Doctor Whos 49th Anniversary: The Future History Of Who

We’ve been to the future and seen the destiny of Doctor Who! Of course… it could have been an alternate future. Or a cheese-fuelled dream.

(This is the Director’s Cut of a feature that appeared in SFX ’s Doctor Who The Fanzine , with never-seen-before… erm, sentences.)

2023

60 ^th anniversary time. UK producer KJ Powell manages to produce a two-hour special called “The 60 Doctors” featuring every still-alive Doctor actor – not just in the UK but from all those franchises around the world – except Christopher Eccleston. It’s a complete mess, but kinda fun.

2025

Doctor Who (US version – now starring Justin Bieber, undergoing a massive career renaissance) is the first show in the world to be made for Total Immersion TV, a primitive form of Virtual Reality, with a limited interactive element. Soon the BBC and eight other Who franchises are following suit. The set-up involves sitting inside a specially constructed pod. It’s not long before all these booths are generally called TARDISes, whatever you’re using them to watch.

2028

Leaps in CG technology, and a subsequent lowering of production costs, means that the Doctor Who Restoration Team finally creates totally authentic-looking recreations of all the lost episodes from the ’60s.

The BBC is so impressed with the results – especially the CG versions no-longer living Doctors – it commissions a special Total Immersion episode featuring William Hartnell, Patrick Troughton, Jon Pertwee and Tom Baker to star alongside current Doctor, ex-porn star Cassie Loengard. Peter Davison refuses to allow his likeness to be used while he’s still alive (“It’d be like I’d be doing myself out of a job, ” he tells The Guardian ). The CG animators refuse to include Colin Baker’s Doctor because prolonged exposure to his coat would make them go blind. They claim.

2031

Cardiff becomes a Doctor Who theme park.

2033

The 70 ^th anniversary is hardly celebrated at all. Russell T Davies appears on lots of chat show promoting his new book, How Doctor Who Saved The BBC . The BBC says it is planning something special for the 75 ^th anniversary. A West End play by award winning writer Sally Spears, called Lonely God, dramatises Christopher Eccelston’s turbulent year as the Doctor, using it as a metaphor for the unions struggling to maintain integrity in a society obsessed with time management. Christopher Eccleston calls it, “Rubbish”.

2035

The Daleks undergo a major redesign… sponsored by Derma Quash, a spot cream. The new Daleks have no eye-stalk, plunger or gun… or anything else that would make a Dalek-shaped DermaQuash bottle expensive to mass produce, In fact, they look like pepper pots. “We’re not selling out,” says current producer Dermot O’Leary. “It’s a return to the original vision.”

2036

The new US Doctor now has a sonic Bosch© power drill. Soon, all territories are at it. Sponsorship goes mad. In Germany, they cast an ex-Olympic snowboarder in the lead and costume him out entirely in Adidas gear. The TARDIS gets go-faster stripes. Three of them.

2038

It’s the 75 ^th Anniversary and the BBC celebrates with W are Of The Daleks – a 13-part epic on Total Immersion TV. It’s so scary that a new BBFC rating is created – PAC (Parental Accompaniment Compulsory). Three grandmothers and a elderly guardian die when forced to accompany their children… all of whom declare it. “Way cool!”

2039

The BBC-produced W ho episode “The Flatulence Of The Ice Warriors” becomes the first ever Doctor Who to be filmed on the moon, as part of a deal with the newly-formed Virgin Lunar Tours to promote holidays on Earth’s only natural satellite. Most viewers just figure it’s been faked as it doesn’t look as good as the game Moon Killer Elite on Total Immersion-Station 360.

2041

DCD (Direct Cortex Download) is launched, allowing people to download virtual experiences direct to their brains. D doctor Who takes full advantage of the new platform, allowing users to play the Doctor’s companion, and choose their favourite Doctor to accompany. This leads to a sudden resurrection of interest in Sylvester McCoy, when players discover that he does really amusing pratfalls when you kick him in the ’nads. “He was the unsung Charlie Chaplin of his day,” claims comedian and games fan Paul Merton III, before boring everybody rotten with a series about the pre-3D days of television.

2043

The 80 ^th anniversary is the most astonishing yet, as a new episode, “The 27.5 Doctors” is filmed with clones of William Hartnell, Patrick Troughton, Bill Pertwee, Tom Baker, Peter Davison, Colin Baker, Sylvester McCoy and Paul McGann taking part (the scientists got the test tubes mixed up a bit, but thought that any Pertwee was better than none). Sadly, the boffins couldn’t also clone their acting abilities, and there isn’t time to train them, so the experiment doesn’t quite work. “They could have just used Madam Tussaud’s waxworks!” blasts The Daily Mail.

2043

One unforeseen side effect of the cloning experiment, though, is that the Cardiff theme park can now populate its attractions with incredibly realistic Doctors. “It’s all a bit Jurassic Park !” claims one Kronk Burger seller. “You can see water rippling in cups when the Colin Baker clones are approaching.”

2047

World War 3.01 puts a stop to all Doctor Who production as all DCD terminals around the planet are shut down for fear of global virtual terrorism. For the next nine years, the only new Who products are old-fashioned propaganda films and motion comics. Many old Total Immersion and DCD episodes are wiped or destroyed, though dodgy 2D copies playable on old-fashioned laptops do the rounds on the black market. A few episodes seem lost forever, though. The holy grail becomes the fourth episode of “The Ninth Planet (Because Pluto Isn’t Actually A Planet Anymore)” when 23 ^rd Doctor Zillian Phoenix regenerated into a CG ape called Bob.

2056

The war is over, and the new Indo-Asian power block bans all science fiction as Western propaganda. Doctor Who survives by word of mouth and illegal downloads only. The digi-fanzine culture goes into overdrive. The Doctor becomes a cult figure; a Robin Hood for late 21 ^st century; an icon for individuality and freedom.

2063

A cultural revolution lead by digital artistic dissidents ushers in the rebirth of crowd-pleasing, anti-imperial multi-platform immersion entertainment. The ruling powers try to control the burgeoning new media outlets but are losing the battle. They allow an ambitious and visionary media-generator to create what they hope will be an instructional new scientific adventure for DCD Plus called Doctor Who , based on an old Western myth, telling her, “But none of those decadent bug eyes monsters, okay?!” By the fourth episode, it’s already causing a phenomenon with the introduction of some mechanical creatures the likes of which have never been seen before…

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