“They were dying to do it,” Russell T Davies says Doctor Who/Star Trek crossover almost happened

Back in 2015, Doctor Who Showrunner Steven Moffat said that, should it arise, he would do a Doctor Who/Star Trek crossover “in a heartbeat,” and now it seems that this came fairly close to happening.

He said at the time: “If it crossed over with Star Trek, it would have to be real Star Trek; it would have to be Captain Kirk and Mr Spock. It has to be the Doctor meets Mr Spock – that’s the one you want.

“I mean, would I do it? Yes, in a heartbeat. I think you might find the Americans a little bit trickier to deal with!”

In a new episode of the Pilot TV Podcast, former showrunner Russell T Davies said that he and Steven Moffat were pretty close to making it happen, with a flight to Los Angeles booked and all!

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Steven Moffat would do a classic Star Trek crossover with Doctor Who “in a heartbeat”

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“We tried to get a Doctor Who crossover with them. We really tried,” Davies said.

“They were dying to do it. Actually, they started talking about it. [Star Trek: Strange New Worlds co-creator] Akiva Goldsman mentioned it in an interview the other day. We were dying to do it. It reached the point where me and Steven Moffat had tickets booked to go to LA to go to the writers’ room to try to work out how to do it and we were talking about more than one episode. And then it’s going to be, in fairness, the nightmare was, with the impossibility of it, to get Disney and Paramount to share it.”

Due to logistical and ownership reasons between Paramount and Disney/BBC, the crossover never got going and Davies, being Davies, teases that it would have been great, honest ‘guv: “In the end… we left it with a will and our tickets were cancelled and we never got there. We had such good ideas! Oh, I won’t say the ideas.”

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As poorly as Doctor Who ended its recent run under Davies – ended? The whole thing was a disaster, let’s be honest – it’s always exciting to think of such a crossover between two of sci-fi’s biggest franchises: “I always thought it had to be Strange New Worlds because I said ‘you’ve got to get the Doctor on the Enterprise’ – rather than on Discovery or something so far back,” Davies said, echoing Moffat’s thoughts from a few years back.

“We were talking about it. Just the Doctor on the Enterprise and say, Spock on the TARDIS. Nurse Chapel on the TARDIS is one because she is a companion, isn’t she?”

Star Trek and Who have crossed over in secondary mediums over the years, with East Side Games making two mobile games in recent years and IDW publishing Star Trek: The Next Generation/Doctor Who: Assimilation, but the biggest nod had to be in the aforementioned Strange New Worlds when Pelia mentioned a mysterious time-travelling Doctor.

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For now, these will just remain fun little nods and asides, but Davies seems to think there are fans on both sides that would like to see it happen, so as illogical as it seems, it still might happen: “We’re adults but, if you’re eight years old, don’t you want to see the TARDIS meeting the Enterprise and the Enterprise meeting the TARDIS? That’s how it works in your head. I think for a young audience actually it would have opened up both shows to audiences they don’t have.”

For now, these two worlds, while skimming past each other several times in recent years, are entirely separate, but that’s enough for the fans, just as Transformers exist in the world of Doctor Who – look up Marvel UK Death’s Head – so too, the Enterprise and the TARDIS may one day collide in deep, deep space.

It’s great being a fan, even when your beloved franchises aren’t being loved by those guiding them as much as they once were.

Thoughts? I know you have them and I wanna hear ’em all.

Watch the Podcast:

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