In the Eleventh Doctor story “The Time of Angels” (2010), the Doctor journeys to the planet Alfava Metraxis, where the spaceship Byzantium has crashed. Hidden inside is a Weeping Angel.
“First, inevitably, the idea, the fantasy, the fairy tale. Then, scientific calculation. Ultimately, fulfilment crowns the dream . . . For me, a [spaceship] is only a means, only a method of reaching the depths of space, and not an end in itself . . . There’s no doubt that it’s very important to have [spaceships] since they will help mankind to settle elsewhere in the Universe. But what I’m working for is this resettling . . . The whole idea is to move away from the Earth to settlements in space.”
—Konstantin Tsiolkovsky (1903) in The Investigation of Universal Space by Means of Reactive Devices, NASA translation (1964)
Well, of course we’re going to start with the TARDIS. The now obsolete Type 40 TT Capsule, of which there were only 305 registered on Gallifrey, has been serving the Doctor for centuries of phone box travel. The ship was meant to have six pilots, but the Doctor just about gets by on his own. (Well, most of the time.) According to the Twelfth Doctor episode “Flatline,” if the TARDIS were ever to land with its true weight, it would fracture the surface of the Earth.
The TARDIS may change its appearance the millisecond it lands, in order to better fit with its environment. But the “chameleon circuit,” responsible for the change, got broken, so the blue police phone box look is here to stay. (The chameleon circuit breakdown was a way to cut down costs and not to have to build a new TARDIS exterior set for every new story. It’s similar to the USS Enterprise in Star Trek, which was originally envisaged as splitting into a saucer section, which then landed wherever. Too expensive and time-consuming for every new planet, so they famously came up with the transporter idea.)
Well, the actual phone boxes exist, though the BBC, shifty devils, actually came to own the copyright of the London police box design, so the London police couldn’t build any more without BBC permission!
The Genesis Ark was a prison ship, created by the Time Lords during The Last Great Time War, which held millions of Daleks. Kind of useful and scary at the same time, the Ark had a life support system and a navigation engine. But the Daleks stole it, brought it to Earth, and released millions of Daleks into the skies above London. That surely can’t be good.
The Ark, according to Dalek Sec, needed an area of thirty square miles.
Unlikely.
The Webstar was a starship made of silk and strengthened by dark energy. It’s not everyone’s first thought when considering travel across the cosmos, even if it is the Whoniverse. Each Webstar could be steered by a single Racnoss, with the pilot being able to teleport to and from the surface of a planet, merely adding to the sheer improbability of the whole affair.
An eight-pointed webbed star, looking very much like something a spider created in the vacuum of space.
Unlikely.
This spacecraft was used by the Judoon to capture alien criminals. When the rocket lands, a long exit ramp appears, and huge numbers of Judoon soldiers troop out onto the unsuspecting planet. Powered by pulse fusion engines, Judoon rockets can cross the solar system in forty-five minutes. That’s pretty fast.
Classic-looking rockets with four landing prongs and four boosters.
More likely. Nuclear pulse propulsion is a hypothetical method of spacecraft propulsion that uses nuclear explosions for thrust. As to crossing the solar system in forty-five minutes: assuming the solar system has a diameter of over seven billion miles, the Judoon rocket would have to be traveling at 3.37 million miles a second. Unlikely.
The spaceship that famously crashed into London’s Big Ben, the Slitheen craft was a faster-than-light ship, which used a slipstream engine to work its way through space (and crash into Big Ben).
Looking much like a fat, grey Raxacoricofallapatorian frisbee.
You do the “math.”
Okay, for sheer cool, this spacecraft is some concept. Designed by the Cult of Skaro, its mission was to explore the void that exists between the dimensions of space. Sure, no one knows a lot about such voids, but that’s no doubt the point of the mission. Allegedly, the ship could separate from time and space, which it would need to get into those all-important voidy bits. Finally, as it has no detectable mass or heat, it can become invisible. Apparently.
Invisible.
Nope. Seems someone just liked the sound of “Dalek Void Ship” and went with it.
The SS Madame de Pompadour is a fifty-first-century energy trawler, which collects dark matter in its rotating arms that also double up as the ship’s method of propulsion. The Pompadour starship has a crew of around fifty people, and was also famous for its deadly keen crew. Numbering also about fifty, the crew of clockwork repair droids would be ready to fix the ship at any cost to the crew, or themselves.
Much like a space station, only far creepier.
As likely as Trump winning the Nobel Prize for Literature.
The Sycorax Armada was the fleet of asteroid ships used by the Sycorax race for space travel. Literally built from asteroids, these city ships were so huge that they created shockwaves when they entered the Earth’s atmosphere, and eclipsed the Sun.
Like gigantic flying rocks. And watch out, their shockwaves will shatter all the glass in your home.
This one’s not so improbable. Scientists and engineers dream of moving asteroids in the near future when the day comes to mine them for their mineral wealth. Having said that, no one is yet talking about turbocharging those babies.
The Flagship forms part of the Sontaran attack fleet. Around its “waist” is a belt of dozens of smaller Sontaran scout ships, spherical crafts accommodating one soldier each. The Flagship is resistant to nuclear weapons and carries a planet-ravaging cannon, revealed when the ship slips into battle mode (Sontarans are far from subtle).
Like a cosmic flying bug—a large sphere with eight humongous claws; four on the top half and four on the bottom.
Nope.
The Ark is a gigantic Generation Starship created millions of years into the future. It’s on a 700-year mission to relocate the entire population of the dying Earth; including humans, animals, and a one-eyed race of aliens called Monoids. While it has an onboard city and a huge jungle, most of the humans are actually held at “microcell size” within storage trays, with the exception of a crew of human guardians and Monoids.
We only ever see a portion of the ship’s exterior, but a map suggests that it’s a circular ship with a huge metallic roof. Basically, then, a flying shed.
According to American sci-fi writer Kim Stanley Robinson, pretty tricky.