An Unoriginal Beginning

I wonder how many thousands of Doctor Who fans have blogs or pages or image galleries called “Bigger on the Inside.” Not to mention the various official sites that probably have a page or a header by that name, or all the posters of the TARDIS with that as a caption (I have one of those on the wall of my TV room at this very moment).

I actually devoted some time trying to think of something else to name this blog— something more distinctive and different, something more original. But the problem is, “Bigger on the Inside” is simply the perfect title for what I want this blog to be about. Nothing else covers it quite so well as that.

Not just because I’m a Doctor Who fan and this blog will include Doctor Who fan stuff, although both are true. It’s more the other way around: I’m a Doctor Who fan because the phrase “Bigger on the Inside” describes so much more than just the Doctor’s TARDIS, and the things it describes are exactly the things I’m interested in, and want to talk about here.

A lot of articles have tried to describe the “indefinable magic” of Doctor Who. Usually they focus on the kinds of stories the series tells. Something about the particular style of science fiction/adventure Doctor Who presents, or the eccentric humor, or the imagination of its madly creative Universe, or the underlying philosophy— or the way all these things come together. And all of those things do contribute— but they also change more often than many commentators realize. But I think the magic is that the whole series is built around the most potent symbol of Story itself that I’ve ever come across.

The TARDIS looks like a blue box no bigger than a garden shed. Open the doors and it’s bigger on the inside. Walk through those doors and it can take you, as the Doctor once said, “anywhere in time and space, anything that ever happened or ever will.”

TARDIS

Also known as A STORY.

So that’s the connecting thread that connects everything this blog is going to be about, and that’s why “Bigger on the Inside” was, in the end, the only possible title:

  • The TARDIS is bigger on the inside.
  • Books are bigger on the inside (even the nonfiction ones).
  • Stories are bigger on the inside.
    • Even the bad ones, badly told, are bigger than the words or pictures that tell them, and the great ones are vast beyond comprehension: you can read or watch them over and over and never stop noticing new things.

And most of all, people are bigger on the inside. The average human head is rather smaller around than the average human waistline (in my case the ratio drops every year). But the inside of our little round skulls is larger than all the galaxies put together. That’s true of everyone, even that one guy you’re thinking is a counterexample (you know you thought of someone).

So: Bigger on the Inside. A blog about the insides of TARDISes, the insides of Stories, and the insides of my head (it’s the only one I have access to). I really don’t know exactly where it’s going to go.

But that’s the fun part.

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