10 Doctor Who Real Life Alternate Timelines

1. What If Doctor Who Had Never Been Made?

Question Mark To quote the Master, 'a Universe without the Doctor scarcely bears thinking about.' The obvious answer to this one is that you wouldn't be reading this article, nor would we be writing it. And don't be nasty and say that would be a plus, either. But seriously: what has the impact of Doctor Who been on our culture? Some would argue that franchises like Star Trek and Star Wars have had more of an effect, but we would not be one of them. The absence of Doctor Who means all of the leads in science fiction programmes and movies would fall into the Captain Kirk-Han Solo-Buck Rogers model: handsome, rugged, virile, highly sexualised, and unquestionably heterosexual. The TV Movie and the 2005 series making the Doctor into a character capable of romantic interest doesn't negate the 25-plus years when he wasn't, and that has had an impact on young fans who would later become fans and even writers. Another impact is on our language. The terms TARDIS, Dalek, Cybermen, and even police box are no longer single descriptors limited to explaining a concept specific to a single TV show. They instead each invoke a set of connotations that transcend their denotative meanings in the dictionary. (That's something to consider, too: the word 'Dalek' now appears in the OED.) We'd not only lose the word, we'd lose the concept. Sure, we'd still have 'Nazi' to fall back on, but the word 'Dalek' describes a concept with its own brand of evil and horror, an even more universal one. The Nazis were evil, but they were still human beings (despite all evidence to the contrary). The Daleks never were. Such an alien evil is hard to imagine outside of the works of H.P. Lovecraft or Ambrose Bierce. What about all the writers, actors, producers, filmmakers, artists, and other professionals who entered their field or took a different direction because of their interest in Doctor Who? Would we still have a show like Sherlock, or David Tennant's acting career, or the works of Alan Moore, without Doctor Who - or if we did, would they be just as brilliant? Isn't it a wonderful thing that we live in a world where we don't know the answer to that question? We'd like to hear your answers to some of these questions, and we'd especially like to hear some of the What Ifs you've asked yourself over the years about Doctor Who, so feel free to discuss all of this in the comments section below!
Contributor
Contributor

Tony Whitt has previously written TV, DVD, and comic reviews for CINESCAPE, NOW PLAYING, and iF MAGAZINE. His weekly COMICSCAPE columns from the early 2000s can still be found archived on Mania.com. He has also written a book of gay-themed short stories titled CRESCENT CITY CONNECTIONS, available on Amazon.com in both paperback and Kindle format. Whitt currently lives and works in Chicago, Illinois.