Due to the significance of Doctor Who in popular British culture, the shape of the police box is now more strongly associated with the TARDIS than its real-world inspiration.

[3] Both continued to be used during the classic series; in "Rose" (2005), the Ninth Doctor uses the singular (although this was a decision of actor Christopher Eccleston—[4] the line was plural in the script for the episode).

[7] In the fictional universe of the Doctor Who television show, TARDISes are space- and time-travel vehicles of the Time Lords, an alien species from the planet Gallifrey.

[8] TARDISes are built with a "chameleon circuit", a type of camouflage technology that changes the exterior form of the ship to blend into the environment of whatever time or place it lands in.

However, perhaps we can forgive the artistic license if we recognise that, as in other science fiction works, the presentation of some type of ubiquitous translation tool is necessary to explain to the audience how people from other countries, time periods, and even other worlds, can understand each other and indeed appear to speak (mostly) flawless English.

[18][19] While there is no known precedent for this notion, a November 1960 episode of the popular radio comedy show Beyond Our Ken included a sketch featuring a time machine described as "a tall telephone box".

In the first episode, An Unearthly Child (1963), the TARDIS is first seen hidden in a London scrapyard in 1963, and after travelling back in time ("The Cave of Skulls") to the Paleolithic era, the police box exterior persists.

Numerous details have been altered over time, including the shape of the roof, the signage, the shade of blue paint, the presence of a St John Ambulance emblem and the overall height of the box.

[28] The evolution of the prop design was referenced on-screen in the episode "Blink" (2007), when the character Detective Inspector Shipton says the TARDIS "isn't a real [police box].

From the inception of the show in 1963 up until the end of the "classic series" in 1989, the design of the TARDIS console room remained largely unchanged from Brachacki's original set, a brightly lit white chamber, lined with a pattern of roundels on the walls and with a central hexagonal console which contained a cylindrical "time rotor" that moved when the TARDIS was in transit.

The ability to travel simply by fading into and out of different locations became one of the trademarks of the show, allowing for a great deal of versatility in setting and storytelling without a large expense in special effects.

As Torchwood Three's hub is situated at a rift of temporal energy, the Doctor often appears on Roald Dahl Plass directly above it in order to recharge the TARDIS.

It reappears in Death of the Doctor (2010), where it is stolen by the Shansheeth who try to use it as an immortality machine, and transports Sarah Jane, Jo Grant and their adolescent companions (Rani Chandra, Clyde Langer and Santiago Jones).

TARDIS scale models of various sizes have been manufactured to accompany other Doctor Who dolls and action figures, some with sound effects included.

There have been TARDIS-shaped video games, play tents for children, toy boxes, cookie jars, book ends, key chains, and even a police-box-shaped bottle for a TARDIS bubble bath.

[48] A data storage manufacturer called tarDISK markets a flash memory drive for Apple MacBook which it claims is "bigger on the inside".

[52] In 2007, the British rock band Radiohead included the song "Up on the Ladder" on their album In Rainbows which begins with the line "I'm stuck in the TARDIS".

[53][54] In 2001, Turner Prize-winning artist Mark Wallinger created a piece or artwork entitled Time and Relative Dimensions in Space that is structurally a police box shape faced with mirrors.

[57][58] In film, the TARDIS makes a cameo appearance in a number of productions, including Iron Sky (2012)[59] and The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part (2019).

[60] The TARDIS has also featured within the gameplay of a number of popular video games, including Lego Dimensions[61] and Fortnite: Battle Royale.

[65][66] "Tardis" has also become a slang term used in the British real estate industry, to suggest that a house or apartment is actually substantally bigger on the inside that it looks on the outside.