As any fan of Doctor Who knows, the title character's ship does some pretty incredible things even when it's not traveling through time and space. For starters, the TARDIS is bigger in the inside, letting it keep its diminutive Police Box shape even though there's room for the entire crew (not to mention several swimming pools) on board.
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Of course, that idea is a little difficult to get across in toys and models, which tend to be limited by known physical laws. However, one clever fan has discovered a workaround, giving a model TARDIS back its dimensional transcendentality.
Greg Kumparak, who used to be the mobile editor at TechCrunch, started by building a TARDIS model with a removable side. Behind the Police Box doors he put a distinctive wavy pattern that probably would have qualified for a special effect in the classic Doctor Who, a series which ran from 1963 to 1989.
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It looks pretty lame, but the magic begins when you hold up your smartphone or tablet to the device.
If you look at the TARDIS through a custom app that Kumparak designed with Blender, the pattern disappears, replaced with a 3D point of view that looks just like the console room from the most recent series of the TV show.
The perspective changes as you move your screen, giving the illusion of an impossibly massive interior. Kumparak spent days creating the app, but the results are worth it -- it's a way-cool effect.
We hope the BBC gives Kumparak a call, which would allow this augmented-reality TARDIS to get to market ASAP. In the meantime, give us your ideas on how to take the idea even further in the comments.
Homepage image courtesy of BBC America
BONUS: Doctor Who Season 7 Premieres in New York
Doctor Who Returns
Matt Smith (The Doctor) and Karen Gillan (Amy Pond) attended a special screening of the premiere of Doctor Who Series 7 at New York City's Ziegfeld Theater. The episode, "Asylum of the Daleks," debuts on BBC America on Sept. 1.
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This story originally published on Mashable here.