Skip to main content

How much does the Doctor's TARDIS weigh from the outside?


Lady Romana is quoted as saying a TARDIS weights 5x10^6 kilograms, but I've also read that she was mistaken in this or that she was referring to the inside.


The Doctor's TARDIS has been moved a number of times and has landed on soft ground and not sunk in at all. This indicates the full weight of the interior is not felt from the exterior. But in The Parting of the Ways, Rose, Jackie, and Mickey use a large truck with chains to free up part of the interior of the TARDIS, and when they pull with the truck, the TARDIS doesn't just get pulled along on the ground, so, at least when the door is open, there's some connection between the weight inside and the outside shell.


I've searched for this and Romana's answer is the only one I find, but if that were true and it weight that much on the outside, people could not pick it up and move it.



How much does the Doctor's TARDIS weight from the outside?



Answer



I've never seen a in-universe explanation (Possibly because that's something they have avoided defining, lest it cause complications later), but observing it's behavior, I'd guess the following:


The external shell has a weight consistent with what the chameleon circuit has modeled it upon. For example, the Doctor's Tardis is set up as a police box, and, being made primarily of wood, isn't that heavy. Other disguised Tardis examples, however, weren't so light -- The Master's Tardis, disguised as the Melkur, should have weighed about the same as a stone statue of it's size. That being said, I've never seen anything to really confirm this, it's just supposition.


As to when Mickey, Rose and Jackie were pulling on the console, the cable they connected was crossing the threshold into the main Tardis; they were pulling against the actual full weight of the Tardis, not just it's exterior shell. (Goes back to the whole Dimensionally transcendental thing; just as the exterior shape doesn't pass back physical requirements to the interior shape, so does force exerted on the inside not translate to force on the outside) Had they simply hooked the cable around the Tardis, it most likely would have moved quite easily. One way to think of it is that the door of the Tardis is an opening to a Pocket Universe; it doesn't CONTAIN it, so much as provide a portal to it.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

languages - Do we ever see written English in the Star Wars films?

In Empire Strikes Back , we see a transcription of what R2's beeps and bloops mean, but it's not English (sorry for the low quality, it's from the 2004 DVDs): I'd assume it's what Basic looks like when written, but is there some point in the the Star Wars films we see written English instead? (This sort of spun off from a discussion in How do people understand astromech droids? .) Answer At one point there was English but it has been phased out in subsequent versions of the films. Chris Gould at DVD Active did a comparison of all versions of each of the Star Wars films, and in his comparison of Episode 4 , there are a couple of screenshots showing how the power gauge for the Death Star tractor beam was changed. I imagine there are probably more to be found in his other comparisons but I haven't got around to reading those yet.
Post a Comment
Read more

Was the "pure soul" of Harry's what had really hurt Voldemort?

In the Order of the Phoenix, Voldemort possesses Harry, and it hurts. Greatly. I think that Dumbledore explained that it was because Voldemort's rotten soul was incapable of assimilating Harry's pure soul, that Voldemort didn't understand the love and friendship etc that Harry has in his heart. But, I think it was a lie. Remember that in Deathly Hallows, while looking for information regarding Horcruxes, it is discovered that it is in fact possible to merge a soul fragment back, but that the process was extremely painful. Now then, if Voldemort tried to possess Harry, and Harry had a fragment of Voldemort's soul, I think that it could have been the true cause of Voldemort's pain: the fact of having his soul so close of another fragment. I think that Dumbledore knew that fact, but had to lie to Harry because it was inappropriate to let him know that he had one of Voldemort's soul fragments at the moment. Is that right? Or was it truly the pure soul of Harry's...
Post a Comment
Read more

star wars - What "exactly" happens when someone turns to the Dark Side?

When I saw the original Star Wars saga as a kid, the concept of the Dark Side imprinted in me was quite simple. You did a bad thing, so you're a bad person so you go to the Dark Side and keep doing bad things. Now, obviously this doesn't hold true in reality. In my mind it is perfectly reasonable for Luke to kill the Emperor and Vader and then just flee the Death Star and rejoin the Alliance. After all they are at war, those are enemy officers that have captured him and are taunting him by threatening with death of all loved ones and the whole operation was intended to kill the Emperor anyway. The same would hold true for Anakin. He could have killed Mace Windu to save the Chancellor and Padme but that doesn't mean he's going to then go mad and kill all Jedis including children. It doesn't add up from a merely psychological point of view. He had a set of objectives and that made him want to keep the Chancellor alive (quite valid by the way, Mace Windu is quite clums...
Post a Comment
Read more

star trek - Warning regarding forward saucer section in Nemesis?

In Star Trek: Nemesis , just before the Enterprise rams into the Scimitar, Picard sends a text message from his captain's chair arm pad to Troi — who is manning the helm in lieu of the crewman who was just blown out through what was once the view screen — indicating that she should put full impulse on standby. (Literally, if you watch the scene closely, Troi's console prefaces the order with "TXT MSG" !) My question is: Did Picard also somehow warn crew members in the forward saucer section about what was about to happen? The ramming of the Scimitar was a heat of the moment decision. Considering that he also resorted to calling the auto-destruct sequence shortly after (which ended up being offline), he probably was of the mindset that any losses would be acceptable in order to hault Shinzon's march to Earth. Still, I'm curious. Answer The original script indicates that he called for the crew to " brace for impact ". Whether that call (or the comma...
Post a Comment
Read more