This Working TARDIS From Doctor Who Travels Through Resonite

Doctor Who fans successfully recreated a working TARDIS inside Resonite.

Ultrawidegamer and Navy3001 are firing up the console and inviting curious users along as they world-hop with the TARDIS they’ve built out of their passion for the hit BBC show.

Their latest TARDIS is capable of carrying up to five users to different world instances and holds a system of inter-dimensional hallways with additional rooms.

Yes, the TARDIS is larger on the inside. And when it travels, all users inside of it are carried and appear in-world together.

“Before this TARDIS existed nobody thought what we were doing was even possible,” Ultra explained.

The two originally sought to create a rough concept with a 3D model created by a different user. The plausibility of their project remained dubious until Navy experienced a breakthrough in design.

“The day that I did the first worldscript with the TARDIS, I spammed [Ultra] with messages saying, ‘I did it!’.”

To commemorate the accomplishment, Navy took a photo of the TARDIS sitting in a field of green grass, a snapshot of a random world he’d landed in.

It was the first of many adventures to follow.

Parking The TARDIS

The virtual TARDIS has gone through several iterations, some with varying features.

The interior originally reflected the First Doctor’s console room, but like an ever-expanding clubhouse they added new hallways, rooms and features, eventually implementing a placement system which lets them park the TARDIS in a spot other than their chosen world’s spawn area. There’s even an animated tunnel which appears on-screen during the engine warp sequence to give an additional feeling of immersion.

It’s still up to the driver to make sure the TARDIS lands correctly. There are so many buttons on the console. How does anyone know which one to press?

“Locally for [the driver] the button highlights as it needs to be pressed and then it will slowly fade out,” Ultra explained. “If we don’t click it in that amount of time then we lose the indicator. It has to be done quickly and correctly.”

In other words, they’ve made a little game out of controlling the TARDIS that requires you to behave a lot like a wild Doctor steering the ship through space and time.

I joined a travel demonstration featuring Navy, Ultra, and their friends CJay and LLax. I’d been a fan of Doctor Who for a while so visiting a working copy of the show’s creation in VR felt surreal and exciting. As Navy buzzed around the console, our group chattered about which era of Doctor Who was our favorite. Ultra prefers David Tennant while Navy likes Christopher Eccleston. I have a lot of favorites but I enjoyed John Hurt’s acting the most.

Just as we got into the subject, the engine stopped whirring and the lights powered down. Something had gone wrong. Our guide brandished a sonic screwdriver and moved toward the engine room with the rest of us in tow. The power core was missing! We had to leave the TARDIS in order to search for it.

Nowhere To Hide

“Just so you guys know, staying in the TARDIS does not mean you’ll be safe,” Navy announced to the group before heading toward the front door. Beyond the main exit, I could see a green office hallway. It wasn’t until our group stepped outside that I realized where we were.

Navy documents his adventures with the TARDIS on his Youtube channel. In order to facilitate the most fun for everyone, he creates different campaign-style worlds to land in and will set the engine’s power core to spawn somewhere on that map. The day of our interview, we were thrown in the TARDIS into a backrooms world full of monsters. We would have to make our way through the maze of corridors, retrieve the engine component, and head back to the TARDIS without dying.

Walking into the dreary green hallways felt like a nightmare. We could hear occasional growling but couldn’t see any monsters yet. CJay fluttered right behind me while LLax bravely flanked every corner possible.

“The key is to make sure you’re not the slowest”, CJay advised as we snuck along.

Eventually we were confronted by a lumbering yellow creature called “Mister Happy” who chased us for several minutes while another shadow monster moved toward us in increments, like a weeping angel. CJay died in the middle of all the chaos. The rest of us ran aimlessly until we found the power core and scrambled back toward the TARDIS.

I was relieved when we landed in the next world. Mercifully peaceful, it featured a purplish landscape with gorgeous starlike formations floating in the sky.

Looking Ahead

Ultra and Navy are nowhere near done when it comes to updating their TARDIS. They plan to implement as many interdimensional rooms from the Doctor Who series as possible. And of course, another remodel is also in the works.

They both have found Resonite to be the place for their adventures, as opposed to other places like VRChat, because of how much freedom the tooling offers them in creating whatever they can dream of.

“All other games that are similar to [here], there are hard limitations on some stuff you can do,” said Ultra.

Navy and Ultra also agree on how easy it is to collaborate on creations together due to Resonite’s live-building capabilities.

Interested users who want to take a look at the duo’s past TARDIS creations can visit their online museum. To see the current TARDIS in action, try visiting their related virtual pub called The Navy Seal.

The Doctor might just stop by if there’s space to join.

Resonite carries very positive reviews on Steam and you’ll need a fairly powerful PC to take you through your journeys there.