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From Memory Alpha, the free Star Trek reference
(written from a Production point of view)
Doctor Who is a long-running British science fiction television program, and one of the few science fiction franchises which is older than Star Trek. Doctor Who is about the adventures of a mysterious time traveler called the Doctor, who travels through time and space with (usually Human) companions, fighting monsters and righting wrongs. It debuted on the BBC on November 23, 1963, and ran continuously until 1989. In 1996 a TV movie was co produced by the BBC and Universal Pictures as a pilot for a proposed new series which was never made. When the BBC regained sole rights to the program however, it was successfully brought back in 2005 and the revived series is considered "the flagship" show of BBC One. Like Star Trek: The Original Series, the show has spawned four spin-off series: K-9 and Company, Torchwood, The Sarah Jane Adventures and K-9.
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[edit] Doctor Who references in Star Trek
Star Trek has referenced Doctor Who on at least three occasions. In TNG: "The Neutral Zone", an on-screen graphic of Clare Raymond's family listed William Hartnell, Patrick Troughton, Jon Pertwee, Tom Baker, Peter Davidson and Colin Baker among her descendants. These are the first six actors who played the role of the Doctor on Doctor Who. ("Peter Davidson" is a misspelling of Peter Davison.) At the time that "The Neutral Zone" was filmed, Sylvester McCoy had been cast as the Seventh Doctor, but few of his stories had been aired in the United States.
The Argolis Cluster, first mentioned in TNG: "I Borg", was named after the planet Argolis, seen in the 1980 Doctor Who serial The Leisure Hive.
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The time-travel pod encountered by the Enterprise NX-01 in ENT: "Future Tense" was influenced by the TARDIS, the time machine from Doctor Who. Specifically, the interior of the TARDIS is larger than its exterior (or "dimensionally transcendental"), and the time-travel pod was also bigger on the inside than on the outside. The exterior of the TARDIS is in the shape of a British police box and Mike Sussman, co-writer of "Future Tense", noted: "My idea of the ship morphing into a police call box was immediately nixed by the producers!" (Star Trek Monthly issue 108)
Additionally, many fans of both shows have noticed a similarity between the Borg and the Cybermen, popular recurring Doctor Who monsters who debuted in the 1966 serial The Tenth Planet.
[edit] Star Trek references in Doctor Who
[edit] Television series
Star Trek was not directly referenced in the original 1963–1989 series of Doctor Who, although the 1966 serial The Power of the Daleks took place on a rocky planet named Vulcan, and occasionally writers have called energy weapons "phasers" (e.g. The Horns Of Nimon and Terror of the Vervoids). References to warp drive, Starfleet, and even UFP-like entities (Galaxy 4) are made frequently in the original series, but not in any Star Trek context, and some of these references even predate the Trek franchise. Around the time the Original Series began, Doctor Who began featuring a technology called Transmat which functions similar to the transporter (The Moonbase, et al).
In the classic television series, the mechanism that enables the TARDIS to take the form of a police box is usually called a "chameleon circuit". However, in the 1996 BBC/Universal co-produced TV Movie, the Doctor refers to the mechanism as a "cloaking device".
There were at least two direct references to Star Trek in the 21st century Doctor Who revival. In the episode "The Empty Child", Rose expressed dismay at the Doctor's low-tech approach to problem-solving (for example, asking questions instead of scanning for alien tech) and says, "Give me some Spock!" Later in the same episode, Rose introduced the Doctor to Captain Jack Harkness as "Mr. Spock", and Harkness briefly referred to the Doctor by this name before being corrected. In "Fear Her", the Doctor taught a child the Vulcan salute.
The Doctor also shares some similarities to Vulcans. The Third Doctor often performed the equivalent of a Vulcan nerve pinch and the Tenth Doctor has on several occasions performed a telepathic link very similar to a mind meld.
Star Trek has been referenced twice in the Doctor Who spin-off series The Sarah Jane Adventures. In Warriors of Kudlak, when Luke Smith asks Clyde Langer for his cell phone while aboard a spaceship, another character scoffs that it will be useless in space unless he knows Captain Kirk's phone number. And in Mona Lisa's Revenge, Clyde describes Luke as being "all science and logic and Spocky stuff like that".
[edit] Other media
Star Trek has been referred to several times in original Doctor Who novels; for example, in the novel The Left-Handed Hummingbird by Kate Orman, the Doctor's companion Bernice Summerfield says that the first time she saw Star Trek, she thought it was a documentary. The Blue Angel by Paul Magrs has an extended pastiche of Star Trek with analogues of Captain Kirk, the Enterprise and the Federation. The audio play Bang-Bang-A-Boom! takes the pastiche even further, taking place on a space station called "Dark Space 8" and featuring supporting characters and events spoofing various elements of Trek-style scifi.
The audiobook original novel Pest Control by Peter Anghelides, the Doctor's companion Donna Noble gives herself and the Doctor aliases based on Star Trek characters.
[edit] Crossover concept
In 2009, Russell T Davies, the writer/producer who was responsible for Doctor Who from 2005–2009, told an interviewer for The Times of London:
- "I would have loved to have done a Star Trek crossover. The very first year, we talked about it. Then Star Trek finally went off air. Landing the TARDIS on board the Enterprise would have been magnificent. Can you imagine what their script department would have wanted, and what I would have wanted? It would have been the biggest battle." [1]
Due to the vast nature of both franchises however, and the various international distribution rights owned by multiple companies, it is unlikely such a crossover would ever have been produced.
[edit] Actors who have appeared in both franchises
Numerous actors have had credited roles for episodes and/or films set in both the Star Trek and Doctor Who franchises. Gregg Palmer also appeared in both, but his Star Trek role was uncredited.
- ↑ The filming of "Shada" was interrupted by a strike, and the serial was never completed; however, a partial reconstruction of the story with linking narration was later released on video.
- ↑ This is a 7-part animated serial airing in the UK in late 2009 on the BBC's Red Button service and later BBC 2. It is not considered part of any particular season of the series.
Several other actors, including Alexander Siddig, as well as some of those listed above including David Warner and Daphne Ashbrook, have also performed in audio dramas based upon Doctor Who and produced by Big Finish Productions. Licensed by the BBC, the audios exist in a grey area of canon as, unlike Paramount Pictures and Star Trek, the BBC has never decreed what constitutes canon in the Doctor Who franchise.
[edit] Production personnel who have worked on both franchises
Composer John Debney, who composed music for episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, also composed the score for the 1996 Doctor Who TV movie co-produced by Universal Pictures and the BBC for Fox Television.
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
- Doctor Who at Wikipedia
- Star Trek at the TARDIS Index File, a Doctor Who wiki