List of references to other DWU media in live-action BBC stories

References to non-televised works in live-action BBC DWU stories can be few and far between, but over the years, writers have slipped in references to characters, places, and events which originated in media other than the parent show.

Although starting as early as the show's second season, with Terry Nation striving to maintain continuity between televised Dalek material and the Skarosian tyrants' solo appearances in printed media, this behaviour became more common with the advent of the 2005 series of the show, with writers having lived through, and even participated in the writing of, the novels, comics, and audio stories of the 80s, 90s, and early 2000s.

Season 2

 * The Dalek Invasion of Earth used the term "Dalekanium" to refer to the metal that comprises the casing of a Dalek. The term, spelled "Dalekenium", had first been used several months earlier in the comic The Humanoids in The Dalek Book. It would remain a frequently used term, both on television and in other media, through to the 21st century.

Season 4

 * David Whitaker's The Evil of the Daleks marks the first televised appearance of the Dalek Emperor. Whitaker had previously co-written the first appearance of an emperor in the comic Invasion of the Daleks with fellow television writer Terry Nation, and later works would confirm the implicit identity of the two Emperors, now purported both to be the Dalek Prime.
 * Although in his early appearances the Dalek Emperor operated a small and mobile casing, he had been shown to transition to a huge, static casing located in the Great Hall of the Dalek City for the sake of increased intelligence the year prior in The Secret of the Emperor, a story printed in The Dalek Outer Space Book.

Season 10

 * Frontier in Space featured a future Earth being ruled by a President of Earth. The title had first appeared in the DWU in a TV Century 21 short story, Battle in Space.
 * The Dalek Supreme in Planet of the Daleks shares its black and gold colour scheme with the Dalek Leader from the comic strip *Sub Zero, which predated the serial by a year.

Season 12

 * In Robot, Sarah Jane Smith berates Benton after he chases off K1, prompting him to reply: "The US Cavalry never got treated like this." Sarah previously called for the US Cavalry to fend off the Daleks during the audio segments meant for the live performance at Goodwood Motor Circuit on 18 May 1974. Robot began airing in December of that year. (In the novelisation, the line is less specific: "The US Cavalry never get treated like this.")
 * In Genesis of the Daleks, the Fourth Doctor's recollection of the conclusion of the Dalek invasion of Earth fails to tally with the on-screen events of The Dalek Invasion of Earth, but references accounts of the invasion given in spin-off media:
 * Instead of a mere bomb collapsing their tunnelwork, he claims that the Daleks were defeated in part by the power of Earth's magnetic core, something shown in the theatrical film Daleks' Invasion Earth 2150 A.D.;
 * Instead of the mid-22nd century, the Doctor tells Davros that the invasion happened in 2000. The 1966 Target novelisation Doctor Who and the Crusaders mentioned the Dalek invasion as having happened in "the 21st century".
 * Additionally, while it conflicts with its event, Genesis of the Daleks does borrow some elements from the previous account of the' Creation of the Daleks given in the first The Daleks comic story, Genesis of Evil. Beyond the similarity of title, details present in both Geneses but not previously mentioned in (or even conflicting with) the account of the Daleks' origin in The Daleks include:
 * The Daleks' casings having been invented by one of the Daleks' humanoid ancestors before the actual Dalek mutants, instead the Daleks having built them themselves afte rmutating.
 * The Daleks' ancestors having already been the aggressors in the war against the Thals, rather than initially innocent victims of warmongering, slave-driving Thals as suggested in the original Dalek story.
 * The Daleks' ancestor taking refuge in a bunker, and becoming one of the last survivors of the original Dalek race.
 * The Daleks vowing to conquer the rest of the universe almost immediately after being created and supplanting their makers.
 * Still in Genesis of the Daleks, Davros creates the Dalek mutants by "accelerating the evolution" of the Kaleds. In a different pre-1975 account of the Daleks' origin, We are the Daleks!, also written by Terry Nation himself, he had already presented the Dalek mutants as the result of artificially accelerated evolution, this time of transplanted humans at the hands of the Halldons.

Season 13

 * The Brain of Morbius is set on Karn, which was first a setting in the stage play Doctor Who and the Daleks in Seven Keys to Doomsday.

Season 25

 * In Remembrance of the Daleks, the casing used by Davros as Dalek Emperor has a spherical upper section, thus having a similar silhouette to the casing used by the original Dalek Emperor in the TV Century 21 Daleks comics. Indeed, at an early stage in planning of the storyline, Remembrance was planned to feature the Emperor in earnest.

Series 1

 * A London double decker bus resembling Iris Wildthyme's Celestial Omnibus, the Number 22 to Putney Common, can be glimpsed in the opening scenes of Rose.
 * The concept of a time war originated in the Doctor Who Magazine comic 4-D War, where Time Lords of the Dark Times fight in the Black Sun War. The concept would later become a major part of the War in Heaven of the BBC Eighth Doctor Adventures, before eventually finding its way onto television in the form of the Last Great Time War, initially mentioned in Rose.
 * In the Virgin New Adventures novel Lungbarrow, the Time Vortex is red when travelling forward in time and blue when travelling backwards. This idea was used again from Series 1 to 4 of the new series.
 * UNIT officer Muriel Frost, who originated from the 1990 Doctor Who Magazine comic The Mark of Mandragora, appears in Aliens of London.
 * Dalek is Robert Shearman's adaptation of his 2003 audio drama Jubilee. This fact is referenced by the Jubilee Pizza boxes seen in the story.
 * Kronkburgers, first eaten by soldiers of an alternate Roman Empire in the Doctor Who Magazine comic Doctor Who and the Iron Legion, were sold on Satellite Five in The Long Game.
 * In Boom Town, Rose Tyler recalls her visit to Justicia from the BBC New Series Adventures novel The Monsters Inside.
 * In Bad Wolf, the Anne Droid asked Rose a question about the planet Lucifer, which first appeared in the Virgin New Adventures novel Lucifer Rising.
 * In The Parting of the Ways, the Doctor claims that ancient Dalek legends refer to him as the "Oncoming Storm", a title that was first applied to him in the novels Love and War and Vampire Science. It would remain frequently used in subsequent years of televised and non-televised media alike.

Series 2

 * The two-parter Rise of the Cybermen / The Age of Steel is loosely based on the audio story Spare Parts, with Marc Platt being thanked in the end credits of the story.
 * Army of Ghosts hinges on the existence of "the Void", being the space between universes. Although the "dimensional divide" was first referenced on television in Inferno, it was the DWM comic story Voyager which first described what lay beyond the Doctor's universe with the name of "the Void" — and, incidentally, the first story to attempt to depict it visually.
 * The Satan Pit mentions the existence of a Kaled God of War. The novel Father Time had previously mentioned that the Klade (implied to be the future descendants of the Daleks, themselves offspring of the Kaleds) worshipped a God of War.
 * Doomsday includes the first televised reference to rels, a Dalek measurement of time. A Dalek unit called a "rel" was created in 1964's The Dalek Dictionary, where it measured "hydro-electricity"; it was first depicted as a unit of time in the film Daleks' Invasion Earth 2150 A.D., and had since appeared in comics and audios.

Series 3

 * In Smith and Jones, the Doctor mentions that he used to have a brother. The character of Irving Braxiatel, first introduced in the Virgin New Adventures, had previously been established as the Doctor's brother.
 * Gareth Roberts' The Shakespeare Code, is conceptually very similar to the comic story A Groatsworth of Wit, which was also written by Roberts and also featured William Shakespeare.
 * The Face of Boe's final message to the Doctor in Gridlock was reused from Davies' short story Meet the Doctor in the 2006 Doctor Who Annual.
 * Paul Cornell's two-parter Human Nature / The Family of Blood is an adaptation of his Virgin New Adventures novel Human Nature.
 * Steven Moffat's Blink is an adaptation of the short story What I Did on My Christmas Holidays by Sally Sparrow, published two years earlier.

Series 4

 * The Butler Institute, originally from the Virgin New Adventures novel Cat's Cradle: Warhead, was briefly seen in The Poison Sky.
 * Although the final design of the Supreme Dalek in The Stolen Earth only retains the three dome lights (in place of the typical two) as evidence of it, concept art proves that its design was influenced by the TV Century 21 Golden Emperor's, much like that of Davros's imperial casing in Remembrance of the Daleks.
 * The Space Agency, first featured in the TV21 Dalek prose story Fireball Surrenders!, is mentioned in The Waters of Mars.
 * Henrietta Goodheart from the novel Beautiful Chaos is mentioned as Netty, a member of the Silver Cloak, in The End of Time.
 * Rassilon's partisans in The End of Time intend to survive the Ultimate Sanction by becoming "beings of consciousness alone". Alien Bodies was the first story to show this as a possibility for Time Lords, having been used by a similar purpose by the Celestis.

Series 5

 * Victory of the Daleks and subsequent stories establish that the Doctor and Winston Churchill are old friends. Players in the BBC Past Doctor Adventures was actually the first story to depict the relationship in this way, and was reinforced by Churchill's cameo in The Shadow in the Glass.
 * The Lodger is an adaptation of the Doctor Who Magazine comic of the same name.
 * At the opening of the Pandorica in (the aptly named) The Pandorica Opens, the Alliance is mentioned to include Chelonians and Haemogoths. Chelonians originated in the Virgin New Adventures novel The Highest Science, while the Haemogoths had been mentioned in the BBC New Series Adventures novel The Forgotten Army, published a few months prior.

Series 6

 * Professor Arthur Candy, who first appeared in Steven Moffat's Decalog 3: Consequences short story Continuity Errors, appears again in Moffat's television story Let's Kill Hitler. Furthermore, he meets River at Luna University, which was first mentioned in that story.
 * In Night Terrors, the Doctor mentions Snow White and the Seven Keys to Doomsday among the bedtime stories he knows. This references the stage play Doctor Who and the Daleks in Seven Keys to Doomsday, which was also later adapted into an audio story by Big Finish.

Series 7

 * The Brig's daughter Kate Stewart, who first appeared in the 1995 home video Downtime, appears as a major recurring character in the series starting with The Power of Three.
 * Before regenerating in The Night of the Doctor, the Eighth Doctor recalls some of his audio-original companions, including Charley, C'rizz, Lucie Miller, Tamsin Drew, and Molly O'Sullivan.
 * The Day of the Doctor prominently featured the War Council of Gallifrey, first seen in the BBC Eighth Doctor Adventures as part of the War in Heaven.

Series 8

 * In Into the Dalek, Clara Oswald is a teacher of Class 1C, which was identified as Barbara Wright's class number in the novelisation The Edge of Destruction.
 * Abslom Daak, who first appeared in the Doctor Who Magazine comic Abslom Daak... Dalek Killer, was seen in the memories of the cyborg Psi in Time Heist.

Series 9

 * The Magician's Apprentice revealed that had survived the events of Death in Heaven, a fact which had been foreshadowed by the Doctor Who Magazine short story The Secret Diary of the Master the previous year.
 * In The Witch's Familiar, Missy mentions that the Doctor once fell into a nest of vampire monkeys. Vampire monkeys were featured in the comic story Tooth and Claw.
 * In The Girl Who Died the Doctor mentions the Velosians, who had first been mentioned in the audio Starlight Robbery two years earlier. They went on to debut in Tales of the Dark Times in 2020.
 * In The Zygon Invasion, the Twelfth Doctor tells Petronella Osgood that he wears question mark underpants. The Eighth Doctor was the first Doctor to be shown to wear such, in the comic The Glorious Dead and the novel Seeing I.

Series 10

 * The colony planet in Smile, though not named in dialogue, was identified in advertising and reference material around the time of the episode's release as Gliese 581d, a link eventually confirmed in a narrative work in the 2018 Doctor Who Annual. This planet had first been mentioned as a future human colony ten years earlier in All Snug in Their Beds, a Fourth Doctor short story printed in Short Trips: The Ghosts of Christmas.
 * When recalling the planets on which the Cybermen have originated in The Doctor Falls, the Twelfth Doctor mentions Marinus, which had been revealed as a Cyberman origin planet in the Doctor Who Magazine comic The World Shapers.

Series 11

 * In Resolution, the reconnaissance scout variant of Dalek was introduced. A similar concept — a hitherto unseen type of Dalek specialised to "spy out the land for an imminent full-scale invasion" which also arrived on Earth — was seen in the 1966 short story Have Daleks Invaded Scotland?.

Series 12

 * In The Timeless Children the actor for Rassilon was cast to resemble Don Warrington, who played Rassilon in the audio story Zagreus.
 * Dialogue in the same scene suggests that the founders of Gallifrey knowingly restricted Time Lord regeneration to a maximum of twelve renewals, an idea first made explicit in Zagreus, albeit now attributed to Tecteun.

Torchwood

 * After Freema Agyeman was cast in, which featured a character called , Torchwood script editor Gary Russell mentioned in a tweet that the alias used by Agyeman's character, Martha Jones, in the television story Reset, was a deliberate reference to the Eighth Doctor's companion Sam Jones.
 * John Frobisher from Children of Earth was named after Frobisher, a Sixth Doctor companion in the Doctor Who Magazine comics. (REF: DWMSE 39)

The Sarah Jane Adventures

 * The Raxacoricofallapatorian villains of the story The Gift, the Blathereen, first appeared in the BBC New Series Adventures novel The Monsters Inside.

Class

 * The Coal Hill School Roll of Honours Board includes the names A. Okehurst, J. Gibson, and D. Hatcher, who all perished in the events of the Telos Doctor Who novella Time and Relative.

Mini-sodes

 * In Liberty Hall, Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart mentions being with the Doctor in Malebolgia in 2003, which are references to the audio story Minuet in Hell. He also mentions Gordon and Kate Lethbridge-Stewart, who are his family members in the independently produced Downtime.
 * In Ian Chesterton: An Introduction, the home video reconstruction of The Crusade, Ian Chesterton recalls two untelevised adventures. The first involves the talking stones of Tyron, mentioned in the parent story's novelisation, Doctor Who and the Crusaders, and the second is his witnessing of the Salem witch trials, depicted in the BBC Past Doctor Adventures novel The Witch Hunters.