Star Trek: Strange New Worlds’ co-showrunner Akiva Goldsman has revealed a crossover with Doctor Who was very close to happening after last year’s epic Easter egg.
The sixth episode of season 3, titled The Sehlat Who Ate Its Tail – which aired last August – treated fans to the appearance of the TARDIS in the background behind the USS Enterprise, while Commander Pelia (Carol Kane) also suggested she had met a Doctor.
Asked about the Easter egg during a recent interview with Awards Radar, Goldsman discussed how he was actively working with former Who showrunner Russell T Davies on a crossover for years.
“We were trying with Russell to do a crossover. We were for years," he said. “Again, these are the near misses, but we got not unclose, and we had some really cool conversations about it. And so, certainly in our view, I mean, Pelia traveled in the TARDIS. Why not?”
Although The Sehlat Who Ate Its Tail marked the first time Doctor Who and Star Trek have crossed over in live-action, the sci-fi series have made multiple nods towards one another over the years, with one notable example being Doctor Who episode Space Babies, in which the Fifteenth Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa) declares to companion Ruby Sunday (Millie Gibson) that they should visit the Enterprise sometime.
Davies previously expressed his desire to make a crossover happen, saying at a panel in 2024: “We would love to announce a crossover between Star Trek and Doctor Who [but we aren’t doing that today].”
He added: "If anyone can make that happen… it’s fans that can make that happen! Two great big broadcasters, two great big empires – and their lawyers! – would have to come together, but we can do that, can’t we?
“Quite seriously, I’d love it. That [montage] video, that shows you what it would feel like, what it would look like… the joy of it. It must happen!”
no thanks.
how about a Dr Who / Red Dwarf mashup?
Star Trek is, at its very heart, a loving plea for the aspirational possibilities of structure and institutions that respect rights, codes, and moral reasoning/governance, and Dr. Who’s thing is VERY much anti-institution, and heavily individualist with free association vibes, to the point of almost being a big ‘A’ Anarchist manifesto.
They’re both exceptionally good separately, but it would take an INCREDIBLE writer to mesh their themes and vibes in any kind of coherent way that manages to not cheapen both, and - and I say this in the nicest possible way - the Star Trek I’ve seen in the past decade or so doesn’t inspire confidence they have any writers close to that caliber.
Honestly, I’m rather glad it hasn’t happened. I prefer to keep them separate. They’re very different universes.
That said, if one must have a crossover, at least write it such that the Star Trek universe is a separate universe to the Whoniverse and it requires some kind of universe-hopping accident to bring the two together. Both franchises are too well fleshed out for their canons to co-exist in the same fictional universe.
That said, if one must have a crossover, at least write it such that the Star Trek universe is a separate universe to the Whoniverse and it requires some kind of universe-hopping accident to bring the two together. Both franchises are too well fleshed out for their canons to co-exist in the same fictional universe.
From my knowledge, outside of an odd recurring example, that’s generally how Dr. Who works.
Feels like it’s getting into the weeds a bit, but the approaches to the idea of a multiverse in the properties goes a way to handle the issues with canon. Trek has quantum realities, where any event can just be said to happen in a different plane and not affect the main one. Dr. Who however has a single shared timeline and relies on time travel to write events into and out of existence.
So when the 10th Doctor met the crew of the Cerritos? In Trek that’s just a different continuity to the main story, but in Dr. Who it’s currently the reason why the Doctor doesn’t have 3D glasses anymore (He left them behind and Rutherford found them).
Edit: Oh yeah, how could I forget? the Guardian of Forever can also cross over into alternate dimensions and move people between them.
Forgive me for not considering a mobile game cannon.
I don’t think Trek and Doctor Who are particularly different in their handling of timelines and universes.
Most of Trek takes place in the Prime timeline. Time-travel alters it on occasion.
Most of Doctor Who takes place in a single timeline as well, but due to the core concept of the show time-travel (and history-changing stuff) happens a lot more regularly. To get around this there’s the whole concept of “fixed points” that can’t be changed without serious consequences, and beta canon or extended universe explanations as to how the Time Lords “fixed” a certain continuity (the web of time). This tends to give the show a lot more flexibility in its handling of canon, but one could argue that even then there are a host of inconsistencies in New Who that don’t respect the Classic Series canon (or changes that are poorly explained due to poor writing).
Both shows do deal with alternate/parallel universes from time to time, and in much the same way. Trek’s Mirror Universe has equivalents in the two parallel universes in televised Who (the 3rd Doctor story Inferno and the 10th Doctor story Rise of the Cybermen). Edit: it is interesting to note that both these parallel universes depicted lack the Time Lords or an equivalent Doctor. There are, however, parallel Doctors and Time Lords that show up in the audio dramas (e.g. the alternate Gallifreys visited via the Axis in Gallifrey Series 4-6, or David Warner’s Unbound Doctor in the Bernice Summerfield audios).
Both shows consequently also have methods for travelling between universes. Star Trek typically uses a transporter accident, but Discovery also has the mycelial network (can’t recall if the Guardian just does time travel or more like you say). Doctor Who has the TARDIS (although requires something to go badly wrong for it to jump universes) as well as CVEs (Charged Vacuum Emboitments, or effectively tunnels between universes – typically just the Doctor’s main universe and pocket universes adjacent to it).
All that said, without being that familiar with the Lower Decks/Who crossover game, I’d be inclined to treat it as part of the main Trek timeline with an intrusion from the Whoniverse (likewise I understand the IDW crossover comic Assimilation is similar).
it definitely does not mesh well, only as telling a joke or as in passing offscreen maybe, maybe copy some episodes or characthers and repurpose then.
I would not have enjoyed that. no.
When EVE Online has a Doctor Who crossover before Star Trek…
Did that happen?? It’s been so long since I won EVE Online…
Won? I didn’t think that was a game one could win…
I “won” EVE Online after I got a corporate job in sales with plenty of spreadsheets and logistics. Outside of spaceships, it lost a lot of its appeal.
No longer playing it is sometimes a win.
With EVE not playing is always a win.
well, you got me there
yeah a few years ago. you could get items for your character like the 4th Doctors scarf or the 11th’s outfit. some other stuff too.
think of all the polarities they could reverse
All those times Captain Picard was telling Wesley to shut up - it was actually reminding him not to spill the beans and share secrets that the universe was still not ready for yet.
If they did it where time lords aren’t canon… so like a holodeck nov episode, sure.
That would be fun.
It would also be quite fun poking wholes in all the physics implications…… but I don’t think they’d enjoy that the way I would,
I agree, I don’t like the idea in Star Trek canon. If it were a Dr Who episode, and in their canon Star Trek is real, but not the other way around, I’d be fine with that.
Star Trek already has Q and the Traveller. There are canonical gods that defy physics already. I wouldn’t hate a crossover that wasn’t holodeck related.
Also we have tons of time travel and made up radiation and crossing to parallel universes
they have several other gods/god like. organians, douwd, Prophets/pah wraiths. nagilum could be one, the most egnimatic ones.
doctor who apparently also have gods from other realities, the patheon of discord seems to be more powerful than anything in the whoverse.
I’m not saying ST and Who are both about the same level of scifi hardness.
But, the way things work are both entirely different, and a cross over would smash them together.
And then there’s the lore.
Were Time Lords one of the temporal factions? Does that make them the bad guys?
There was a shitty TNG/Doctor Who crossover years ago in comic form:
There have been plenty over the years, way back to the classic series
“shitty” being the operative word here.
Eww. IDW…