As much as I’d love to see the TARDIS materialize on the starship Enterprise, I disagree with Russell T Davies’ assertion that a Star Trek and Doctor Who crossover “must” happen. The Doctor Who showrunner’s comments came during the Star Trek X Doctor Who panel at San Diego Comic-Con 2024. Davies’ Comic-Con statement is his latest attempt to bring the worlds of Doctor Who and Star Trek together on-screen. 20 years ago, when RTD was making plans for his Doctor Who revival, and Star Trek: Enterprise was still on TV, he wanted the two shows to cross over.

Russell T Davies returned to this idea when storylining David Tennant’s final Doctor Who specials in 2009, but quickly abandoned the idea. Russell T Davies’ unmade Star Trek crossover is clearly an ambition that he’s still keen to realize in 2024. The sly joke in “Space Babies” that Doctor Who and Star Trek take place in the same universe was RTD’s first step to making this dream a reality. However, Davies’ assertion that it “must” happen suggests that a Star Trek and Doctor Who crossover is a non-negotiable inevitability, rather than merely something it would be fun to see.

RTD Says A Star Trek Doctor Who Crossover “Must” Happen But I Disagree

Saying Doctor Who and Star Trek “must” get together doesn’t answer “why”.

During the Star Trek X Doctor panel at Comic-Con, RTD responded to an audience question about a potential Star Trek and Doctor Who crossover episode by saying:

“We would love to bring you a crossover episode and the way we can make that happen is the fans. The fans continue to make crossover art, and stories and continue to ask and push to bring these two universes together. Because we must get together. It must happen.”

Doctor Who fans are used to Russell T Davies’ tendency to make hyperbolic and exacting statements like that, but it frames a Star Trek crossover as an exercise in fan service. Fan art, like the gorgeous Comic-Con exclusive poster by Dusty Abell below, is great, but it also doesn’t have to sustain 60 minutes of television drama.

For all Russell T Davies’ talk about how Doctor Who and Star Trek “must” get together, he’s notably vague on why they should. It’s clear that RTD is a fan of Star Trek, and Trek writers like Star Trek: Prodigy‘s Hageman Brothers are clearly Doctor Who fans. However, it’s not enough to put TV’s two biggest sci-fi franchises together because the fans want it, even if those fans are screenwriters themselves. While a show of support for the idea on social media will be vital in selling the crossover to the BBC, Disney, and Paramount, there also needs to be a very good story reason why Doctor Who and Star Trek are crossing over.

A Star Trek Doctor Who Crossover Needs A Great Story

A Star Trek and Doctor Who crossover should not be taken lightly, and needs a great story to anchor it. Russell T Davies’ fondness for the Borg (via Gizmodo) feels demonstrative of his lack of imagination when it comes to bringing the TARDIS aboard the starship Enterprise. Firstly, the Borg are incredibly over-exposed in Star Trek. They’re also so similar to Doctor Who‘s Cybermen that the Collective’s “resistance is futile” catchphrase is the same as the Cybermen’s own “resistance is useless” assertion from Patrick Troughton’s 1967 serial “The Tomb of the Cybermen”.

Secondly, the Doctor and the crew of the starship Enterprise already faced the Cybermen and the Borg in a Matt Smith era Star Trek crossover comic, Assimilation². A much better story would be to pair up the Doctor and Starfleet to face a threat that demonstrates their very different approaches. Whether this is a threat to the fabric of time or reality, or a terrifying new alien villain would be up to the writers to decide. The Doctor’s lonely god persona and quixotic nature makes him more like John de Lancie’s Q than one of Starfleet’s officers, which would create a fantastic dynamic in any potential Star Trek and Doctor Who crossover.