. (DW: The Sensorites)

There was some evidence to suggest that TARDIS keys were not vessel-specific (the Doctor was able to use his own TARDIS key to enter the Rani's TARDIS). (DW: The Mark of the Rani)

Also, it could be assumed that the lock of the TARDIS had a lock-out function, disallowing anyone entry regardless of whether or not they had a key. (DW: The Dalek Invasion of Earth, Utopia)

TARDISes could be remotely locked, much like wireless carkeys. (DW: The End Of Time) The Doctor was also able to open the doors by snapping his fingers, though this was apparently abnormal. (DW: Forest of the Dead)

Emergency measures
Type 40s had many defensive devices, designed not only to protect the occupants, but also the ship itself. They included the HADS system (Hostile Action Displacement System). (DW: The Krotons)

It was also capable of "anchoring" itself onto another ship to not only stabilise itself, but also to allow the occupants to escape in the event of terminal instability ("break-up"). This was invoked by an automatic safety cut out. (DW: Terminus)

When in space, it would automatically lock onto the nearest large centre of gravity, such as a planet. (DW: Voyage of the Damned)

The Doctor's TARDIS also had the function where the engines would shut down if the pilot were to exit the TARDIS, River attempted to utilise this function to avert the explosion of the TARDIS and the threat this posed to the fabric of the universe. (DW: The Pandorica Opens)

Eye of Harmony
The Doctor's TARDIS had a link with the Eye of Harmony and so derived its power from there. (DW: Doctor Who)

Matter-energy conversion
The ship had, at one time, an ancillary power station, which on the Doctor's TARDIS existed in the form of an art gallery, the exhibited works apparently being converted from matter into raw energy when required. (DW: The Invasion of Time)

The TARDIS's Architectural Configuration controls could also delete rooms, apparently converting them and their contents into raw energy which was then dumped into the reactor core. This action could give the TARDIS the added thrust it might need to escape from areas of gravity strong enough to otherwise defeat the TARDIS's helm controls. (DW: Logopolis, Castrovalva)

Temporal rifts
After the destruction of Gallifrey, the Ninth Doctor recharged his ship with the energy from a temporal rift, in this case, the Cardiff Space-Time Rift. (DW: Boom Town, Utopia)

Other means
When the Doctor's TARDIS accidentally visited a parallel universe, it could not take its crew back immediately because its energy supply stemmed from the universe it was created in, so by removing it from its home universe its "life" energy supply was severed. After finding a glowing green crystal, the Doctor breathed on it, giving it, he said, ten years of his life. Within twenty-four hours, he said the TARDIS had enough energy to return home. (DW: Rise of the Cybermen)

Required elements
Elements needed for the proper functioning of the Type 40 and requiring occasional replenishment include mercury used in its fluid links (DW: The Daleks, The Wheel in Space), thorium (BFA: The Fragile Yellow Arc of Fragrance) and the rare ore Zeiton-7. (DW: Vengeance on Varos)

Other Features
All Type 40's were installed with the Record of Rassilon. (DW: State of Decay)