10 Even MORE Times Doctor Who Appeared In Other TV Shows
3. Coupling
Coupling was a sitcom that ran on the BBC between 2000 and 2004, detailing the lives of three men and three women in their 30s as they navigate their lives and relationships.
It's also chock-full of Doctor Who references, which will come as no surprise once you find out who wrote it.
The show was the brainchild of none other than Steven Moffat, who based it on his own relationship with producer Sue Vertue, who had previously worked with Moffat on his 1999 charity sketch The Curse of Fatal Death. With a Whovian duo running the show, the references were inevitable.
These include one of the main characters, Oliver, owning a nerdy bookshop with a gigantic replica Dalek as one of its centrepieces. In the Series 4 episode Nightlines, Oliver also has a package that says "EXTERMINATE" when he hits the top of the box.
Elsewhere, another character, Steven Taylor (also the name of a First Doctor companion), describes how he used to hide behind the sofa while watching Doctor Who, and there's even a "Bring Back Doctor Who" jumper visible at one point, since Coupling was written and broadcast before the show returned in 2005.
It was during the 2005 series that Moffat wrote his first official Doctor Who story, The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances – so he got his wish, and then some.