Posted in: BBC, Doctor Who, TV | Tagged: bbc, david tennant, doctor who, jo martin, jodie whittaker, matt smith, peter capaldi, peter davison, steven moffat
Doctor Who: Are Those Doctor-Meets-Doctor Moments Ultimate Fanfic?
The increasingly erratic Doctor Who compilation videos have reached a crossover compilation: the three times they had a crossover with themselves. Only three times? Well, that's the three times it has happened in the new show since it came back in 2005.
Christopher Eccleston, who played the Ninth Doctor and the first of the new era, has said he felt crossover stories didn't work because they were mostly fanfic, and he had a point. Crossovers only matter to longtime fans who want to see different Doctors together. He never had a crossover episode except perhaps for an upcoming Big Finish audio where he teamed up with the late David Warner.
Anyway, there's "Fugitive of the Judoon" where the Thirteenth (Jodie Whittaker) meets a forgotten incarnation (Jo Martin) in what is perhaps the best moment in showrunner Chris Chibnall's entire run. The triumph is in Jo Martin creating a complete, fully-formed regeneration from scratch. Martin is the most pragmatically ruthless and no-nonsense Doctor of them all, and she had great chemistry with Whittaker. There should have been a show about the two of them as bickering buddies traveling Time and Space righting wrongs.
Steven Moffat got to write the ultimate fanfic crossover in "Day of the Doctor," which had the Eleventh (Matt Smith) meet up with the Tenth (David Tennant) and the War Doctor (John Hurt). Moffat managed to turn the story into a commentary about crossovers by the end. His final story, "Twice Upon a Time," with the Twelfth Doctor (Peter Capaldi) and the First Doctor (David Bradley), also offered his final meditation on the nature of the Doctor and the ability to regenerate and live multiple lifetimes in the finest Buddhist parable ever seen on television.
The first crossover in the new era was actually "Time Crash," the 2009 Children in Need short written by Moffat where the Tenth met the Fifth (Peter Davison). The BBC has removed the actual short, but the Behind the Scenes short of its making is still on the BBC Three YouTube Channel. This was before Tennant ended up marrying Georgia Tennant and metacommentary on crossovers spilled into real life. Doctor Who is streaming on HBO Max in the US.