10 Doctor Who Facts Most Fans Don't Know

How exactly to write the name of the Doctor's ship has been the source of contention for quite some time. Is TARDIS a universally-accepted acronym? Or is Tardis merely a name, like one you would give to a sail boat?

According to David J Howe and Stephen James Walker's unofficial guide to Doctor Who, the sail boat concept was the original intention by the creators of the show, something that is backed up by a lot of the dialogue in its early days. For example, the First Doctor and his companions rarely refer to the TARDIS, but rather "the ship" - Steven Moffat even made a nostalgic joke about this when the First and Twelfth Doctors met in Twice Upon A Time.

The Doctor Who annuals also appeared to follow this pattern of the ship being dubbed "Tardis", rather than that word being an acronym. Sometimes, the stories in those pages would refer to the Doctor and his companions returning "to Tardis" rather than "to the TARDIS", as is the norm now.

For years, fans were hung up on the line about Susan inventing the TARDIS acronym, which perhaps suggested something larger. Maybe she was just a trendsetter who dubbed the Doctor's rickety old Type 40 Tardis, and the Doctor's legend caught on and influenced the branding of future time capsules.