Cultural references to the Doctor Who universe/2020s

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Occasionally, elements of the Doctor Who universe are referenced in the broader popular culture. This page exists to throw a spotlight on some of these casual references made in television, comics, films and other media which happened during the 2020s.

In-universe references

These references functionally act as minor, unlicensed crossovers between the series and the DWU: some element of the Doctor Who universe makes a cameo, or is referenced, in such a way as to imply that it is real in the world of the story, or indeed that the story itself "unofficially" takes place in the Doctor Who universe.

Television

  • In the episode Hayley Was a Girl Scout? (2022) of American Dad!, K9 appears at a robot convention.
  • In the episode, Ghostbasket (2024), of the Australian animated preschool series, Bluey, Bandit Heeler describes a rather small house as being "bigger inside". Notably, the official Doctor Who Twitter responded in kind when the clip was posted to the official Bluey Twitter account.[1]

Film

  • In the 2022 version of Matilda (which featured Phyllida Law’s mother, Emma Thompson), when the children were singing while Bruce Bogtrotter was eating the chocolate cake, they mentioned that his largeness "is a bit like a TARDIS" in reference to how he'd be able to eat the whole cake.

Webcast

  • An individual finds themselves inside the Doctor's TARDIS. (If You Get Stranded in the Past, How to Tell What Year You’re In)

    An individual finds themselves inside the Doctor's TARDIS. (If You Get Stranded in the Past, How to Tell What Year You’re In)

  • The individual and the TARDIS before the Big Bang.

    The individual and the TARDIS before the Big Bang.

  • The individual being consumed by molten lava next to the TARDIS.

    The individual being consumed by molten lava next to the TARDIS.

  • The individual suffocating next to the TARDIS.

    The individual suffocating next to the TARDIS.

  • The individual and the TARDIS alongside dinosaurs and mammals.

    The individual and the TARDIS alongside dinosaurs and mammals.

  • The individual and the TARDIS in Papua New Guinea.

    The individual and the TARDIS in Papua New Guinea.

  • The individual and the TARDIS in England.

    The individual and the TARDIS in England.

  • Tom Scott’s video "Why The Web Is Such A Mess" included a Vote Saxon poster. This video was posted on 23 November 2020, the 57th anniversary of Doctor Who.[3]

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Prose

  • In Chapter 24 of Steven Hall's 2021 novel Maxwell's Demon, an unreliable account given to the main character relates how the character of Andrew Black supposedly had a brief encounter with an old woman named "Elizabeth Shaw", who was ostensibly the first to warn him about the metafictional apocalypse which Black seeks to avert throughout the book. Questioned about the Doctor Who connection in 2024, Hall confirmed that the name was significant[4] and linked it to an earlier comment he had left in the same Reddit thread, in which he remarked that among the "harder-to-spot examples" of the supposed glitches in reality was that the character of Sophie Almonds, who appears throughout the book, and is eventually revealed to be an impostor impersonating the real Almonds to help Andrew Black convince the main character of the reality of the threat, "is written so that she could – perhaps! – be interpreted as another fictional character from elsewhere, one who shows up waaaay before Umber does. It’s no coincidence that it’s Sophie who first asks ‘what is the world made of’".[5] The fake Sophie Almonds is described in Chapter 8 as having blue eyes and "shoulder-length, dark brown hair, often tied back with a simple black ribbon, and increasingly threaded through with silver", matching an older version of Caroline John's appearance as Liz (notably corresponding to the middle-aged Liz seen in the P.R.O.B.E. series). The book's eventual ambiguities make it impossible to say for certain whether, even if the connection is accepted, the woman posing as Almonds should be interpreted as the genuine Liz Shaw lending assistance to Black, as a fictional Liz bought to life by Black's power, as a fictional Liz brought to life by the catastrophe, or as an actor hired by Black to pretend to be Liz pretending to be Almonds.
  • In the Star Wars novel Brotherhood (2022), the droid Huyang is rumoured to have arrived at the Jedi Temple in a "big blue box" thousands of years in the past. Huyang was voiced by David Tennant in Star Wars: The Clones Wars and this is a tacit reference to the TARDIS.
  • Scott Sanford's 2022 Jenny Everywhere short story The Folly of Men, set in 1960s London, featured a "Captain Stewart" working for an international "Intelligence Taskforce". This is implicitly a younger version of Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart, already working for UNIT. Jenny Cornelius comments that "in ten or twenty years you’ll have shot up the ranks, you’ll be a brigadier or something, and you’ll have no time to run around with me".

Video games

  • Watch Dogs: Legion (2020) is set in a near-future London. A police box covered in graffiti is seen in an underground safehouse.
  • The prominent Minecraft [+]Loading...["Minecraft (video game)"] modpack Gregtech: New Horizons introduced a multiblock structure called "The Eye of Harmony".

Comics

Out-of-universe references

These references are to Doctor Who (or one of its spin-offs) as works of fiction. They merely establish that fiction about the Doctor or the Daleks exists in the fictional universe of the story, as it does in the real world.

Television

Mock SFX cover for Regression of the Daleks (SFX 336)
  • Episode 4 of It's a Sin (2021) by Russell T Davies, a scene set in 1988 depicts the filming of Regression of the Daleks, a fictional serial of Doctor Who. The character Ritchie Tozer played Trooper Linden in the story. This is a tribute to Dursley McLinden, who played Mike Smith in Remembrance of the Daleks, raised money for AIDS-related charities, and died of the disease in 1995.[9]
    • Issue 336 of SFX included an article about It's a Sin. The article featured a mock cover imagining Regression of the Daleks as a real episode in 1988.
  • In the episode "Cupid's Errant Arrow" (2020) of Star Trek: Lower Decks, two characters use a tool that makes the noise of the sonic screwdriver.
  • In the episode "This Is What It Takes" (2021) of Legacies, Landon say the therapy box is "bigger than it looks on the outside".
  • In the episode "Rick & Morty's Thanksploitation Spectacular" (2021) of Rick and Morty, a character refers to Rick Sanchez as a "spiky-haired Doctor Who in a lab coat".
  • Season 3 of Doom Patrol (2021) introduced the time travelling villain Madame Rogue (Laura De Mille) as played by Michelle Gomez. In the episode "Dada Patrol", Jane refers to her as "Doctor Who".
  • In South Park: Post COVID: The Return of COVID (2021), the character Kevin Stoley mistakenly thinks the Foundation Against Time Travel is a Doctor Who convention, and shows up dressed as the Fourth Doctor and performs an impression of a Dalek.
  • In episode 4 of The Time Traveler's Wife (2022), written by Steven Moffat, Gomez questions if investing in stocks with knowledge of the future will affect the Web of Time.
  • The first shot of episode 6 of season 2 of Beforeigners (2022) shows a TARDIS fish tank decoration. One of the show's main themes is time travel and this episode features a rift in time.
  • In the The Dumping Ground series 9 episode Friend Zone (2022), after Jody switched Sasha's artwork with one that Jody thought would win an art competition Sasha had entered into, Sasha sarcastically asked Jody about having "Doctor Who take [them] back using his TARDIS and stop [Jody] from being an idiot" to fix it.
  • In the Queen of Oz episode "There's A New Queen in Town" (2023), Matthew points out a time zone difference. Princess Georgiana (Catherine Tate) calls him a "fucking Time Lord" and asks if he got back from "the planet of the tiny doll hands".
  • In the sixth episode of Wolf (2023), the character Molina asks Honey (Sacha Dhawan) how he feels about Doctor Who and says he always wanted to go on a tour in Cardiff. When Honey doesn't respond, Molina says, "Look, I get it, the Thirteenth Doctor wasn't to everyone's taste and you don't strike me as a feminist — but let's get something in the diary, yeah?"
  • Crowley wearing a fez. (The Ball)
    Good Omens season 2 (2023):
  • In the episode "I'm Not Going Anywhere" (2024) of Invincible, at a comic con, an individual dressed as the Thirteenth Doctor cameos in the background.

Prose

  • In the novel Piranesi (2020) by Susanna Clarke, a research paper is mentioned: ‘Timey-Wimey: Steven Moffat, Blink and J. W. Dunne’s theories of Time’, Journal of Space, Time and Everything, Volume 64: 42–68, University of Minnesota Press.
  • Thomas Quinn, the main character of Steven Hall's 2021 novel Maxwell's Demon is a jobbing writer like his creator (who wrote multiple scripts for Big Finish Doctor Who audio stories). He states in Chapter 4 that he has "written new adventures for Thunderbirds, Stingray, Doctor Who, Sapphire and Steel, He-Man, The Tripods, Thundercats…" and more, with an unfinished Captain Scarlet script occupying him for much of the book. In Chapter 30, a mug decorated with a Dalek is seen. In addition to these out-of-universe references, however, the character of Liz Shaw makes an ambiguous cameo in the flesh, as documented in the relevant section of this page in greater detail.
  • In the novel Later (2021) by Stephen King, Jamie Conklin doesn't think Torchwood is cool but watches it because he gets to stay up an hour past his bedtime.
  • In the novel Broadway Revival (2022) by Laura Frankos, Doctor Who was revived for its 100th anniversary in 2063 and ran for another ten years. Several episodes involved the Doctor encountering Rippers, a group of time travellers who conduct historical research in the past.

Comics

Video games

  • In a 2020 update to Marvel Contest of Champions, Cosmic Ghost Rider mentioned a TV show with an orange wormhole with catchy electronic music. He also paraphrases a line from Blink: "You see, people think time is a linear progression of cause to effect, when in reality it's more like a big ball of time--".
  • In a 2024 episode of Inside Star Citizen the opening of Doctor Who is recreated.[10]

Real world

  • A 2020 New York Times article titled "What to Expect From Facebook, Twitter and YouTube on Election Day" included a graphic by Shira Inbar of three K9s representing Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. [11]
  • The Dutch CoronaCheck website had a QR code that, when scanned, has the message: "River Song is a fictional character in the British science-fiction series Doctor Who. As a consequence of River and the Doctor both being time travellers, their adventures together are out-of-sync chronologically, resulting in surprising consequences for them and their unusual romantic life together. She often signals the Doctor by using the phrase “Hello Sweetie”."

Footnotes

  1. ↑ @bbcdoctorwho
  2. ↑ If You Get Stranded in the Past, How to Tell What Year You’re In
  3. ↑ Why The Web Is Such A Mess
  4. ↑ Steven Hall (13 October 2024). Reply in the "Steven Hall AMA" thread. /r/TheRawSharkTexts on Reddit. Archived from the original on 13 October 2024.
  5. ↑ Steven Hall (29 August 2024). Reply in the "Steven Hall AMA" thread. /r/TheRawSharkTexts on Reddit. Archived from the original on 13 October 2024.
  6. ↑ @hausofdecline on Twitter
  7. ↑ Did you spot this sneaky Doctor Who Easter Egg in The Boys?
  8. ↑ BBC: "How Drew You Do."
  9. ↑ It’s a Sin’s Doctor Who Crossover Pays Tribute to Remembrance of the Daleks Actor
  10. ↑ Doctor Who, Star Citizen Wiki
  11. ↑ What to Expect From Facebook, Twitter and YouTube on Election Day
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