Does the TARDIS have Atrium circuits?

[senko]

Was rewatching the snowmen and it hit me that tall staircase + ladder is all far (relatively speaking) outside the tardis not to mention the cloudbank. So would that mean at some point the TARDIS picked up a functioning Atrium circuit that can build things outside its shell and just doesn't use it?

[Stormcrow]

I wouldn't take Moffat being Victorian-whimsical too seriously, especially in a Christmas special. He tosses out one-offs that "don't count" ever again. Who knows? Maybe the staircase was some OTHER piece of technology not even invented by the Time Lords.

[senko]

I have to admit a lot of the glimpses we see of Gallifrey they seem to be at a much lower tech level than you'd expect e.g. the invasion of Arcadia special.

[da professor]

The Timelords got so worried about abuse of certain technologies that they locked them away. Perhaps they went a bit overboard, causing their overall tech level to drop, explaining why in RAW ancient Gallifreyan tech is higher than the current stuff.

[senko]

That is the rule's explanation I was actually thinking more current series vs older one though. First time we see a timelord other than the doctor he's floating around and vanishing without a TARDIS (easy enough to replicate), then we have the matrix an entire virutal world you can enter and exit, old "obsolete" teleportation circuits and so on. In the current series the glimpses we've seen a things like hard drive cyber brains implants, that scanner of the sky trench's, the body armour of the guards still being used in the midst of a war. Which doesn't even touch on the hints of things in the books. It just seems the vast imagination of the time lord society created in the original run has been replaced by a need to make it 'mesh' (like the sonic sunglasses on an incarnation who's personality isn't really suited to it) and as a result we've lost the magic of their advanced tech.