Scuppering the dreams of the kind of science-fiction fans who would just like all of their most beloved characters to climb into one, conveniently spaceship-styled contraption together (and then, possibly, kiss), long-time Doctor Who head honcho Russell T. Davies has confirmed that a crossover between his franchise and Paramount’s Star Trek very nearly happened… before the cosmic forces known as “Disney and Paramount’s egos” intervened to smash the project to bits.
Davies has a new memoir coming out, so he’s making the press rounds at the moment—including an appearance on Empire‘s Pilot TV podcast, where he revealed that the potential crossover was in firm enough territory at one point that he and fellow Who guy Steven Moffat had been booked on flights to go to Los Angeles to talk out plans and logistics with the showrunners of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. (Which had previously laid a bit of winking track for the mash-up by giving Carol Kane’s character a line about her travels with “a time-traveling doctor.”) Asserting (per TrekMovie) that “We really tried,” and that the Star Trek folks were “dying to do it,” Davies says the lovefest was ruined when corporate politics started getting involved.
Noting that this was still happening while Disney was pushing its (ultimately short-lived) investment in the Who franchise, Davies said “The nightmare…would be to get Paramount and Disney to share it.” Saying that basically every co-production in the history of television has involved “bloody, life and death” struggles over who gets to show the crossover first, Davies says the corporate overlords tried to figure out a way to air the crossover episodes close together enough not to cause a problem. Said negotiations came to naught, though, so “In the end our tickets were cancelled and we never got there. We had such good ideas.” But while Davies remains hopeful that some project might one day work out between Star Trek and whatever the next Doctor Who thing is, for now fans will have to content themselves with that one comic book crossover from 2012, and also the, uh, 2,000+ results that come up when we searched “star trek AND doctor who” on A03 this morning.
Keep scrolling for more great stories.