Russell T Davies and Steven Moffat plotted Doctor Who/Star Trek crossover

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Russell T Davies revealed that he and Steven Moffat tried to devise a plan for a television crossover between Doctor Who and Star Trek: Strange New Worlds – and it went as far as booking a flight to Los Angeles.

On the Pilot TV Podcast, Davies told Boyd Hilton, the co-author of his memoir The Queerest of Folk about the plan, which had been previously mooted.

“We tried to get a Doctor Who crossover with them. We really tried, yeah, yeah, yeah. I should have put this in the book. I didn’t put this in the book! It was kind of embargoed at the time and so I didn’t talk about it.”

“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 impossible of it would be to get Disney and Paramount to share it.”

Both franchises did manage to include some Easter eggs for each other with the TARDIS appearing in the the background of a scene in Strange New Worlds and Pelia mentioning a mysterious time-travelling Doctor. In Doctor Who, the Fifteenth Doctor suggested a visit.

The timing and logistics couldn’t be worked out between the respective streamers of the two franchises.

“So, to get Paramount and Disney to agree and to get two series to coincide so the transmission of Doctor Who might coincide. And, in the end, we kind of said… But 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.”

Davies did continue to briefly outline some of his ideas.

“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. 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?”

Doctor Who Star Trek game crossover

The worlds of Star Trek and Doctor Who did collide in two mobile games by East Side Games; Star Trek: Lower Decks – The Badgey Directive and Doctor Who: Lost in Time. There was also an IDW crossover comic book titled Star Trek: The Next Generation/Doctor Who: Assimilation.

Davies holds out hope for an eventual television crossover.

“Who knows? And there will be a new Doctor Who coming along and there’s such a good will there in that Star Trek empire. I know a lot of staff have moved on but there’s a lot of love between those two worlds.”

“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.”

Davies’ new memoir, The Queerest of Folk: A Life in Television is now available.