The Doctor has always called the Tardis "she," I believe, but I took that to be like a guy calling his car "she" or ships being called "she" even when they are the USS Chester Nimitz. The Tardis can only be really female if she has gender--that was what I meant. But I'm no scholar of Old Who and have no idea what the established canon is from then. Is there some more specific bit of info about it?
I imagine Tardises are grown not through sexual reproduction, but more like the way crystals grow, through nucleation--or some corals, through cell division. That's more technical than it needs to be--I doubt the writers have given a great deal of thought to the rules of Tardis creation.
I didn't much like the "You sexy thing" comment, but it did seem to me to be a remark one makes to one's car rather than one's girlfriend--or maybe to some brilliant piece of architecture or computer code. "Sexy" has come to mean "ingenious" in some contexts. But it's that comment (and others like it) that led me to think of the Doctor as youngish. He seemed to be looking at the Tardis like a new hotrod or a Nimbus 2000 Quiddich broomstick.
My sense of the Tardis having gender (sort of)had more to do with him calling her "Dear," which is not something you say to your car, but might say to a person you knew well. (But then he calls Churchill "Dear" too, so it's just a habit.)
That the Tardis is the Doctor's OTP is emerging from other things, as we've noted: the fact that they regenerate together; that when 10 died, the Tardis nearly did too; that when 10 was unconscious after regenerating from 9, the Tardis could not do translations; and of course the fact that the Doctor is happiest and safest in the Tardis, yet does not treat it as his home--that is, not as a house. But beyond that, as you say, there's little to really go on.
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I imagine Tardises are grown not through sexual reproduction, but more like the way crystals grow, through nucleation--or some corals, through cell division. That's more technical than it needs to be--I doubt the writers have given a great deal of thought to the rules of Tardis creation.
I didn't much like the "You sexy thing" comment, but it did seem to me to be a remark one makes to one's car rather than one's girlfriend--or maybe to some brilliant piece of architecture or computer code. "Sexy" has come to mean "ingenious" in some contexts. But it's that comment (and others like it) that led me to think of the Doctor as youngish. He seemed to be looking at the Tardis like a new hotrod or a Nimbus 2000 Quiddich broomstick.
My sense of the Tardis having gender (sort of)had more to do with him calling her "Dear," which is not something you say to your car, but might say to a person you knew well. (But then he calls Churchill "Dear" too, so it's just a habit.)
That the Tardis is the Doctor's OTP is emerging from other things, as we've noted: the fact that they regenerate together; that when 10 died, the Tardis nearly did too; that when 10 was unconscious after regenerating from 9, the Tardis could not do translations; and of course the fact that the Doctor is happiest and safest in the Tardis, yet does not treat it as his home--that is, not as a house. But beyond that, as you say, there's little to really go on.