10 Times Doctor Who Shamelessly Ripped Off Hollywood

4. Earthshock Borrows From Ridley Scott's Alien - Literally

Doctor Who Earthshock Snyder
BBC

Considering that Earthshock aired in 1982, it would be genuinely surprising if it didn't take inspiration from some of the groundbreaking sci-fi cinema of the late 1970s, such as Star Wars and Alien.

However, it did - and episode one of this serial contains a clear and obvious ripoff of an intense scene found in Ridley Scott's original 1979 Alien film.

Earthshock begins with a team of troopers exploring a cave system, with their progress being monitored on a scanner that displays lifeforms as small white dots. At one point, some of these dots start to disappear as the troopers are picked off by a mysterious, unseen threat, which is exactly how Dallas' death plays out in Alien - even down to the scanner and the dots.

Earthshock also borrows from Alien in a literal, physical sense too. The Cyberscope prop seen in this serial was built using parts from the Nostromo set that Ridley Scott used in Alien. This is due to the fact that modelmaker Martin Bower worked on both projects. Nothing wrong with a bit of recycling!

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Danny has been with WhatCulture for almost nine years, and is currently Doctor Who Editor and WhoCulture Channel Manager, overseeing all of WhatCulture's Whoniverse coverage. He has been writing and video editing for 10+ years, and first got a taste for content creation after making his own Doctor Who trailers and uploading them to YouTube (they're admittedly a bit rusty by today's standards). If you need someone to recite every Doctor Who episode in order or to tell you about the making of 1988's Remembrance of the Daleks, Danny is the person to ask.