Cultural references to the Doctor Who universe

Just as characters from other fictional universes have appeared in the Doctor Who Universe, elements of the Doctor Who Universe, have (for the most part, unofficially), appeared in other continuities.

Televised examples
Get Off My Cloud, the final episode of the third season of the BBC's anthology series Out of the Unknown was partly set in the subconscious mind of a science-fiction writer and featured in-character appearances by the Daleks (as fictional creations). (The episode's designer was Raymond Cusick, who was earlier responsible for the original Dalek design.)

Arrivederci Roma, the first episode of the first season of Channel 4's comedy series Chelmsford 123, showed the TARDIS materializing in the background of one scene, the Doctor briefly stepping outside before going back in and dematerializing.

Marvel
Marvel UK created a number of characters who appeared in various titles owned by the company, including Doctor Who Magazine (which was later re-named Doctor Who Monthly). The characters of the Special Executive (troubleshooters employed by the Time Lords, who had appeared in 4-D War and Black Sun Rising) appeared with Captain Britain in the "Jaspers' Warp" storyline written by the Special Executive's creator, Alan Moore.

The Doctor Who comics version of Merlin also appeared briefly in Captain Britain in a sequence demonstrating that Merlin had several alternate appearances and personalities that he could adopt as he saw fit. The Doctor has also appeared in cameos in several prose novels based in the Marvel Universe.

Marvel USA occasionally made oblique references to Doctor Who. These are largely the work of Chris Claremont, best known as the longest-running writer of the X-Men. Claremont's X-Men spin-off Excalibur featured the WHO, the Weird Happenings Organisation, led by Doctor Alistaire Stuart along with his sister, Brigadier Alysande Stuart. (They are obviously named after Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart.) The Marvel Universe has a thinly veiled version of the Doctor known as Professor Gamble who happens to have Dalek-like robot enemies known as the Incinerators (or Dredlox).

DC/Wildstorm
The Wildstorm comic book The Establishment featured Mister Pharmacist, a character clearly inspired by the Fourth Doctor, though a much darker and sinister one. He worked alongside a team of super-secret agents based on other characters from British fantasy and adventure television series. The Establishment made many other allusions to this genre and to British pulp fiction.

Another Wildstorm title, Albion, a series scripted by Leah Moore and plotted by her father Alan Moore, featured a Cyberman and also an Ice Warrior. It is unclear whether the Cyberman was meant to be 'real' or a costume. (The scene was set in an SF-themed bar, but the 'real' Robot Archie is also on display.) Like The Establishment, Albion was deeply rooted in English popular culture.

Grant Morrison's The Invisibles featured surgically altered drone henchmen known as the Cyphermen.

2000 AD
The 2000AD strip Caballistics, Inc. features Doctor Who references so often that they are practically part of the series' format. However, it also depicted a character clearly intended to be the actor Tom Baker being murdered by Scottish nationalist demons. This would appear to undermine the frequent suggestion by Caballistics, Inc fans that the series is unofficially set in the Doctor Who universe.

Prose examples

 * The Doctor has a cameo in Barbara Hambly's Star Trek novel Ishmael.


 * Lady Jennifer Buckingham from The War Games appears in the second volume of Kim Newman's crossover-intensive Anno Dracula universe. Charles Beauregard, the hero of several Anno Dracula stories, is referred to in All-Consuming Fire. One of Newman's books in the Dark Future series makes references to an alternative timeline, ultra-nationalist pro-English version of the Doctor Who television series in which the Doctor makes visits to famous events in English history while fighting off extraterrestrial threats to the Crown. Newman's Life's Lottery, a playful exploration of the concept of alternate universes, references Inferno in some detail (and a character fantasises somewhat colourfully about Jo Grant).


 * Michael Moorcock, an admirer of Doctor Who, had "Doctor Who" and a Dalek appear, amongst many other fictional characters, in his The Condition of Muzak.


 * Richard Calder's Dead trilogy features numerous dark alternative time lines involved in a sex war between men and woman, at least one featuring a version of Doctor Who. The last scene of the last volume, Dead Things, shows the young protagonist watching a scene of the "Daleks exterminating the slave girls of Skaro".