Doctor Who fans eagerly awaiting word of their time-travelling hero should be paying attention to Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, which just dropped its second Gallifreyan Easter egg this season.
Strange New Worlds’ third season finale features an obvious reference to one of its characters meeting The Doctor, as the millennia-old Commander Pelia (played by Carol Kane) tells Spock (Ethan Peck) that he should meet a “time-travelling Doctor I once knew” (thanks, ScreenRant).
While time travel is certainly a thing in Star Trek, it seems highly likely that Pelia’s reference is meant as a nod to the BBC’s long-running sci-fi franchise, with the two series’ currently enjoying an unusually close relationship.
Indeed, this season’s sixth episode bizarrely featured The Doctor’s TARDIS, which made repeated blink-and-you’ll-miss-it appearances in the background. Look carefully during the numerous space-set scenes in Strange New Worlds episode The Sehlat Who Ate Its Tail, and you’ll see the iconic blue police box floating around the Enterprise.
These references follow a previous tease of a full crossover by the Doctor himself, in one of the most exciting moments of Ncuti Gatwa’s first season episode Space Babies. There, Gatwa tells companion Ruby Sunday that the pair should take a trip to visit the Enterprise at some point, suggesting that the events of Star Trek are also somehow reachable within Doctor Who canon.
In other news, the TARDIS from Doctor Who shows up in the most recent episode of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds! pic.twitter.com/LNBBGZ3r79
— Dan Leckie (@Dan_Leckie) August 16, 2025
Of course, team-ups between the Time Lord and the Federation have already occured in other mediums. 2012’s Star Trek: The Next Generation/Doctor Who: Assimilation graphic novel saw Matt Smith’s Eleventh Doctor on board Jean-Luc Picard’s Enterprise, with companion Amy Pond along for the ride. The adventure saw the heroes battling Star Trek’s Borg and Doctor Who’s Cybermen (which are, to be fair, quite similar). During the comic, the Doctor also mentions his Fourth incarnation (that would be Tom Baker) meeting James T. Kirk.
More recently, smartphone games Star Trek: Lower Decks Mobile and Doctor Who: Lost in Time shared a 2024 crossover story featuring David Tennant’s Tenth Doctor, told in each title from the perspective of either franchise. This followed a friendly shared panel at San Diego Comic-Con 2024 featuring Star Trek writer Alex Kurtzman and Doctor Who showrunner Russell T Davies, the latter of whom said he would “love to announce a crossover between Star Trek and Doctor Who” for TV, though doing so would require “two great big empires — and their lawyers” to make it happen.
Such a crossover would also have to work around the future of Doctor Who, which is currently on hiatus. After two seasons funded by Disney, the BBC has indefinitely paused the show’s production, though the broadcaster has vowed to continue the show at some point.
Tom Phillips is IGN’s News Editor. You can reach Tom at [email protected] or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social
