HUGH: "WHO"

Now that I've run the course of the episodes from Christopher Eccleston's reign as the Ninth Doctor in 'Doctor Who', I'd like to share an email I received from my online amigo Hugh D. back in June:

Hi Toby.
I've seen some online clips from the last episode of Doctor Who.

The Bad Wolf sequence was good--definitely bringing DW to the sort of story arcs that made Buffy so interesting over the years. They had the Perivale trilogy in the last season of the original series, and many fans are speculating that Bad Wolf will still connect to Fenric from that sequence.

[From me: As we've seen, that wasn't the case, but it made for one of the best theories during the season.]

The regeneration was also good--I think Tennant will make for a strong Doctor. I would have liked them to go to Richard E. Grant, just so the Scream of the Shalka story from the webverse would become canon. Of course, three stories have been online from the BBC before that one: Real Time, a 6th Doctor story with Cybermen, and two which cause major continuity debates--Shada, an 8th Doctor story revisiting the original strike-up-ended one, and Death Comes to Time, with the 7th Doctor dying at the end.There are plenty of online theories that attempt to reconcile DCtT, but I won't go into those now.

The Shada one I think is brilliant. As I'm sure you know, the scenes of Tom Baker and Lalla Ward in The Five Doctors serial were from the aborted serial Shada, which was never finished, since Baker didn't come back for the reunion broadcast. The 4th Doctor got trapped in a time eddy, instead of being brought to Gallifrey. The web version had the 8th Doctor going to Romana (now president of Gallifrey) to try and uncover a hole in his memory, created by that point [when] his 4th incarnation was trapped in time. Personally, I think this version should count then as the main version of the story (since the only other version out there is a video with linking narration by Baker).

Anyway, I digress...

I was trying to think of connections from Doctor Who to other shows. I know you've picked up some ideas from the latest series for some ties.

The main series link I can think of offhand is to A Man Called Sloane, as Robert Conrad's spy worked for the international agency UNIT. Since I cannot find anywhere on an episode guide what UNIT stood for on this show, I hold it is United Nations Intelligence Taskforce, the military group the Doctor aided on so many occassions.

During its history, DW made no official crossovers, although they did discuss links with Z Cars (the Feast of Steven episode of Dalek MasterPlan was at one time to feature the two series) and Blake's 7. The closest straight link then is the 1993 Dimensions in Time "special", a two-part hodgepodge of Doctor Who & Eastenders, with virtually the entire cast of the Cockney soap mixing with all living Doctors and many former companions. Most fans, however, discredit it and bash the serial as dreadful (of course, quality is not always a factor, unfortunately). In terms of any continuity, however, this isn't counted.

Jon Pertwee's last performance was in a commercial for a kind of mobile phone. This was a British series of ads with Kyle Machlachlan playing an agent investigating strange phenomenon, normally explained because of use of these "wonderful" phones. In this one, Machlachlan and his partner came to talk to Pertwee, an English inventor conducting experiments in time travel. Having once again solved that the phenomenon were actually the result of the phones, the pair walk off, while the familiar sound of the Tardis dematerializing is heard.

While these ads apparently were playing at an X-Files feel, Kyle Machlachlan I contend was actually Agent Cooper, so this commercial links Twin Peaks and DW.

I've read that Tom Baker played his Doctor on a British "Disney Time" series, which might tie to other shows.

Also, there's a possibility of the Daleks making the links--one "appeared" on Red Dwarf, and one is in _The Loony Toons Movie_, thus making some cineverse ties possible (or perhaps that was the Dalek from the Peter Cushing movies in the 1960s?).

Let me know the connections you find. I didn't get into the historical ones or even the fact a Patrick Troughton story was set on the planet Vulcan.

Hugh