Having just spent the last week packing up a ridiculous amount of accumulated crap, signing bunches of paperwork, and then unpacking some but good-god-nowhere-near-all-of-it-why-oh-why-do-we-still-have-all-this stuff, I’m starting to see a real advantage to spending one’s centuries in a TARDIS.

As we’ve moved house, we’ve stumbled across a whole lot of keepsakes that we’ve held on to for a vast stretch of years. They’re the kinds of things that when originally packed had too much meaning to let go, but have remained in boxes for so long that meaning may or may not have since faded. Sorting will take a redonkulous amount of time and effort.

I suspect the TARDIS is littered with such shelves and boxes, a collection that the Doctor has never bothered to curate. Hints at that tendency abound. For example, at least a couple separate times we’ve seen a wardrobe area littered with clothing from bygone Regenerations (and I doubt the Doctor even knows what all is lurking in the rooms filled with clothing his Companions have—or could have—used). And when Clara was lost in the depths during Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS, we saw an array of memorabilia (such as the pinwheel that was in young Amelia Pond’s yard in The Eleventh Hour) suggestive of packrat tendencies I know all too well.

How convenient would it be not ever to have to clear any of that stuff out?

I’m don’t think we’ve ever seen it in exactly these terms on screen, but I know of at least one audio (Relative Dimensions, if memory serves) in which we learn the TARDIS has archived all past Companions’ rooms. We also know that the Doctor has forcibly removed rooms on more than one occasion—in Castrovalva, for example—but that the TARDIS can, apparently, grow them back as necessary; at the beginning of Paradise Towers, the Doctor bemoans his decision to jettison the swimming pool, yet we know it’s back by The Eleventh Hour, and even get a peek at it ourselves in Journey.

Taken all together, that’s strong evidence that the TARDIS has a wide array of abilities, and a great deal of self-determination for the shape her interior will have. I get the distinct impression she takes the Doctor’s preferences (including the subconscious ones) into account. What I wouldn’t give to be able simply to archive everything without worrying about running out of space, or whether the container would get wet or moldy or moth-eaten!

The tough decisions I’ve had to make this week about what should or shouldn’t be kept, or what furniture will or won’t fit into our new home, would be rendered moot. I’ve talked about wanting a TARDIS before, but boy howdy! does the desperation borne of this week’s travails trump the other reasons. Having rooms that adjust themselves to fit the dimensions of their contents would kick serious ass.

Then again, given my scattered state of mind, maybe all I really need is a Zero Room. I’ll just pretend I have one, and that the rest will follow in time.