- Primary Subject: The scrapped live-action Star Trek and Doctor Who crossover
- Key Update: Star Trek: Strange New Worlds co-showrunner Akiva Goldsman revealed that he and Russell T. Davies spent years actively developing an on-screen crossover before logistics and red tape ultimately stalled the project.
- Status: Confirmed
- Last Verified: June 24, 2026
- Quick Answer: The crossover failed to materialize primarily due to the massive legal and logistical hurdles of uniting two enormous broadcasting empires and their respective legal teams.
The sci-fi crossover of the century almost made it to our television screens. For decades, fans have debated how the United Federation of Planets would react to a rogue Time Lord in a blue box. Following a string of massive, reality-bending Easter eggs that left both fandoms' jaws on the floor, the creative minds behind the starship Enterprise have finally opened up about how tantalizingly close we came to a full-blown, live-action event.
Did You Know Star Trek & Doctor Who Almost Had a Crossover?
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The boundary between the Whoniverse and Starfleet is much thinner than anyone realized. In a recent interview with Awards Radar, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds showrunner Akiva Goldsman confirmed that he, co-showrunner Henry Alonso Myers, and former Doctor Who showrunner Russell T Davies went back and forth on the idea of a potential crossover to bridge the two universes, only for it to never come to fruition.
"We were trying with Russell to do a crossover," Goldsman recalled, "We were for years. Again, these are the near misses, but we got not unclose and we had some really cool conversations about it. And so, certainly in our view, I mean, Pelia travelled in the TARDIS. Why not?"
Hints of overlapping the two franchises made their way into Strange New Worlds, specifically in the 2025 season finale, titled New Life and New Civilizations, where chief engineer Pelia (Carol Kane) casually referenced a long history of time-traveling adventures involving a "certain" Doctor, strongly implying she had crossed paths with the Time Lord.
While Davies had publicly voiced that he would have wanted to pursue what would have been a historic television event as early as 2024, bringing two massive legacy sci-fi empires meant dealing with a heavy amount of studio executives and lawyers over complications when it came to both franchise copyrights.
It is also worth mentioning that, in the episode titled The Sehlat Who Ate Its Tail, the Doctor's iconic blue TARDIS was shown trapped alongside the USS Enterprise within a star-consuming entity, serving as a playful Easter egg for eagle-eyed fans, unbeknownst to watchers what might have been.
What a Star Trek x Doctor Who Crossover Episode Would've Looked Like
Even though the supposedly dedicated crossover episode was never filmed, the showrunners leaned entirely into the concept of subtly weaving Doctor Who directly into the official Star Trek canon during the recent seasons of Strange New Worlds.
Chief Engineer Pelia would've served as the pivotal character, considering she was an immortal Lanthanite who lived on Earth for thousands of years. It would be nearly impossible not to have encountered the Time Lord at least one too many times.
In the season 3 finale, New Life and New Civilizations, Pelia casually dropped a bombshell by mentioning her past adventures traveling with a "certain time-traveling Doctor." Goldsman doubled down on this in his interview with Awards Radar, stating bluntly: "Certainly, in our view, I mean, Pelia traveled in the TARDIS. Why not?"
Meanwhile, Doctor Who returned the favor of Easter eggs when Ncuti Gatwa's Fifteenth Doctor told his companion Ruby Sunday that they should pay a visit to Starfleet someday, almost confirming the organization is real and is connected to each other's canon universe.
Had the legal teams cleared the runway, the episode would have seen Captain Pike and Spock attempting to make logical sense of Time Lord regeneration and localized temporal anomalies, while the Doctor crossed paths with an old friend in the ship's engine room.
For now, the crossover lives through brilliantly, hidden-in-plain-sight winks, and the comic book pages of past IDW publishing runs.
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