And another Enterprise crew member would have been his companion on the TARDIS.
Doctor Who legend Russell T. Davies threw even more wood on the fandom fire while guest-hosting a new episode of the Pilot TV podcast this week. During the show, Davies revealed that he and the executives running Star Trek were intently trying to make an epic crossover happen between the two science fiction franchises. And the must-see Strange New Worlds event would have featured “The Doctor on the Enterprise and say Spock [Ethan Peck] on the TARDIS,” according to Davies.
Sadly, Davies didn’t mention the Star Trek/Doctor Who crossover in his new book, which the former Who showrunner was promoting on Pilot TV. However, he did address the proposed event on the podcast by saying: “We tried to get a Doctor Who crossover with them. We really tried. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I didn’t put this in the book [because] it was kind of embargoed at the time, and so I didn’t talk about it.”
Davies actually teased "more than one episode" of the Star Trek and Doctor Who crossover, which never happened. Plus, he brought up the fact that Nurse Chapel (Jess Bush) would have served as Spock's companion, and she would have appeared on the TARDIS, too. Davies continued during the same sit-down by saying:
“They were dying to do it. Actually, they’ve started talking about it. 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 [Doctor Who writer and producer] had tickets booked to go to LA to go to the writers room to try to work out how to do it.”
Ultimately, the Star Trek/Doctor Who crossover featuring Ethan Peck’s Lt. Spock aboard the time-traveling telephone box didn’t happen, but it wasn’t because Strange New Worlds showrunners Akiva Goldsman and Henry Alonso Myers wouldn't have come up with a meaningful storyline with Davies.
No, The Doctor didn’t visit Strange New Worlds’ version of the USS Enterprise because of the politics which came out of Star Trek belonging to Paramount Skydance under CBS Studios and the BBC's Doctor Who being co-produced by Disney, at the time the Trek-Whoniverse crossover was being contemplated.
Personally, as much as I enjoyed Ncuti Gatwa’s portrayal of the 15th Doctor, I honestly would have wanted to watch David Tennant’s version of Doctor Who interact with Mr. Spock in the crossover event that never happened. Strange New Worlds came out in 2022, and Tennant, who originally played the 10th Doctor, returned as the 14th iteration of the character in 2023 for the three must-see 60th anniversary episodes.
So, the timeline would have matched up perfectly for Tennant’s beloved character to boldly go where no Doctor had gone before on Strange New Worlds. Unfortunately, unless someone has a real TARDIS at their disposal, the time has literally passed on that particular Star Trek/Doctor Who crossover.
However, wouldn’t a Trek into the Whoniverse be a clever way to launch future Doctor Who and Star Trek streaming or television series? I’d certainly tune in. How about you? Share your thoughts and comments with us on the Redshirts Always Die Facebook and X pages.
Live long and prosper, Trekkies!
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