Star Trek’s Doctor Who Crossover Almost Happened, and Akiva Goldsman Just Spilled the Details
‘Star Trek: Strange New Worlds‘ has always worn its sci-fi love on its sleeve, but few fans realized just how far that affection extended behind the scenes. The Paramount+ series returned this week with its fourth season premiere, “Valles Marineris,” continuing the adventures of Captain Christopher Pike and the USS Enterprise crew as they chart the decade before the original ‘Star Trek’ series. Season four has already stirred plenty of chatter online, but the real buzz didn’t come from the episode itself.
It came from co-showrunner Akiva Goldsman, who sat down with SYFY Wire for an exclusive interview about the show’s ongoing love letter to ‘Doctor Who’. Fans had already clocked a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it TARDIS Easter egg tucked into the background of a previous season, along with a cryptic line from engineer Pelia about “the time I spent time travelling with a Doctor.” Turns out those weren’t just playful nods.
Goldsman confirmed that ‘Strange New Worlds’ seriously explored a full crossover with ‘Doctor Who’, working directly with former showrunner Russell T. Davies. “We really did talk to Russell for a while about crossing over the two shows,” Goldsman revealed in the interview with SYFY Wire, adding it wasn’t just a passing idea but a real conversation about “how narratively it would work.” The two shows’ teams reportedly got into the weeds on production logistics too.
According to Goldsman, they even discussed when the crossover would air, how to blend the two shows’ distinct visual styles, and whether it could unfold as a two-part special. It’s the kind of detail that makes the eventual outcome sting a little more for longtime viewers of both franchises. Corporate red tape, not creative disagreement, is reportedly what killed the plan.
“Ultimately, there were too many corporate hurdles,” Goldsman explained, summing up the crossover’s fate as “really lovely and unfulfilled,” a phrase he says applies to a lot of ambitious ideas within the ‘Star Trek’ universe. Rather than scrap the concept entirely, the writers folded its spirit into canon anyway.
Goldsman noted that Pelia’s TARDIS-adjacent anecdote effectively canonized an off-screen meeting between the two universes, pointing out that this kind of crossover “has happened before in comics,” so the writers simply decided, in his words, to “assume it did happen.” It’s a clever workaround that lets both fandoms have their cake without either studio signing off on the real thing.
This isn’t the first time Goldsman has teased the near-miss either. He and fellow co-showrunner Henry Alonso Myers previously told Awards Radar that talks with Davies stretched on “for years,” with Goldsman calling it a “near miss” rather than a dead end. Whether that door stays permanently closed remains to be seen, especially with ‘Strange New Worlds’ now barreling toward its fifth and final season.
For now, fans are left piecing together TARDIS glimpses and throwaway lines instead of the real deal. Would you have wanted to see Pike’s crew cross paths with the Doctor on screen, or does the Easter egg version feel more fitting for these two universes?
