WARNING: Contains MAJOR SPOILERS for Star Trek: Prodigy season 2!
Summary
Having watched every episode of the brilliantStar Trek: Prodigyseason 2, I started to think that the showrunners, Dan and Kevin Hageman, might also be fans of 21st centuryDoctor Who. Given thatProdigyseason 2 is an epic time travel adventure, it’s only natural that it crosses the fandom streams betweenStar TrekandDoctor Who. To be clear, aside from one bit of dialog that has entered our cultural lexicon, I only noticedProdigy’scrossovers betweenStar TrekandDoctor Whobecause I’m a huge fan of both franchises myself.
I grew up in the UK in the 1990s, and was raised on a steady diet ofDoctor Whorepeats and the 1990sStar TrekTV shows thatStar Trek:Prodigyseason 2lovingly draws upon.Prodigyseason 2 continues the story of severalStar Trek: Voyagercharacters, and contains multiple references to otherTrekshows. There are also plot similarities, character moments and dialog that appear to referenceDoctor Whofrom 2005 onward. It might be deliberate, it might be a complete coincidence, but as a fan of both shows,I greatly enjoyedProdigy’s apparent love for the 21st century era ofDoctor Who.
Doctor Who Wants To Crossover With Star Trek, But Could It Happen?
Ncuti Gatwa’s Doctor wants to visit the USS Enterprise, setting up a long-awaited crossover between Doctor Who and Star Trek. But how would it work?
Star Trek: Prodigy Season 2’s Doctor Who References Explained
The most obvious reference toDoctor Whocomes inStar Trek: Prodigyseason 2, episode 1, “Into the Breach, Part I”,written by Dan & Kevin Hageman, and directed by Ben Hibon. As the Doctor - not that one - briefs the young Academy hopefuls on their time-traveling mission to save Captain Chakotay (Robert Beltran), Dal R’El (Brett Gray) mentions that “…this timey wimey stuff hurts my head.” While the phrase “timey wimey” has pretty much entered the cultural lexicon,it did originate in Steven Moffat’s script for the classicDoctor Whoepisode “Blink”. In “Blink”, David Tennant’s Tenth Doctor described the time-space continuum as a “ball of wibbly, wobbly, timey wimey stuff.”
Dal and Janeway hate time travel, or at least hate the experience of getting their heads around the wibbly wobbliness of it all.
With “wibbly wobbly, timey wimey stuff”, Steven Moffat created a perfect way to describe the vagaries of temporal mechanics. InStar Trek: Prodigy, both Dal andJaneway hate time travel, or at least hate the experience of getting their heads around the wibbly wobbliness of it all. So I completely understand whyProdigyadopts that description into their own vocabulary. While that’s the most overt reference to Steven Moffat’sDoctor Whoscripts,there’s a weird similarity between Gwyndala (Ella Purnell) and the Eleventh Doctor (Matt Smith) later inProdigyseason 2.
At the end ofStar Trek: Prodigyseason 2, episode 3, “Who Saves The Saviors”,written by Eric McNamara, and directed by Sung Shin, Gwyn is trapped inside an ancient tomb on Solum. In the next episode, “Temporal Mechanics 101”, written by Keith Sweet II, and directed by Ben Hibon, Dal and the crew of the Infinity are given coordinates to travel back through time and rescue her. The idea of using future knowledge to free someone from a prison cell in the past is effectively how the Eleventh Doctor gets himself out of the Pandorica inDoctor Who’s season 5 finale, “The Big Bang”.
Doctor Who Subtly Proves A Matt Smith Sci-Fi Crossover Is Proper Canon In RTD’s New Era
Ncuti Gatwa makes a comment in “Space Babies” that refers to an off-screen adventure that took the Eleventh Doctor into another sci-fi universe.
The solution that Dal and theStar Trek: Prodigykids receive is a lot less complicated than Steven Moffat’s solution inDoctor Who, but the similarity is there. One final similarity betweenProdigyandDoctor Whois the introduction of the Loom, temporal beings that feast on aberrant timelines. The Loom is the true threat inStar Trek: Prodigyseason 2, butthe Loom’s motivations bear a huge similarity with one-shotDoctor Whovillains, the Reapers, who fed on the alternate timeline created when Rose Tyler (Billie Piper) prevented her father from being killed in a traffic accident in Paul Cornell’s “Father’s Day”.
Doctor Whospinoff media established that Time Lords weren’t born but were instead crafted on giant genetic looms.
The Hageman Brothers Characterize Wesley Crusher As “A Little Bit Doctor Who”
One of the biggest surprises ofStar Trek: Prodigyseason 2 is the return of Wil Wheaton as Wesley Crusher, who has changed a great deal since his final appearance inStar Trek: The Next Generation. Watching Wesley in action as a Traveller, I was struck by Wil Wheaton’s performance, which seemed to be leaning more on the likes of Matt Smith and David Tennant inDoctor WhothanTNG’s Wesley Crusher. Wes even quoted Sylvester McCoy’s Seventh Doctor by observing: “time will tell, it usually does”. In anexclusiveScreen Rantinterview, Kevin and Dan Hageman discussed bringing Wesley back, describing their characterization of him as:
A little Doctor Who, a little Willy Wonka…
Prior to becoming the Fifteenth Doctor, Ncuti Gatwa had asked his agent to put him forward for characters like Doctor Who or Willy Wonka.
Doctor Who And Star Trek Have A Long History Together
Turning Wesley Crusher intoStar Trek’s answer toDoctor Who, while Dal quotes David Tennant, maintains a long relationship between both franchises.The recentDoctor Whoreferences inStar Trek: Prodigyseason 2 continue a long tradition going back decades. For example, a production designer’s joke inStar Trek: The Next Generation’s season 1 finale, “The Neutral Zone”, revealed the first fiveDoctor Whoactors to be relations of Claire Raymond (Gracie Harrison), though this was later cut out for the Bluray remaster.
More recently, Ncuti Gatwa’s Fifteenth Doctor implied thatStar TrekandDoctor Whotake place in the same fictional universe.What’s heartening about this continuing relationship betweenStar TrekandDoctor Whois that I grew up at a time when you had a choice of one or the other.Doctor Whowas canceled in 1989 as the UK began screeningStar Trek: The Next Generation, whileStar Trek: Enterprisewas canceled in 2005, just asDoctor Whoreturned to TV. Asthefuture ofProdigyseason 3is uncertain,Doctor WhoandStar Trek’s 21st century second chances should give the Hagemans some hope.
I find it heartening thatDoctor WhoandStar Trekaren’t rivals, but instead learn from each other and push their storytelling in new directions as a result.
19 years afterEnterprise’s cancelation, andStar TrekandDoctor Whoare both jewels in the crown of their respective streaming services. And yet, if the affectionate nods toDoctor WhoinStar Trek: Prodigyare anything to go by, neither franchise sees the other as competition, they take inspiration from each other instead. As a lifelong fan of both, I find it heartening thatDoctor WhoandStar Trekhave never been rivals, but instead learn from each other and push their storytelling in new directions as a result.
Star Trek: Prodigy
Star Trek: Prodigy is the first TV series in the Star Trek franchise marketed toward children, and one of the few animated series in the franchise. The story follows a group of young aliens who find a stolen Starfleet ship and use it to escape from the Tars Lamora prison colony where they are all held captive. Working together with the help of a holographic Captain Kathryn Janeway (Kate Mulgrew), the new crew of the USS Protostar must find their way back to the Alpha Quadrant to warn the Federation of the deadly threat that is pursuing them.
Doctor Who
Doctor Who: Released on July 19, 2025, this series follows the Doctor and their companion as they journey across time and space, encountering a range of extraordinary friends and adversaries, expanding the universe of the long-running British science fiction series.
