Ways to destroy a Tardis?

[garethl]

Hello everyone!

The Assembled Hordes of Genghis Khan Couldn't Get Through Those Doors

As the title says, who or what can destroy or damage a Tardis?

The Tardis is a sort of invulnerable fortress and sometimes a too easy solution for certain problems.

EDIT: Just remembered, the 2006 Christmas Special where the Titanic collides with the Tardis.

One solution would be to separate the crew from the Tardis or (especially when using a Tardis with a working Chameleon Circuit) hide the Tardis.

Besides the players feel much too safe in their Tardis. Classic or new series threats to Tardis structural integrity welcome!

[Stormcrow]

The TARDIS may be less invulnerable than is sometimes claimed. Notice that they're always worried when missiles or crashes are imminent.

As a rule of thumb, no alien can enter the landed TARDIS without using powerful explosives (probably at least TL 9), and even then the Hostile Action Displacement System will simply relocate the TARDIS should such an explosion be imminent.

Ideally, the TARDIS is simply the means to get from one adventure to the next, not a component of the plot itself.

[cliffordjones]

Dec 10, 2011 13:49:32 GMT garethl said:

The Tardis is a sort of invulnerable fortress

That pretty much sums it up. It's basically indestructible to all but plot-level threats.

The usual trick is to make it physically inaccessible. Have it fall down a cliff, into a muddy bog or bury it under some sort of landslide or debris. There are plenty of examples of this in both classic and new adventures. The fact that the TARDIS is effectively indestructible actually works in your favour, as you can sink it into lava pits and drop heavy rocks onto it without ever worrying about it breaking. I remember, for example, a story in an old annual where The TARDIS was swallowed by some sort of giant space monster but was fortunately immune to the creature's highly corrosive stomach acid. Indestructible and indigestible.

Otherwise, as you say, it can be a little too handy to have around all the time.

The other thing to do is to have it 'captured' - carted off by daleks, cybermen, the local despot or some mad scientist type. Of course, it is always placed under heavy guard... because blue boxes are known to be highly dangerous.

[Marnal]

From my TARDIS Tech Index

The heart of a star does produce enough heat to instantly vaporize the a TARDIS. If the exo-shell was to develop a crack chronon radiation would be released. To a lesser species this would appear to be a white glow.

While the entire Exo-Shell can be transmatted or transducted without difficulty, the Interior cannot be penetrated by transmat beams unless the beam's power has been increased by a factor of 50 million. Certain gravitic, thermal, telepathic, and radioactive forces will be transferred to the inside (if the force fields are deactivated). These forces could damage the crew or the console.

Some areas of space are dangerous to a TARDIS interior. The Zeg Zone is one such area of space. The Electromagnetic Pulse Signature interferes with electrical and exitonic circuitry. If exposed to this radiation for too long the console will explode. Shortly after that the TARDIS will seal its doors until it has repaired the damage and TARDIS has been physically transported out of range of the radiation.

The exo-shell can be displaced from the current time-cone making it disappear. The auto-systems will try to return to the original time zone but need a standing wave generated by a binary induction system to home in on. A massive exterior gravitational force can warp the inner dimensions against the outer shell until a catastrophic schism develops in the outer shell. If this were to occur the interior of a TARDIS would break out and be randomly mapped into the area. This situation can be rectified with a sufficiently complex and powerful gravitational field that can draw the interior segments together, allowing the Endo and Exo-Shells to reform.

Much of a TARDIS's invulnerability comes from its Force Fields. But those must be switched on to work.

It would take a psionic force of tremendous (almost unbelievable) power to penetrate a TARDIS traveling the vortex. Beings such as the Guardians, Eternals, Sutekh, and higher life forms can penetrate a TARDIS's Force-Field Prisms by rotating the frequency of their attacks. Such an attack might cause the relative continuum stabilizer to fail, leading to a major power loss. A beam of Coherent Tunneled Chronons is also capable of damaging a TARDIS, as is a black hole, Dalek Temporal Disruptors, a supernova, the D-Mat Gun, or a wormhole. Time displacement waves found near a black hole can penetrate the force fields and kill the crew (though the TARDIS will be undamaged).

[cliffordjones]

Dec 10, 2011 14:30:21 GMT cliffordjones said:

That pretty much sums it up. It's basically indestructible to all but plot-level threats.

The usual trick is to make it physically inaccessible.

Otherwise, as you say, it can be a little too handy to have around all the time.

It occurs to me that you could award the players a pool of story points at the beginning of a game for agreeing to be temporarily TARDISless. Then, they have the option to use those points to either get the TARDIS back at some dramatically interesting moment or to put them toward some other ingenious plot-beating scheme. Getting the TARDIS back in 'down time' is, of course, done for free.

[Rel Fexive]

That sounds like a perfect solution.

[cliffordjones]

Dec 10, 2011 14:30:21 GMT cliffordjones said:

The usual trick is to make it physically inaccessible. Have it fall down a cliff, into a muddy bog or bury it under some sort of landslide or debris.

Remember, The Doctor is rubbish at parking... ;D

[Siskoid]

Math.

[garethl]

Dec 11, 2011 12:15:06 GMT Siskoid said:

Math.

Do you mean by calculating the damage vs it's stats? I remember seeing the Tardis statted up in the Gamemasters book (can't check it right now).

[stahlman]

Destroy or disable?

[Siskoid]

Dec 11, 2011 16:18:25 GMT garethl said:

Dec 11, 2011 12:15:06 GMT Siskoid said:

Math.

Do you mean by calculating the damage vs it's stats? I remember seeing the Tardis statted up in the Gamemasters book (can't check it right now).

No, more of a joke about how the interior dimensions are mathematically derived. Pull some nonsense from Logopolis and you might have some weapon against the TARDIS.

[Rel Fexive]

Sure. A block transfer calculation "weapon" could unmake or rework a TARDIS, or at least separate the interior dimension from the exterior shell. A bit like in Frontios, maybe.

[Curufea]

Maths was probably used by the Shift in Alien Bodies to turn a sentient TARDIS's weapons on itself. Certainly damaged it, but it was repairable (by the Time Lord called Homunculus)

[misterharry]

On a similar theme, the N-Forms - Gallifreyan superweapons which I think were also created by Block Transfer Computation - could be shut down, controlled or even destroyed by somebody with access to the Time Lord codes at the heart of their programming, called Patrexian Numbers.

It's not unreasonable to assume that TARDISes have the same weak spot.

[korith]

I believe in The Five Doctors, the cybermen were working on setting a bomb around the TARDIS that had one of the Doctor's incarnations rather worried.

Technology seems to be a major factor here - Genghis Khan's assembled hordes didn't likely have anything beyond TL 2 at their disposal. Against Time Lord (TL10) technology, I'd suggest that an attempt to force their way in would be met with a -16 penalty. Cybermen in most of their situations would have a TL of 7 or higher at their disposal. Given enough of an advantageous situation (the TARDIS being already damaged or unoccupied), I'd expect that they could well find a way to force their way in, at least.

Of course, getting inside a TARDIS doesn't necessarily mean you've won. We see this in the Series 6 episode The Doctor's Wife, for example. In the same episode, we also find that the entity known as House has the ability to effectively "destroy" TARDISes (among other things), though it would probably be the equivalent of a TL11 creature.

Some non-canonical (AFAIK) ideas that might be useful in effectively destroying a TARDIS:
-Dimensional implosion (cause the extradimensional spaces that the TARDIS uses to collapse or fall away into nothingness)
-Disconnecting the TARDIS entrance from the transcendental space it normally connects to (ie, empty the Police Box)
-Drain the TARDIS of its power (and prevent it from recharging via a means such as the Cardiff Rift)
-Exposure to a significant enough temporal paradox (even minor ones appear to make TARDISes uncomfortable).
-Fly the TARDIS into a significantly powerful cosmic entity (such as the heart of a particular variety of star, or a massive enough black hole after disabling the TARDIS' ability to ignore the gravitational effects)
-Multidimensional explosions (explosions limited to crude matter aren't that significant - but explosions which can be generated by entities with knowledge of interstellar travel seem to be far more threatening in nature)

[garethl]

Thanks everyone!

Once again my limited knowledge of old Who shows! Up until now forgetting to lock it was the only threat to our campaigns Tardis.

Low-techlevel doesn't have a chance. I always figured the Daleks might have some weapons or methods of dealing with Tardisses seeing that they've won the Last Great Time War.

[snowman]

I figure as a general rule, the TARDIS would be vulnerable to conventional attack only from temporally-active races: Daleks, 52nd Century humans, other Time Lords, etc. If the enemy in question ISN'T a time traveller, they would probably need more preparation: 21st century humans can open the TARDIS, but it takes a looooong time and a lot of resources. Cybermen could blow it up, but they'd need one heck of a Cyberbomb.

I made the mistake of introducing the old War TARDIS (or battle TARDIS, who knows) into a game, and had to do some fast-talking to explain why they couldn't just turn giant and ram the Daleks' moonbase.

[garethl]

I made the mistake of introducing the old War TARDIS (or battle TARDIS, who knows) into a game, and had to do some fast-talking to explain why they couldn't just turn giant and ram the Daleks' moonbase.

Could you tell me what those explanations were, if you can remember? Such plans have also been made at our table. The only reason the episode ended with an explosion and the Tardis flying away instead of the Tardis flying through the ship was that we try to stay as close as possible to the series.





SMALL SPOILER FOR THE 2011 CHRISTMAS SPECIAL:







In the The Doctor, The Widow and the Wardrobe there is the scene where the widow(sorry can't remember her name) picks the lock of the policebox. My thoughts: Hah, that's the answer to my threat, apparently humans can ... oh ... it isn't the Tardis.