10 Doctor Who Futures That Are Now In The Past
TARDIS or not, nobody can 100% predict the future – not even the Doctor!
Wait around long enough and even the most rational of predictions for the future can become hilariously outdated.
Blade Runner's 2019 setting looks incredibly dated in the 2020s. Not because of artificial intelligence and electric flying cars, but because most of the businesses advertised in its futuristic Los Angeles went bankrupt decades ago.
This is a big problem for a time travel TV show like Doctor Who, especially when it becomes the longest-running sci-fi series ever. In the 1960s, dates like 1986 and 2018 felt impossibly far away – surely Doctor Who wouldn't be on TV by then?
Years that may seem far in the future at the time of writing can come around the corner very quickly, slightly dating your brilliant Doctor Who script. However, as the Doctor is constantly telling us, everything's in flux. Time can be rewritten.
The longer Doctor Who goes on, the more it risks crashing into its wild predictions for the future. The next crossover point will be 2049, when the Moon is revealed to be an egg. So make sure to put that date in your diary! Until then, here's every Doctor Who future that's now far behind us.
10. The Chase - 1966
Terry Nation's outright Dalek comedy The Chase takes place across all of time and space. One particular interlude in the Daleks' pursuit of the First Doctor and his companions is a trip to the observation deck atop the Empire State Building in New York.
This took place on an undisclosed date in 1966, placing it at least a year after the actual broadcast of the episode. As far as historical records can tell, the Daleks never did visit the Empire State Building, so this prediction never came true in our own version of 1966.
The closest the Daleks got to America was when the 1965 Peter Cushing movie Dr. Who and the Daleks premiered in the US in July 1966, to a less-than enthusiastic commercial response. The producers missed a trick by not promoting the movie on top of the Empire State Building!
Other notable Dalek events from 1966 included the broadcast of The Daleks' Master Plan, and a group of Daleks arriving at the Blue Peter studio to review cakes.
Great Skaro Bake Off anyone?