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The well-known Time Machine in the television series Doctor Who; this device can also travel through interplanetary and interstellar space. Its "chameleon circuit" disguised it as an old-fashioned, dark-blue UK police telephone box prior to the first Doctor Who storyline and then (with rare later exceptions) ceased to function. As indicated by the capitals, the name is a somewhat ad-hoc acronym standing for Time And Relative Dimensions In Space. A further notable property of the TARDIS is that it is much larger inside than outside (see Dimensions; Little Big in The Encyclopedia of Fantasy). Stephen Cole's I, TARDIS: Memoirs Of An Impossible Blue Box (2024) is written from the viewpoint of the TARDIS itself, or herself. [DRL]
see also: Dr Who and the Daleks.
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Entry from The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (2011-current) edited by John Clute and David Langford.
Accessed 14:11 pm on 11 October 2026.
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