This week’s Weekly Wednesday Blogging Challenge question is about One Sci-Fi Item or Ability I Wish Really Existed

My immediate answer to this question was obvious: a transporter from Star Trek.

Think about it! No commuting. No airports. No sitting in traffic. No spending hours getting somewhere when you could simply step onto a transporter pad, shimmer attractively for a few seconds, and materialise at your destination.

Perfect.

Except then I actually thought about it.

And, y’all, there are far too many transporter accidents in Star Trek.

People get turned into children. People get duplicated. People get merged with other people. Occasionally someone disappears into some sort of horrifying transporter limbo. Storms interfere with them. Various forms of radiation interfere with them. Half the time someone announces that they can’t get a lock just when you desperately need them to get a lock.

And even when everything is working properly, you’re dependent on somebody else to operate the thing.

Imagine being ready to leave work and having to contact the transporter room.

“Hello, yes, can you beam me home?”

“Sorry, we’re experiencing unusually high levels of ionisation.”

Cool. Great. Guess I live here now.

So after approximately five minutes of considering my original answer, I have changed my mind.

💙 Give Me a TARDIS

Because why settle for instantaneous travel when I could have instantaneous travel and time travel and a house that is bigger on the inside?

Admittedly, the TARDIS isn’t exactly known for getting you precisely where you intended to go either. You might aim for present-day London and end up in Pompeii. Or on an alien planet. Or several centuries later than planned.

But that’s the thing about the TARDIS: she might not always take me where I want to go, but she’ll always take me where I need to go.

And honestly? I can live with that.

There’s no transporter chief involved. No worrying about whether my molecules are going to be reassembled in the correct order. Just me, my slightly temperamental sentient time machine, and the knowledge that if she’s taken me somewhere unexpected, there’s probably a reason for it.

Possibly a terrifying, universe-threatening reason, admittedly.

But a reason.

So yes. My first instinct was Star Trek technology.

My considered answer is Doctor Who.

I want a TARDIS.

A home, a library, a spaceship and a time machine all rolled into one slightly battered blue box. She might occasionally deposit me in the middle of an alien invasion when I was only trying to go to a bookshop, but that’s okay.

She knows where I need to be.

Although if where I need to be happens to involve Cybermen, Daleks or the Weeping Angels, she and I are going to have words.

What about you? If you could have one piece of sci-fi technology or one sci-fi ability, what would you choose? And, more importantly, have you properly considered all the ways it could go catastrophically wrong?