The Star Trek And Doctor Who Crossover Miniseries Was Killed By One Ridiculous Thing

Why didn't "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds" and "Doctor Who" cross over? The short of it: corporate bickering.

Yes, it's been well documented by now that "Strange New Worlds" and "Doctor Who" nearly collided at one point. Indeed, "Strange New Worlds" co-showrunner Akiva Goldsman has admitted that he and "Doctor Who" writer Russell T. Davies tried to hash out what this crossover would look like. One of the fun ideas they had was to make Pelia (Carol Kane), the USS Enterprise's chief engineer on "Strange New Worlds," one of the Doctor's previous time-traveling companions. This was even teased in the "Strange New Worlds" episode "New Life and New Civilizations," where Pelia noted, "Remind me to tell you about the time I spent with a time-traveling doctor I once knew."

As it turns out, though, the crossover was going to be more elaborate than previously hinted ... and it was shut down for petty reasons. Appearing on the Empire podcast "Pilot TV" (via TrekMovie), Davies revealed that he and his fellow "Doctor Who" writer Steven Moffat were actually booked to go talk about the crossover with the creatives on "Strange New Worlds." As he explained:

"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 had tickets booked to go to L.A. to go to the writers' room to try to work out how to do it."

However, the crossover was ultimately doomed because Paramount, which owns "Star Trek," and Disney, which had a partnership with "Doctor Who" at the time, couldn't come to an agreement over who would get to show it first. What's more, this crossover could've been a whole miniseries.

Steven Moffat's involvement here would have been a coup for many Whovians. Russell T. Davies and Moffat are the biggest living superstar writers of the modern "Doctor Who" franchise, and it would have tickled most folks pink to see them collaborating with the creatives behind "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds." Unfortunately, as Davies recalled, the crossover proved too difficult from a corporate standpoint, in no small part due to the question of where the crossover would air first. As he put it:

"The nightmare [...] would be to get Paramount and Disney to share it. You know when a show belongs to the BBC and Netflix, the biggest row [...] behind the scenes [is] on first-rights to a viewing, who shows it first. [...] That's the constant battle of television co-productions: Who's showing it first. When I say battle, I mean it's bloody, life and death. You can guarantee if you see a show that's funded by two companies, there has been a war." 

Getting Paramount and Disney on the same page, then, was too daunting a task, and the crossover halted before it could properly begin. As it so happens, the crossover was, as mentioned, going to be more ambitious than a single story. Davies also noted on "Pilot TV" that there were talks of "more than one episode."

Earlier this year, in an interview with TrekMovie at the 2026 Televerse (a festival put on by the Television Academy), "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds" co-showrunner Henry Alonso Meyer similarly touched on the potential mechanics of a "Doctor Who" crossover:

"On the 'Doctor Who' thing [...] We had a lot of discussion with [the writers] about trying to make it happen. That wasn't a season finale. I think we had even talked about potentially doing it as a separate spin-off episode." 

So, at the very least, the "Doctor Who" crossover would have been a separate special rather than an episode of "Strange New Worlds." And if what Russell T. Davies said was accurate, it would have also been a multi-parter (or perhaps even a miniseries). Sadly, though, corporate wariness has squelched the possibility for the time being.

For the time being, then, we'll merely have to content ourselves with non-canonical crossovers like the comic book "Assimilation²." In that case, the "Star Trek" and "Doctor Who" properties crossed over via a storyline in which the Eleventh Doctor (that is, Matt Smith's Doctor) joins forces with Captain Picard. Meanwhile, in an earlier timeline in the "Star Trek" universe, the Fourth Doctor (that is, Tom Baker's Doctor) teams up with Captain Kirk.

We can further comfort ourselves with the first proposed "Star Trek" spin-off, which would have been a very "Doctor Who"-inflected series featuring a character named Gary Seven (Robert Lansing) and his companion (Teri Garr). Those characters were featured in a "Star Trek: The Original Series" episode titled "Assignment: Earth," and if Gary had secured his own show, it might very well have changed the franchise's trajectory forever.