Was the TARDIS an inspiration for the time-traveling phone booth?
The 1989 film Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure features a pair of dim-witted teenagers traveling through time to retrieve historical figures to make an oral presentation for their history class.
Bill and Ted use a phone booth as their time-traveling vessel.
The creators of Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure originally intended their time travel vessel to be a 1969 van. They were concerned that the van might too closely resemble the Delorean in Back to the Future.
The time machine was initially going to look like a 1969 Chevy van, but the filmmakers decided that was too similar to the DeLorean from "Back to the Future." Instead, they made it look like a vintage phone booth.
The television series Doctor Who originally aired in 1963. "The Doctor" is a Time-Lord who explores the universe usually fighting off some type of threat at different points in history.
The Police Box that the Doctor travels around in is really a Type 40 time and space machine from Gallifrey, his home planet. TARDIS stands for Time And Relative Dimension in Space.
"The Doctor" uses the TARDIS as a time traveling vessel.
The similarities between the TARDIS and a time-traveling phone booth are far more apparent than the similarities between a 1969 van and a DeLorean.
Is there any evidence that the filmmakers of Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure were influenced by the TARDIS from the Doctor Who series?
Best Answer
In-universe, the phone booth (supplied to Bill and Ted by the Three Most Important People in the World) was in fact the inspiration for the TARDIS rather than the other way around, at least according to the officially licensed "Bill & Ted's Most Triumphant Return" comicbook.
Out of universe, the time machine was originally intended to be a time-traveling Hertz van. This was ruled out as being too close to BTTF's DeLorean and substituted for a glass-sided phone booth for visual reasons, primarily to fit in with the "roller-coaster" theming of the movie.
People were still nervous about the time-traveling van being too much like Back to the Future and a change was needed. The idea for the phone booth was suggested by director Stephen Herek, who was looking for something that would provide the exciting visual nature of a roller coaster ride. Both Ed and Chris really liked Stephen, who told them that when he first started reading the script he put it down, put Van Halen on the stereo, and read it while listening to rock music.
Pictures about "Was the TARDIS an inspiration for the time-traveling phone booth?"
Is the TARDIS a telephone booth?
To keep the design within budget it was decided to make the outside resemble a police telephone box: this appearance was explained as being as a result of the mechanism, a "chameleon circuit", that changes the outside appearance of the ship the millisecond it lands (in order to blend in with its environment) being ...Was Bill and Ted inspired by Doctor Who?
Bill & Ted's inspirations were never other similar genre movies. One could argue, because we have a phonebooth, that we were inspired by Doctor Who, but the truth is that it was a van initially. The studio that had it at the time, Warner Bros., was worried about Back to the Future opening, so they made us change it.Why did Bill and Ted use the phone booth?
The phone booth is the time machine in which Bill and Ted travel through time through. Bill and Ted used it to get all the historical figures from the past. It has the appearance of a traditional phone booth with an antenna attached to the top of it.What is the phone booth called in Dr Who?
A classic red telephone box at the heart of a Northamptonshire village has re-materialised as a Tardis to mark Doctor Who's 50th anniversary. The Titchmarsh High Street phone box was adopted by the village hall for \xa31 a year ago and has regenerated through a number of "artistic" makeovers.Doctor Who - Space and Time Extended
Sources: Stack Exchange - This article follows the attribution requirements of Stack Exchange and is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
Images: Castorly Stock, Castorly Stock, Castorly Stock, Castorly Stock