Set your sonic screwdrivers to stun. Doctor Who and Star Trek are coming together for a joint Intergalactic Friendship Day panel at this year’s San Diego Comic-Con. Variety reports that showrunners Russell T. Davies and Alex Kurtzman will be the guests of honor at the franchise-uniting panel.
The panel will take place on Saturday, July 27, and is said to be in the spirit of fostering connection and fellowship between the two shows’ fanbases, under the banner “Friendship Is Universal” – with “Intergalactic Friendship Day” to take place on the 30th. The two franchises will also co-host a gallery experience in San Diego’s Gaslamp Quarter for the duration of the convention, featuring authentic props and costumes from both Trek and Who, as well as photo opportunities and friendship bracelet giveaways. Fans of both series will have plenty of other sights to see at the annual mega-convention, which will take place from July 24-28. Paramount has the casts and crews of Lower Decks, Strange New Worlds, Starfleet Academy, and Section 31 in the cavernous Hall H on Saturday, while CBS will showcase the animated Star Trek: Prodigy on Saturday afternoon. Doctor Who, meanwhile, will materialize in Hall H on Friday afternoon.
Have ‘Doctor Who’ and ‘Star Trek’ Ever Crossed Over?
While the franchises haven’t crossed over on-screen, they have met on the page. In the crossover comics series Star Trek: The Next Generation/Doctor Who: Assimilation², Captain Picard and the crew of the USS Enterprise-D team up with Matt Smith’s Eleventh Doctor to take on the combined forces of their like-minded foes, the Borg and the Cybermen. Written by Scott and David Tipton with art by J.K. Woodward, the series even features a flashback to an encounter between Captain Kirk’s Enterprise crew and Tom Baker’s Fourth Doctor. And although they haven’t met in live-action, both franchises have made affectionate nods to each other over the years. In an episode of Star Trek: Enterprise, the ship encounters a mysterious time craft that they find is “bigger on the inside”; meanwhile, in this year’s Doctor Who season premiere “Space Babies”, after companion Ruby Sunday (Millie Gibson) compares a ship’s matter transporter to Star Trek, the Fifteenth Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa) replies “We gotta visit them one day”.
Oddly, after both debuting in the 1960s, the two franchises have rarely been a going concern on television at the same time. Shortly after Trek returned to the airwaves in 1987 with The Next Generation, Doctor Who was canceled with 1989’s “Survival”. The Next Generation kicked off a lengthy period of Trek on TV, which ended in 2005 with the cancelation of Enterprise…two months after Who made its triumphant return with Christopher Eccleston (and Davies) taking command of the TARDIS. Now, of course, both shows have returned with a vengeance; multiple Star Trek series have taken up residence on Paramount+, while Who has its international home on Disney+.
Davies and Kurtzman’s Intergalactic Friendship Day panel will be held at the San Diego Comic-Con on Saturday, July 27. Stay tuned to Collider for future updates.