Follow TV Tropes

Following

Franchise / Doctor Who Expanded Universe

Go To

"What if the 'real' timeline is like a musical score, with infinite ornamentations possible? There can’t be a perfectly correct performance of the score, because a score is a guide, not a definition. It opens possibilities rather than closing them off. Why shouldn’t time be like music?"
The Eighth Doctor, Eighth Doctor Adventures, "Camera Obscura"

In late 1963 we had Doctor Who, the series which spawned the Whoniverse. Then in 1964, in the pages of TV Comic, a Doctor Who spin-off comic started. It was the first part of what would become the Doctor Who Expanded Universe: a never-ending supply of stories with many different branches, timelines and continuities, which have a strong tendency to reference each other and mutually contradict each other in the same breath.

Expanded Universe series in general, and those without the Doctor in particular, tend to be Darker and Edgier and skew more towards the cynical end of the Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism than their parent series. The different Sarah Jane spin-offs serve as an example in how you can spin off the same character in different ways, using different tropes and for different audiences: the Third Doctor Radio Dramas have her as a Damsel in Distress; The Sarah Jane Adventures and K-9 and Company are notably fluffy and sweet (with still pretty dark themes for children's television of their respective times); the semi-professional direct-to-video non-BBC production Downtime tackled a few more serious issues; the Big Finish Doctor Who audio adaptation series Sarah Jane Smith is dark, mature and complex.

The Perennially Thorny Question of Doctor Who Canon

The Expanded Universe has branched in diverse ways into separate fully licensed and semi-official sub-continuities, divided (in some cases) by copyright restrictions. This is further complicated by the fact that no one person or company, including The BBC, owns all the rights to the monsters and characters which have appeared in the Whoniverse - the Doctor and the TARDIS are pretty much the only elements undeniably locked up by the BBC. Sometimes the varying strands acknowledge each other, sometimes they ignore each other, Depending on the Writer. Just how strongly linked any given series is to the TV series is debatable and can be very, very complicated. Unlike, for example, ViacomCBS and Star Trek or Lucasfilm/Disney and Star Wars the BBC has never come out and made a direct edict as to what is canonical and what isn't. As Paul Cornell wrote about here, the BBC have no interest in fannish conceptions like a fictional canon - to the BBC, "official" Doctor Who is Doctor Who made by them or by licensees, and "canon" doesn't come into it. note ) The main limitation is that the BBC charter, as a public State Broadcaster, means that you must not be required to spend money to "complete the story", which the modern Doctor Who showrunners have interpreted as meaning no viewer should be required to know a story outside the TV series or more than a few years old to understand this week's episode. Revived series showrunners Russell T. Davies and Steven Moffat have both ridiculed the idea that the novels, audios and comics are not "real Doctor Who". This is helped along by the fact that (unlike, say, Star Trek) Doctor Who writers are rarely limited to one particular medium. TV writers have gone on to write novels or comics or for Big Finish and vice versa. Many writers have taken the characters they created and own into their own spinoffs with little or no mention of their common TARDIS-shaped ancestor.

Since the return of the TV series, ideas from a diverse range of audio dramas, novels, and licensed Direct to Video films have all been referenced, alluded to, directly imported (most notably Kate Stewart) and in some rare cases directly adapted in TV series episodes. And many Expanded Universe stories and characters are adapted into other Expanded Universe stories and characters, which are then adapted for TV, which then spin off into more Expanded Universe stories... you get the idea. The Timey-Wimey Ball, Broad Strokes and especially the MST3K Mantra apply where necessary.

The "wilderness years" also spawned numerous Fan Work stories, typically involving the then-cancelled TV series' actors and crew in some way. These include the Doctor Who Audio Visuals (many of those involved became the nucleus of the official Big Finish production studio) and various BBV Productions (which blurred the lines between "official" and "fan" work, as the concepts were legally licenced from the rights holders). The people responsible for these Fan Work productions ended up directly involved in Doctor Who proper, and many of the concepts became Ascended Fanon.

In short: the Doctor Who Expanded Universe is a never-ending rabbit hole of stories. It's all tangled and full of Broad Strokes, and those who expect consistency, or even, in some cases, sanity, are in for a confusing ride. But the sheer importance and impact of the Expanded Universe to the TV series proper is tremendous: numerous post-2005 Whoniverse writers (and quite a few actors) got their start in Doctor Who in its expanded universe, and everyone involved with the current TV show has been heavily influenced by the EU's stories. In the years since the 50th Anniversary, the production team at the BBC have even aided the slow erasure of the boundaries between the "old" and "new" series, so that, for instance, Series 5 of Torchwood is produced by Big Finish, Benny Summerfield can meet the Twelfth Doctor, and Abslom Daak can get a quick cameo on the TV.

In summation, Doctor Who has basically the exact opposite of Negative Continuity - everything is equally valid, even (perhaps especially!) when it doesn't make sense, and "canon" exists purely in the minds of the audience.

    open/close all folders 

    Alternate Reality Games 

    Comics 

Comics

  • TV Comic: This British Anthology Comic publication specialised, as its name suggests, in comic strips featuring licensed TV characters. It ran a Doctor Who strip from 1964 to 1979, with a break during 1971-3 when the Doctor Who strip appeared in a sister title called Countdown and later TV Action, aimed at a slightly older audience. However, all these strips were definitely commercial publications aimed at a child audience, and the stories featuring the first four versions of "Dr. Who" and his companions (who in the early days were entirely different from the TV characters, due to the publishers only paying the fee to use the Doctor himself) reflected this. Apart from sharing very basic elements, they didn't have much in common with the television series. At one point, the Doctor joins forces with Santa Claus to battle an evil wizard and save Christmas.
  • The Dalek Chronicles. This comic ran in the Gerry Anderson-linked anthology title TV Century 21 from 1965 to 1967, featuring the Daleks in general and the Emperor Dalek in particular as the Villain Protagonists, killing and destroying everything in sight. This strip owed its existence to the fact that Terry Nation personally owned the copyright in the Daleks and initially licensed them separately. For its time it was distinctly Darker and Edgier than the main Doctor Who strip, and was partially written by the first script editor of Doctor Who, David Whitaker. It has a much higher reputation among fans than the early Doctor Who strips, and parts of its content undoubtedly influenced plots and Dalek characterisation and tech in later TV stories. Examples include the Emperor Dalek and, of course, the storyline about the nonconformist (though still violent) hippy Dalek who decided to go against the Emperor and defend pretty things — to the death! (The latter storyline appeared, minus the silliness, in the television story "The Evil of the Daleks".) The later ones have some excellent artwork by Ron Turner.
  • Doctor Who Magazine: From 1979 onwards, and still ongoing. By and large, the DWM comics have tended to reference their own sub-continuity more than other media. Until the 21st century revival of the series, this frequently involved original companions, although K-9, Peri and Ace all made significant strip appearances. During the early 1990s, they shared the same continuity as the Doctor Who New Adventures novels; in the mid-90s, around the time of the TV Movie, they made a break with the novels' continuity by killing off Ace as a teenager (after the books had shown her to age, turn into a '90s Anti-Hero and finally leave the Doctor for good).
    • Abslom Daak Dalek Killer: Published in Doctor Who Magazine. A Barbarian Hero IN SPACE!, doubling as both Space Opera and a partial Deconstruction of Anti-Hero tropes. It starred a rather dim-witted Ax-Crazy/Ineffectual Loner on a perpetual Roaring Rampage of Revenge against the Daleks, who had exterminated his lover, a Rich Bitch Fallen Princess (literally a princess, in her case. After her extermination she ended up unalive in a cryo-chamber.). He lived during the same 26th century time period as Bernice Summerfield, and met her twice.
    • "Evening's Empire": A comic written by former script editor Andrew Cartmel starring the Seventh Doctor and Ace. Originally a DWM story which suffered extreme schedule slip after Part 1, it was eventually put out as a Doctor Who Classic Comics special (Classic Comics being a DWM spinoff), and subsequently collected in the Seventh Doctor DWM TPB Evening's Empire.
  • Marvel Comics: Marvel UK were the original publishers of DWM from 1979 to 1995, and put out a few graphic novels reprinting DWM stories. Marvel US published a Doctor Who ongoing comic, reprinting the Fourth and Fifth Doctors' DWM comics from the beginning. Marvel's Doctor Who content is designated Earth-5556 of the Marvel Multiverse.
    • The Age of Chaos: An original comic written by Colin Baker, starring the Sixth Doctor and Frobisher.
    • The Incredible Hulk Presents: A short-lived UK magazine reprinting US comics, which also featured original Seventh Doctor comics. Initially, the plan was for the comics to be published in DWM as well, but the DWM editor shot the idea down, as they were aimed at a younger audience than DWM; in the end, only one published Incredible Hulk Presents comic, and one unpublished, ran in DWM. All of the Incredible Hulk Presents comics were collected in the Seventh Doctor DWM TPB Nemesis of the Daleks, along with the background behind them.
  • Radio Times comic strip: A short-lived Eighth Doctor strip written by Gary Russell with art by Lee Sullivan. It ran for about a year in Radio Times after the TV Movie, and ended up getting Cut Short. (Gary would later wrap up the story as a side-plot in his Eighth Doctor Adventures novel Placebo Effect.) Format-wise, it was more akin to a newspaper comic than anything else, with short strips generally cliffhangering into the next one.
  • Doctor Who Adventures: After the TV series' return in 2005, a new magazine aimed at kids came out alongside DWM in 2006, with its own Lighter and Softer comic and in-universe articles, stories, games, etc. — a format similar to the early years of DWM.
  • Doctor Who (IDW): American company IDW Publishing picked up the licence for US Doctor Who comics after the export success of the 21st-century revived series, reprinting the Doctor Who Magazine run from the beginning as Doctor Who Classics, producing their own one-shots and miniseries, and eventually launching their own separate ongoing series featuring the Tenth and Eleventh Doctors - Ten with original companions, Eleven with his TV companions. IDW's issues are officially invokedNo Export for You to the UK, for licencing reasons, although it's easy to find the TPBs in comic shops. Their Doctor Who licence ended at the same time as Matt Smith's tenure on the show. Their releases included, but are not limited to:
  • BBC Books Doctor Who Graphic Novels: During the Eleventh Doctor's era, the BBC published two hardbound graphic novels, The Only Good Dalek and The Dalek Project. Both were by writer Justin Richards and artist Mike Collins, who had worked on the Doctor Who Magazine comics, and have a general flavour very similar to those.
  • Doctor Who (Titan): After IDW lost the US Doctor Who comics license, Titan Books, previously known mostly for publishing 2000 AD strip collections, were the next recipients. Having previously published three separate ongoing series featuring the Tenth, Eleventh and Twelfth Doctors, with both Ten and Eleven having original companions, they then did a single ongoing featuring the Thirteenth Doctor, then went on to do a series of miniseries with a rotating cast (Missy, the Fugitive Doctor, an Eighth, Eleventh and Rose Tyler team-up, etc.). They also did miniseries featuring the previous Doctors, including the first full Ninth Doctor comic story since his era originally ended, released to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the revival. This was then expanded into a Ninth Doctor ongoing series. All the comics were combined into two anthologies for UK consumption: Doctor Who Comic, which launched in February 2015 (initially featuring all three on-going titles, later covering the Eleventh and Twelfth Doctor comics and Four Doctors), and Tales From the TARDIS (featuring the later Tenth Doctor comics and the other miniseries). With Titan's reduction in output, only Doctor Who Comic was left, reprinting the current US comic.
  • Cutaway Comics: Cutaway release miniseries focusing on various Whoniverse characters and settings absent the Doctor, TARDIS or companions, including Omega, Eldrad, Lytton, Orcini and Paradise Towers.

    Film 

Film

  • Dr. Who and the Daleks (based on "The Daleks") and Daleks' Invasion Earth 2150 A.D. (based on "The Dalek Invasion of Earth"): Two colour, relatively high budgeted Doctor Who film adaptations from the 1960s. The films, starring Peter Cushing, shortened and dumbed down the stories, meaning that they cut out much Padding, but simplified the themes, softened the characters and overall made things Lighter and Softer. The Doctor underwent Flanderization into a human Absent-Minded Professor literally called Dr. Who who had invented a time machine called TARDIS (no "the"). His grand-daughter Susan was de-aged to prepubescence and Barbara and Ian were changed from teachers to Doctor Who's grown-up elder grand-daughter and her incompetent Plucky Comic Relief boyfriend. The second film replaced Barbara and Ian with Doctor Who's niece Louise and Tom Campbell, a bumbling policeman who anticipated a couple of TV companions by stumbling into TARDIS thinking it was a real police box. At least two comics and one prose spin-off short story have been officially published featuring the movieverse characters. Bernard Cribbins, who played Campbell, played Donna's grandfather Wilfred Mott in several Davies-era TV stories, decades later. Steven Moffat, showrunner of the main series, has cited the movie Daleks as inspiration for the Dalek design of series 5. Needless to say, they occur in a Alternate Continuity from the series, although more than one mainstream story has claimed they were actually in-universe films based on Ian and Barbara pitching their experiences as "fiction". The idea nearly became official in "Day Of The Doctor" but they couldn't get clearance to use the posters in time. Then the novelization of that episode restored it, and even added that the actual Doctor lent Peter Cushing one of his coats and gave him a trip in the TARDIS to perform in Rogue One in place of his CGI Fake Shemp because he was a big fan!
  • Reeltime Pictures: Semi-pro direct-to-video licensed videos starring TV series companions and monsters, including:
    • Wartime
    • Downtime (also integrated into the Missing Adventures continuity; introduced Canon Immigrant Kate Stewart)
    • Shakedown: The Return of the Sontarans (also integrated into the New Adventures continuity)
    • Mindgame
    • Dæmos Rising
  • Various unlicensed productions: These were shot in various circumstances over the years, typically by members of the cast and crew just goofing around without the BBC's permission. This category notably includes "The Crystal Conundrum", which is the only filmed adventure to date in which companio Bernice Summerfield accompanies the Doctor. (Bernice later also briefly appeared in live-action format alone, in a Big Finish video trailer.)
  • "Global Conspiracy": A short Mockumentary by Mark Gatiss, based on and released on the DVD releases of "The Green Death".

    Television 

Television

Most TV spin-offs are unambiguously in the continuity of the main TV series: this section is for TV oddments whose continuity was ambiguous even at the time of production.
  • "A Fix With Sontarans": A crossover mini-episode which appeared as a segment of the once-popular Jim'll Fix It. It became a invokedBanned Episode after its host, Jimmy Savile, was posthumously outed as a serial rapist.
    • The release of the Season 22 Blu-Ray unbanned the episode by removing the Savile segments of the episode and adding a less continuity destroying endingnote , managing to not only get around the main issue everyone had with the short but also allowing the viewer to treat its canonicity just like every other example on the list.
  • "Search Out Space": An episode of a children's educational show Search Out Science, featuring the Seventh Doctor, Ace and K-9.
  • "Dimensions In Time": The 30th anniversary special, doubling as a crossover with EastEnders. All five established Doctors whose actors were alive at that time, and a random assortment of companions, face off in Albert Square against the Rani.
  • Doctor Who: The Curse of Fatal Death: A Comic Relief charity parody mini-episode special by Steven Moffat.
  • "Good As Gold": A charity mini-episode.
  • Children In Need 2011: A Children in Need charity mini-episode.

    Animation/Web Original 

Animation/Web Original

In the 1980s, Canadian company Nelvana planned to produce an animated Who series for American network CBS, which fell through. Early concept art for the series featured a Doctor who bore a striking resemblance to Egon Spengler, from The Real Ghostbusters.

About a decade after Doctor Who went off the air, BBCi started experimenting with the series, doing webcast dramas with animated elements. These include:

  • Death Comes to Time: set in an apparent Alternative Continuity which ignores the TV Movie with the Eighth Doctor as well as the novels.
  • "Shada": A TV episode that got stuck in invokedDevelopment Hell and was later recorded by Big Finish, with the Eighth Doctor taking the place of the Fourth.
  • "Real Time": recorded by Big Finish, starring the Sixth Doctor and Big Finish companion Evelyn. Notably the first cooperation between Colin Baker and the BBC since he got invokedScrewed by the Network.
  • Scream of the Shalka: A 2003 anniversary special by BBCi, which featured a Ninth Doctor played by Richard E. Grant. The TV series' return (announced two months earlier), however, meant the Shalka Doctor got overwritten in continuity. It also featured a cameo by a now somewhat well-known Who fan who basically insisted on having a part written just for him after hearing about the production from down the hall. It eventually was released on DVD in the fall of 2013.
    • Actress Sophie Okonedo, who had a lead role in the serial, would later appear in a different role in Series 5 & 6.
    • Derek Jacobi, who plays the Master in this serial, also plays him in the character's first appearance in the revived series.
    • Richard E. Grant would also return to Who with a notable role in the 2012 Christmas Special, also playing an incarnation of a villain not seen since the classic series.
  • The Infinite Quest: a 13-part serial featuring the Tenth Doctor and Martha, broadcast as part of the BBC kids' series Totally Doctor Who. Released on DVD in the UK in the fall of 2007 and then in the US a year later.
  • Dreamland, a 2009 CGI-animated serial featuring Ten solo with "guest companions". Initially, it was shown on digital and online, before appearing on BBC Two. This is almost certainly in mainstream TV continuity, as one of its villain factions later turned up in The Sarah Jane Adventures. It was released on DVD in the Spring of 2010.
    • Actress Georgia Moffett, who had a notable role in Series 4, appears in this serial as companion Cassie Rice. She and David Tennant would eventually marry nearly two years later.

    Literature 

Literature

  • Doctor Who annuals. Included in this section as the majority of their fictional material was prose, although many also included comic strips. Originally published by World Distributors from 1965 to 1986, revived for a few years in the 1990s by Marvel Comics, and revived again in the 21st century. The 21st century saw separate publications of The Doctor Who Annual (mostly non-fictional material), The Doctor Who Storybook (fiction) and The Brilliant Book of Doctor Who (both fiction and non-fiction). During the 1960s and part of the 1980s, and since the show's revival, these had significant involvement by people connected with the TV series and the fictional content was quite close to the TV show. During the 1970s and other parts of the 1980s, this was notoriously not so, with art that barely resembled the TV actors and some extremely bizarre and OOC stories.
  • The Dalek Annuals: Like the "Daleks" comic strip, a 1960s/70s product of Terry Nation's personal IP ownership and separate licensing of the Daleks. The fictional material in these albums was sometimes quite shockingly Darker and Edgier, with huge death tolls and sympathetic characters failing and dying. The content from these annuals tied in to some of Nation's future-set Dalek TV stories, especially "The Daleks' Master Plan", and the "Daleks" comic strip. The "facts" about Dalek history and technology from these albums, like those from the "Daleks" comic strip, often turned up in later TV stories and other Expanded Universe material.
  • Doctor Who Novelisations: By Target. During the 70s and 80s, in the days before video took off, these were the way to catch up on previous Doctor Who stories. They retold (and frequently expanded on) the stories on TV, and several of them are highly acclaimed. Usually also available as audiobooks, read by the TV series actor(s). Almost every story from the classic series got a novelisation, with the TV Movie's being done by BBC Books; the five that didn't get one ("The Pirate Planet", "City of Death", "Shada", "Resurrection of the Daleks" and "Revelation of the Daleks") received fan novelisations courtesy of the New Zealand Doctor Who Fan Club. (If you noticed that three of the five are Douglas Adams stories, you're right. Adams wouldn't allow others to novelise his scripts, and - notorious procrastinator that he was - never did them himself. Also, with The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy having taken off in the meantime, Target Books was no longer able to afford the advances he commanded.) "Shada" eventually received an official novelisation by BBC Books in 2012, written by Gareth Roberts. "City of Death" also received a BBC novelisation in 2015; initially it was announced that it would again be by Roberts, but it was eventually written by Torchwood writer James Goss. A novelisation of "The Pirate Planet" by Goss came out in 2017, followed by his novelisation of another Adams-written work - the never-produced film Doctor Who and the Krikkitmen - in 2018. Novelisations of the other two "missing" stories, by their original writer Eric Saward, were finally published in 2019. The first full novelisations of stories from the revival series were released in 2018, with more following later.
    • The Companions of Doctor Who: A short-lived series of Target novels featuring companions without the Doctor. After original novels featuring Turlough and Harry Sullivan (the latter written by Sullivan's actor Ian Marter), it fizzled out with a novelisation of K-9 and Company.
    • The Missing Episodes: Novelisations of three stories planned for the aborted original Season 23, "The Nightmare Fair", "Mission to Magnus" and "The Ultimate Evil"; the other planned stories were not advanced enough in the writing to be used as source material.
    • Doctor Who Meets Scratchman: The novelisation of Tom Baker's screenplay for a proposed movie that never happened; adapted by Tom himself with help from James Goss.
  • Pearson novelisations: Pearson Education's abridged novelisations of selected stories from the revival series for the educational market, to help promote child literacy. The initial set of four, "The Eleventh Hour", "Victory of the Daleks", "The Time of Angels", and "The Lodger" were only available directly from Pearson to schools which belonged to Bug Club, their child literacy scheme, though copies have found their way onto the market. Later novelisations are mass-market releases, available for anyone to buy.
  • Doctor Who New Adventures: Created after the show was cancelled, as an official continuation of the adventures of the Seventh Doctor and, initially, Ace. Also known as "Virgin New Adventures", after their publisher. Choosing to aim for an audience of 25 and up fans and readers of Science Fiction (versus targeting a younger, less reverent demographic, as they also considered), they made both the Doctor and the tone of the entire franchise Darker and Edgier. They also made the stories a harder science fiction. The novels (more because of the creativity of the fans-turned-authors invokedRunning the Asylum than by Executive Meddling) riffed over each other's contributions. Future Show Runner Russell T. Davies contributed one of the novels, Damaged Goods. Other writers for the New Adventures would later write for the 2005 revival series. The penultimate New Adventures novel featuring the Doctor, Lungbarrow by Marc Platt, also went into the Doctor's secret Back Story, hinted about onscreen. After Virgin lost the licence, they decided they'd accumulated enough world-building to continue without him, and continued for two more years to release "New Adventures" novels (without the "Doctor Who") featuring characters original to the series; in particular, the series shifted its focus to:
  • Doctor Who Missing Adventures: Novels starring the first six Doctors, also published by Virgin at the same time as the New Adventures featuring the Seventh. Although they were written to officially fit in between specific pairs of TV stories, and so couldn't do anything that would truly break TV continuity, they often adopted the more "mature", Darker and Edgier subject matter and tone of the New Adventures.
  • Decalogs: A five-volume series of short story anthologies featuring the Doctor and his companions, also published by Virgin. Notably, Decalog 3: Consequences contained "Continuity Errors", later head writer's Steven Moffat's first contribution to the franchise. Following Virgin's loss of the Doctor Who license, Decalog 4: Re:Generations focused entirely on the family history of New Adventures companion Roz while the final volume, Decalog 5: Wonders, said "screw it" and was, with the exception of "The Judgement of Solomon" featuring Benny, an anthology of standalone sci-fi short stories completely unrelated to the Doctor Who franchise.
  • Eighth Doctor Adventures: Published by the BBC. The authors really had a field day with the Eighth Doctor, who had only appeared in the Made-for-TV Movie. Since his run in the TV series was so short, nearly all of his adventures had to be shown in the Expanded Universe, in the novels, audio plays and comics. Famous for giving the Doctor an Adaptational Sexuality upgrade, with the Eighth Doctor happily getting intimate with his companions, regardless of their gender. General consensus says that both this series and the Doctor Who New Adventures took place in the same universe, though some writers disagreed. At any rate, the Eighth Doctor novels started off Lighter and Softer then before and then got Darker and Edgier again and engaged in heavy Story Arcs leading to (arguably) Continuity Lock-Out and eventually Cosmic Retcon, which in turn led to... etc., etc. Not to be confused with Big Finish's New Eighth Doctor Adventures audio series, which explicitly takes place in a parallel universe (although good luck figuring out where the timelines split).
  • Faction Paradox: An Evil Counterpart (or more precisely, invokedChaotic Neutral counterpart) of the Time Lords who use Temporal Paradoxes as a weapon. Introduced in the Doctor Who New Adventures and later brought back in the Eighth Doctor Adventures published by the BBC, they spun off into their own series of novels, comic books and audios in which various Diabolical Mastermind types square off against each other. This sub-universe seemed to have died, though is now putting out books and audio adventures again after a change of publisher. More adult Speculative Fiction, this sub-universe engages in Black-and-Gray Morality, Evil Versus Evil and Mind Screw at regular intervals. Also much cheeky use of mainstream Whoniverse continuity.
  • Past Doctor Adventures: A range of novels by the BBC analogous to the Virgin Missing Adventures, featuring the first seven Doctors (and in one instance, the Eighth). Dropped in 2005, around the time of David Tennant's debut, and has been revived beginning with The Wheel of Ice in 2012 (a 7-year release gap), with a new book every year, notable among them is 2014's Engines of War, the War Doctor's first Expanded Universe story.
    • Campaign: A novel by Jim Mortimore (he of Big Finish's "The Natural History Of Fear"), originally commissioned by the BBC but rejected due to being completely insane. The book was instead released by Mortimore as a fanzine, and ended up being well-loved by fans and writers alike and influencing a number of later stories.
  • Short Trips: Short story anthologies by the BBC, later published by Big Finish. (Once Big Finish lost their licence to publish Short Trips as books, they continued making new ones as an audio series.)
  • Telos novellas: Briefly, Telos got the licence to do Doctor Who novellas, featuring all the Doctors. The stories are on the experimental side of the franchise and strive to be just plain weird.
  • Time Hunter: A spin-off from the Telos novella, "The Cabinet of Light". This series featured 1950s time-sensitive detective Honoré Lechasseur and his companion Emily Blandish in a mix of mystery novel, detective story, dark fantasy and science-fiction adventures through time and space.
  • New Series Adventures: 2005 onwards. These feature the current TV Doctor and aim themselves towards a more general and kid-inclusive audience. However, the writers like to sneak in references to Darker and Edgier works from the Doctor Who Expanded Universe. These new books appear to be in continuity with the TV series, being referenced (in "Boom Town" and "The End of Time" Part One) in the TV show itself. Trailed off during the Twelfth Doctor's era.
  • Torchwood novels: Many of which were also adapted into audio books, which in turn spawned more novels, etc. See The Other Wiki for a full list.
  • Iris Wildthyme: Rogue (alleged) Time Lady, voiced by Katy Manning in the audios (who also played the Third Doctor's companion Jo Grant in the classic series), whose (alleged) TARDIS looks like a red double-decker London bus, smaller on the inside. She actually originated outside the Whoniverse in a few Magical Realist novels by Paul Magrs and got transplanted into it. If you're looking for a Whovian equivalent of Squirrel Girl, here she is.
    • Señor 105 is a Mexican wrestler/scientist/crime fighter who first appeared as a friend of Iris Wildthyme in some of her stories. He later starred in his own spin-off novella series. Quite possibly the most distant thing on this page from Doctor Who as seen on TV.
  • Puffin ebooks: A monthly series of short ebooks released for the 50th anniversary, featuring the first eleven Doctors in chronological order, written by famous children's authors. Collected as "Doctor Who: 11 Doctors 11 Stories". Notably the Ninth Doctor story The Beast of Babylon gave room for Ninth Doctor adventures without Rose while still allowing the events of "Rose" to be his first adventure.
    • An additional story featuring the Twelfth Doctor was released in 2014, which was also included in a new version of the collection, 12 Doctors 12 Stories. Another version was released in 2019, 13 Doctors 13 Stories, including an additional story featuring the Thirteenth Doctor.
  • Time Trips: BBC Books' analogue to the Puffin ebooks, a series of short ebooks, featuring a different Doctor each story, written by famous novelists. Collected in print as Time Trips. They'd done three ebooks before this, tying in with Series 7 (The Angel's Kiss, Devil in the Smoke, and Summer Falls).
  • Doctor Who Tales Of Trenzalore: This tells the story of some of the Doctor's battles during the Siege of Trenzalore; however, instead of telling it as one big story, Tales of Trenzalore breaks down the years into four different periods, by four different writers.
  • Lethbridge-Stewart: A series of novels from Candy Jar Books about the adventures of Colonel Lethbridge-Stewart before his promotion to Brigadier. Notable for expanding the Lethbridge-Stewart family tree and for tackling the "UNIT Dating Problem" head-on, with the kind of explanation that could only happen in Doctor Who - namely, the 1970s happened twice due to a Time Crash accidentally caused by the TARDIS.
    • The Lucy Wilson Mysteries: A Spin-Offspring novel series from Candy Jar Books following the Brig's granddaughter.
  • Erimem: A spin-off featuring the adventures of the Fifth Doctor Big Finish companion from Thebes Publishing.
  • Time Lord Fairy Tales: A 2015 collection of short stories for children by Justin Richards that restage various European fairy and folktales (or just common tropes thereof) in the Whoniverse, with results that range from all-out Alternate Universe fare to stories that could work in the regular continuity.
  • Twelve Doctors of Christmas: A 2015 anthology telling Christmas-related short stories for each of the twelve main Doctors, each story written by a different author.
  • Myths and Legends: Much like Time Lord Fairy Tales, this is a 2017 collection of short stories by Richard Dinnick adapting stories from Classical Mythology to the Whoniverse.
  • Class novels.
  • Doctor Who meets the World of Hargreaves (aka Dr Men): A series of books by Adam Hargreaves, current writer of the Mr. Men books, featuring the Doctors In the Style of Mr. Men, with one book for each of the first thirteen Doctors, plus an extra Christmas book for Ten. Share a trope page with Mr. Men.
  • A Brief History of Time Lords: A book that covers Time Lord history from both the series and the various aspects of the Expanded Universe. It also claims that Susan is not the Doctor's granddaughter but rather the daughter of a Time Lord President, riffing off "Hell Bent".
  • Dalek: The Astounding Untold History of the Greatest Enemies of the Universe: A book that covers Dalek history with additional features including short prose and comic stories.
  • Dalek Combat Training Manual: An in-universe guide for Time Lords fighting the Daleks.
  • Doctor Who The Target Storybook: A series of short stories for various Doctors written by various authors, In the Style of the Target novelisations. Includes the last story by Terrance Dicks.
  • Doctor Who Puffin Classic Literature Crossovers: A series of novels in which the various Doctors cross over with famous literature, including Robin Hood, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Treasure Island, and King Arthur.

    Audio 

Audio

  • Doctor Who and the Pescatons: A 1976 half-drama-half-audiobook on vinyl LP, in which the Fourth Doctor and Sarah fight off an invasion of Earth by the fish-like Pescatons. Also got a Target novelisation, in the final years of the range when they were casting around for new titles.
  • Exploration Earth: The Time Machine: An episode of an educational radio show on earth sciences, in which the Fourth Doctor and Sarah Jane guide pupils on a trip to Earth's early geological history, with occasional interruptions from villain Megron.
  • Slipback: A serial featuring the Sixth Doctor and Peri, broadcast during a short-lived children's strand of programming on Radio 4. Created to ensure that some kind of Doctor Who would exist in broadcast media during the gap created by the cancellation of the original Season 23. Like "The Pescatons", also received a Target novelisation.
  • Third Doctor Radio Dramas: "The Paradise of Death" (for Radio 5) and "The Ghosts of N-Space" (for Radio 2), and the short story "Glorious Goodwood" (recorded in 1974, released in 2005).
  • Audio Adventures in Time & Space: A semi-official Fan Work production label by BBV Productions (headed by Bill Baggs and Nicholas Briggs). Works from various continuities were produced under the label. Since BBV didn't have the rights to the Doctor, there was a lot of Writing Around Trademarks involved: for example, Ace would travel with Sylvester McCoy as "The Professor", instead of as the Doctor. Some stories focused instead on classic villains, such as the Rani or the Cybermen — the TV series writers were occasionally involved in writing these audios. Others were based on Nicholas Briggs' Who-clone series The Stranger (in which Colin Baker played the titular Sixth Doctor Expy, and Nicola Bryant was Peri Expy "Miss Brown").
  • Doctor Who Audio Visuals: A not-at-all official Fan Work series created by Nicholas Briggs, starring Nicholas Briggs as the Doctor. Written, composed and produced by Nicholas Briggs and a handful of friends with a few dozen pseudonyms. Technically violated BBC copyright, but the BBC choose to look the other way. The series went on for four seasons and ended up influencing Doctor Who as a whole — many of its elements (including its Doctor!) later became invokedAscended Fanon both in the Doctor Who Magazine comics and in Big Finish (the latter of which is also run by Briggs).
  • The ArcHive Tapes: A series of four audio episodes presented as an In-Universe historical document, dedicated to filling in the gaps of the Cybermen's appearances in the classic series. Narrated by Cyberman actor David Banks.
  • Big Finish Doctor Who: Big Finish audios, from 1999 onwards, starring classic Doctors and companions. Headed by Nicholas Briggs. While much of is compatible with the TV series, it also comprises many mutually exclusive timelines and continuities, and is also incompatible with many new TV series events. Originally for Classic Who only, with licences for New Who gradually obtained from 2013 onwards. For a full list of ranges, see the tropes page. Additionally, The Lost Stories are episodes that were intended for the TV series, but never made; episodes marked "Side Step" take place in the Doctor Who New Adventures continuity or Doctor Who Magazine continuity, rather than the Big Finish timeline; and various adaptations of existing Expanded Universe stories, such as the Doctor Who stage plays, have also been recorded.
  • Doctor Who The Dalek Conquests: An In-Universe documentary which, much like The ArcHive Tapes before it, recaps the Daleks' appearances on TV. Narrated by Dalek actor Nicholas Briggs.
  • BBC Audio (aka AudioGO): Prose audios, read by the actors who play TV Doctors and companions. These include:
    • Recordings of Doctor Who novels as prose stories.
    • Recordings of Target Doctor Who Novelisations as prose stories.
    • Recordings of original prose stories, generally one or two hours long; these are variously known as the New Series Audio Exclusives or simply New Series Adventures, although (somewhat confusingly) the latter title also refers to print novels and their audio recordings.
    • They also recruited Fourth Doctor Tom Baker to do three series of audio plays for them. (To make things not confusing at all, these are now also sold on the Big Finish website, and eventually got a Continuity Nod in a Big Finish story, but are not Big Finish themselves.)
    • One cooperation project by AudioGO and Big Finish, the 50th anniversary "Destiny Of The Doctor" series, enabled Big Finish to briefly escape the trademark issues around the Ninth, Tenth and Eleventh Doctors.
  • Kaldor City: By Magic Bullet Productions. Stories set in the decadent far-future human (probably) culture seen in the Fourth Doctor serial "The Robots of Death". Following on from an earlier Past Doctor Adventures novel, Corpse Marker, by "Robots of Death" scriptwriter and Blake's Seven script editor Chris Boucher, these act as loose sequels to that novel and Canon Weld Boucher's Who and Blake's stories. They feature the surprise return of an old Who baddy and someone who's quite probably a Blake's 7 main character.
  • Torchwood audio books and radio dramas: See The Other Wiki for a full list.
  • Doctor Who Redacted: A series by BBC Sounds following three new characters, the hosts of an in-universe podcast which investigates the Doctor at the erasure of those who know them. The Thirteenth Doctor plays a supporting role along with several past characters.

    Stage Plays 

Stage Plays

  • The Curse Of The Daleks, a 1964 stage play serving as an Interquel between the first Dalek story, "The Daleks", and their second, "The Dalek Invasion of Earth". (The earlier The Dalek Chronicles comics had done the same.) It did not feature the Doctor or any of his companions. Adapted by Big Finish.
  • Doctor Who And The Daleks In The Seven Keys To Doomsday, a 1974 stage play with a long title, an alternate Fourth Doctor portayed by Trevor Martin (the real Fourth Doctor had yet to appear on television) and also Daleks. And, as you would expect, the Seven Keys to Doomsday. Remade in 2008 as a Big Finish audio, with Trevor Martin reprising his Doctor.
  • Recall UNIT: The Great T-Bag Mystery, a 1984 stage play featuring Mike Yates, John Benton and a single Dalek, but not the Doctor or any of his companions. It was written by Yates' actor Richard Franklin and performed during that year's edition of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. And no, it has nothing to do with T-Bag.
  • Doctor Who: The Ultimate Adventure, a musical! With singing! And Daleks and Cybermen teaming up! And real Doctors! And Margaret Thatcher! (Or at least an actress playing her.) It was performed in 1989. The Daleks and Cybermen did not team up with Margaret Thatcher. Even Evil Has Standards. Adapted almost word for word as an Audio Play by Big Finish, which also convinced playwright Terrance Dicks to give it an audio sequel ("Beyond The Ultimate Adventure").
  • The Trial of Davros, an unofficial production, performed twice (in 1993 and 2005), with the second performance being supported by both the BBC and Terry Nation's Estate. It features an Alternate History in which Davros was taken out of time by the Time Lords at the end of Genesis of the Daleks and put on trial. Peter Myles reprised his role as Nyder in both performances, while Davros was played by Michael Wisher in the first one, and by Terry Molloy in the second one. The second one also fatured Michael Wisher's son Andrew as one of the prosecutors.
  • Doctor Who Live: The Monsters Are Coming!, a 2010 stage play serving as a sequel to the Third Doctor story "Carnival of Monsters", featuring the son of Vorg from that story and, as you can infer, lots of monsters live on the stage. It did feature the real Doctor... in the form of prerecorded Matt Smith footage which the characters on stage interacted with.
  • The Crash of the Elysium, a 2011-2012 interactive stage play produced by immersive theatre codifiers Punchdrunk from an idea by Steven Moffat. It featured the Weeping Angels, more prerecorded Matt Smith footage (except for one day where Smith appeared in the flesh) and (of course) the crash of a spaceship known as the Elysium. Being a Punchdrunk production, the fourth wall was smashed into bits in this play as the audience was recruited by the military on a quest to face the Angels and rescue the TARDIS, whom they have separated the Doctor from (again).

    Games 

Games

  • The Doctor Who Roleplaying Game: A tabletop RPG made by FASA in the 80s. Marred by poor research, which unintentionally generated invokedFanon. FASA put out several supplements, along with two Gamebooks.
  • Doctor Who: The Game of Time and Space, a gigantic, series-wide crossover featuring all of the Doctors and their companions (two of whom were "Susie" and "Lyla" ) and foes, and which relied upon a multitude of tiny cardboard discs to mark progress.
  • Time Lord, a second RPG made by Virgin Publishing (the publishers of the New and Missing Adventures lines of novels) in the 90s.
  • Doctor Who Adventures In Time And Space: An RPG from Cubicle 7 that was first published in winter 2009, followed by a line of supplements. Doctors and Daleks, an adaptation to the Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition ruleset with its own original playable species and classes, was published in summer 2022.
  • The Make Your Own Adventure With Doctor Who series (Find Your Fate in the US): Six choose-your-own-adventure books with the Sixth Doctor released in the 1980s by Severn House (UK)/Ballantine (US). BBC Books did their own choose-your-own-adventure books for the Tenth and Eleventh Doctors with the Decide Your Destiny books, and for the Twelfth Doctor with the Choose The Future books.
  • Doctor Who Pinball: Williams Electronics published a physical pinball game where the Master and Davros team up to hurl the first seven Doctors into the sun and only your pinball wizardry can rescue them and defeat the villains. FarSight Studios subsequently released a digital pinball game where the Master forms a Legion of Doom of the Doctor's greatest enemies, and the Twelfth Doctor calls on his previous incarnations and you, the player, for help.
  • Exterminate! - The Minatures Game: A tabletop miniatures game by Warlord Games pitting the Daleks against the Cybermen, with expansions including Doctors, companions, allies, villains, and other monsters.
  • Computer games of varying genres:
    • The First Adventure: A Fifth Doctor mini-game compilation for the BBC Micro.
    • Doctor Who and the Warlord: A text adventure for the BBC Micro featuring an unspecified Doctor.
    • Doctor Who And The Mines Of Terror: A platformer with the Sixth Doctor for the BBC Micro, Amstrad CPC and Commodore 64.
    • Dalek Attack: Another platformer, featuring an Out of Character Seventh Doctor, as well as the Fourth and Second, outright killing the Daleks and their allies with his sonic screwdriver and grenades.
    • Destiny of the Doctors: A PC adventure game in which you play a jellyish-esque creature who must rescue the first seven Doctors from the Master. Notable for its live-action cutscenes featuring Anthony Ainley's final performance as the Master.
    • Top Trumps: A Tenth Doctor card game.
    • All the minigames on the BBC's Doctor Who website.
    • The Adventure Games: A set of episodic adventure games with the Eleventh Doctor, headed by Charles Cecil and developed by Sumo Digital. Said to be part of series 5 and 6, four were released in mid-to-late 2010 and one was released in late 2011.
    • Doctor Who: Worlds in Time: A web browser MMO in which time is breaking apart (again), and the Doctor is recruiting a vast network of assistants to help find and repair damaged patches of time, and defeat the alien menaces that plan to use the situation for their own benefit. Each assistant gets their own sonic screwdriver.
    • Attack Of The Graske: An interactive BBC Red Button special starring the Tenth Doctor.
    • Evacuation Earth: A Professor Layton-style puzzle game for the Nintendo DS
    • Doctor Who: Return to Earth: An action game for Wii.
    • The Eternity Clock: Yet another platformer, released on the Playstation 3, Playstation Vita and PC and featuring the Eleventh Doctor and River Song.
    • Doctor Who: Legacy: A free-to-play Match Three RPG puzzler for iOS and Android in which episodes of the show are re-enacted in the style of Puzzle & Dragons. Notable for its gorgeous art, solid gameplay and copious amounts of Continuity Porn, dipping its toes into the Expanded Universe at times.
    • Doctor Who: The Runaway: A short, cartoony, VR adventure. You must help the Thirteenth Doctor rescue a small, lost, Energy Being from a squad of Knight Templar Space Police.
    • Doctor Who: The Edge of Time: A VR Adventure Game. A strange new enemy is infecting all of Time & Space at once and the Thirteenth Doctor is separated from the TARDIS. You, armed with the Sonic Screwdriver and the TARDIS, must race to find the Doctor and set this whole mess right, facing against a large section of the Rogues Gallery in the process.
      • Doctor Who: The Edge of Reality: A remake of The Edge of Time for consoles starring the Thirteenth and Tenth Doctors, with David Tennant reprising his role as the latter in a bonus storyline.
    • Doctor Who: Lost in Time: An Idle Game starring the Fourth, Tenth, Twelfth and Thirteenth Doctors, in which a mysterious influx of vortex energy is affecting the Doctor's timeline, leading to more Continuity Porn as the Doctors revisit their past.

Tropes used in the games:

  • Black Cyberknights: Show up in one of the pre-generated adventure paths in the Cubicle 7 RPG. They stage a duel to try to figure out which of the local knights would be best for conversion.
  • Cursed with Awesome: Due to the destruction of the human race in 1963 in City of the Daleks, Amy is slowly fading from existence. While this is certainly a bad thing, it also affords her occasional invisiblity, which can come in quite handy during stealth sequences.
  • Exposition Fairy: Amy falls into this role for much of City of the Daleks.
  • Gotta Catch 'Em All: The Adventure Games features a card collecting sidequest, in which you find and collect various cards featuring the Doctor's allies, his enemies, incarnations of the Doctor himself, and different flavours of Jellybabies.
  • Power of Love: Allows Sir Tristan to resist the conversion of the Cybermen because it would take him away from his beloved queen.
  • Shout-Out: In one of the Adventures In Time and Space supplemental adventures, "Knight of the Comet", the only man with a sophisticated enough lab to analyze the wounds left by the Cyberknights is named Gaius, who is a cantankerous old man and has a well-stocked medicine cabinet.
  • Temporal Paradox: Lady Morgana manipulates the players into making one to fuel her Paradox Battery.
  • The Tourney: Much less fun if you are thrown through a temporal vortex directly into the middle of one, as happens to the players in "Knight of the Comet"

    Multi-Platform 

Time Lord Victorious

A multi-platform story featuring the Eighth, Ninth and Tenth Doctors, utilising most of the above platforms, designed so each strand can be followed as a standalone; so if you only read the novels, or get the Big Finish audios, you will get a complete story, but you will get more out of it if you follow the other release lines. Includes:

  • Two New Series Adventures novels featuring the Eighth, Ninth and Tenth Doctors, The Knight, the Fool and the Dead (October 2020) and All Flesh is Grass (December 2020)
  • Four Big Finish audio dramas starring Paul McGann as the Eighth Doctor: He Kills Me, He Kills Me Not (October 2020), The Enemy of My Enemy (November 2020), Mutually Assured Destruction (December 2020), and Echoes of Extinction (February 2021; also featuring a B-side story starring David Tennant as the Tenth Doctor)
  • One Big Finish audio drama starring Tom Baker as the Fourth Doctor: Genetics of the Daleks (December 2020)
  • Two Big Finish Short Trips read by Jon Culshaw featuring the Master, Master Thief and Lesser Evils (October 2020)
  • Two special-length Titan comics featuring the Tenth Doctor, simply entitled Doctor Who: Time Lord Victorious (the TPB publication gave it the subtitle "Defender of the Daleks"). (September 2020)
  • Monstrous Beauty, a three-part comic strip in Doctor Who Magazine featuring the Ninth Doctor and Rose (September-November 2020)
  • The Minds of Magnox, a BBC Audio release featuring the Tenth Doctor, performed by Jacob Dudman (December 2020)
  • TLV related content added to Doctor Who: The Edge of Time
  • Daleks!, an animated series on the official YouTube channel (November-December 2020)
  • A Dalek Awakens, a live Room Escape Game by Escape Hunt (March 2020)
  • Time Fracture, a live "immersive experience" event by Immersive Anywhere (May 2021)
  • Tales of the Dark Times, a comic written by the event's lead producer on the official Doctor Who: Comic Reader app
  • Some toys visualising various characters from the different works
  • And one T-shirt detailing one character's backstory. When they said multi-media they really meant it

Doom's Day

Another multi-platform story to celebrate the 60th anniversary, this consists of a full day in the life of the assassin Doom, as she searches for the Doctor, and comprises:
  • Prologue/trailer: Meet Doom - The Universe's Greatest Assassin on the official YouTube channel.
  • Hours 1 and 24: "Hour One" (June 2023) and "Out of Time" (September 2023), two text stories by James Goss on the Doctor Who website
  • Hours 2-5: Four Hours of Doom's Day, a Doctor Who Magazine comic supplement (June 2023)
  • Hours 6-9: Doom's Day: A Doctor in the House? a two issue miniseries from Titan Comics (July 2023)
  • Hours 10 and 15: "AI am the Doctor" and "Wrong Place at the Right Time", events in the mobile game Doctor Who: Lost in Time
  • Hours 11-14: Extraction Point, a novel by James Goss (August 2023)
  • Hours 16-19: Four From Doom's Day, four audio dramas from BBC Audio (August 2023)
  • Hours 20-23: Dying Hours, four audio dramas from Big Finish (September 2023)

    Advertising 
Despite the ban on advertising on the BBC channels themselves, the BBC have been happy to allow Doctor Who to be used in advertising and promotions for various companies over the years. A few of these have gone beyond simple pictures and slogans to tell actual stories:
  • Doctor Who and the Daleks sweet cigarettes: A range of Doctor Who sweet cigarettes from 1964 (sweets in the shape of cigarettes, a British tradition for many years until they were banned for encouraging kids to smoke) included trading cards that told a surprisingly involved story, featuring a team-up between the Daleks and the Voord! The "Doctor Who" who appears has longish, dark hair and doesn't look exactly like any actor to play the role, although he may be interpreted as a younger First Doctor. The series is currently available as a special feature on the DVD issue of "The Keys of Marinus".
  • Doctor Who Fights Masterplan Q: An episodic story featuring the Third Doctor printed on the wrappers of various Nestle chocolate bars, in which the Master attacks British military facilities with his trained alien dinosaur. Included as a special feature on the DVD release of "Terror of the Autons".
  • Prime Computer: This American business computer manufacturer screened adverts in Australia and New Zealand at the turn of the 1980s, featuring Tom Baker and Lalla Ward in character as the Fourth Doctor and Romana in brief skits. They are chiefly notorious among fans for the fourth and final advert, which overtly suggested a fully romantic relationship between the two characters. (This may have been a fourth-wall-breaking joke about the real-world marriage of the actors.) They are officially included on the DVD of "Destiny of the Daleks" and on the Season 18 Blu-Ray box set. These were the only time that a TV advert has actually featured the Doctor in character, although Jon Pertwee once did a Lawyer-Friendly Cameo in a British ad for Vodafone.

Tropes that appear in the Doctor Who Expanded Universe in general:

  • Anyone Can Die: The Doctor Who Magazine comics famously killed off Ace, Big Finish sees Tegan dying of cancer, and Death Comes To Time even permanently killed the Doctor himself. Various works tend to throw in cheeky references to the fact that certain companions are dead in other continuities.
  • Arc Welding: Often necessary, but just as often ignored in favour of an Alternate Continuity explanation.
  • The Bus Came Back: Every single Doctor Who character comes back in the Expanded Universe. In Big Finish, they're generally played by the original actors.
  • Canon Foreigner: Most works feature at least one original companion, and they tend to stick around for a very long time and appear in other media as well. For example, Doctor Who Magazine comics companion Frobisher showed up in Big Finish as well, and eventually in IDW comics. Doctor Who New Adventures companion Bernice Summerfield has appeared in more novels and audios than can be sensibly listed anywhere. Big Finish companion Dr. Evelyn Smythe has even appeared in the official BBC web animation "Real Time". During 2009, when the Doctor was companion-less on TV, DWA gave him Heather McCrimmon, a descendant of Jamie. And so on.
  • Canon Immigrant: Occasionally, characters from the Doctor Who Expanded Universe make it into the TV series. Examples are Kate Stewart (from Downtime) and for the 50th Anniversary webisode "Night of the Doctor", Eight namedropped Charley, C'rizz, Lucie, Tamsin and Molly (by extension, referencing the whole of the mainline Big Finish continuity).
  • Cast Full of Gay: The majority of the more mature Doctor Who spinoffs have a lot of gay and bisexual characters, generally shown in a very positive way. Notable queer companions include Chris Cwej (Seventh Doctor), Oliver Harper (First Doctor), Cinder (War Doctor), and Izzy Sinclair and Fey Truscott-Sade (Eighth Doctor).
  • Character Development: The classic characters of Doctor Who all get plenty of development throughout the Expanded Universe. The crowning example of this trope is generally considered to be "Peri And The Piscon Paradox", written by actress Nicola Bryant's partner Nev Fountain.
  • Continuity Snarl: Different branches and franchises freely reference each other or contradict each other, and no single author has the power to say whether or not something is in continuity with something else. It's all a bit like a big tangled ball of multicoloured yarn, or perhaps wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey... stuff. Not least because quite a few authors, in every medium, will cheekily reference events or characters from nominally "different" continuities, just for laughs.
  • Darker and Edgier: Many of the spinoffs, notably the Doctor Who New Adventures and Big Finish.
  • The Dark Times: The early years of the Universe were led by the Great Old Ones; the Animus, the Celestial Toymaker, the Black Guardian, the Gods of Ragnarok, Fenric and many others besides, with Elder Powers such as the Dæmons and Eternals, Osirans and Jagaroth also flourishing during this time.
  • Eldritch Abomination: While these have appeared in the TV show, they're especially common here and actual crossovers with the Cthulhu Mythos have happened. Time Lords that have been bio-re-engineered to regenerate into more combat suitable forms have been described as becoming Mythosian monsters, the Nestene Consciousness has been described as one of the children of Shub-Niggurath, and there's even a story where the Animusnote  has been retconnned as being Lloigornote .
    • Oh, and also minor villain The Great Intelligence turns out to actually be YOG-SOTHOTH!, who escaped the destruction of his universe with the other Great Old Ones (read: The Time Lords from said previous universe), by shunting themselves into a parallel universe that died a second later than theirs to pass into the next universe, which is the canon Doctor Who universe!
  • Fantasy Kitchen Sink: You name it, it's in there. Iris Wildthyme especially goes all out on this trope.
  • Fix Fic: As you can imagine, there's been years of this, often devolving into Armed with Canon.
  • The Krampus: Big Finish, the Titan Doctor Who comics, and the Doctor Who Magazine comic strip have all featured completely different and incompatible versions of the Krampus as one-shot villains. DWM has actually had two completely different versions in different stories!
  • The Men in Black: Just about every part of the Expanded Universe has its own evil, or at least Darker and Edgier, UK Government Conspiracy alien-investigation secret service to match the TV universe's Torchwood:
    • The Virgin prose novels had Department C19, which was at one point run by the Master in disguise.
    • The Big Finish continuity has Department C4, aka the Forge. The Forge was the most obvious influence on Torchwood, being specifically motivated by extreme British nationalism and oriented towards reverse-engineering alien technology for military purposes. It also got a namecheck in a Doctor Who (Titan) story.
    • The Doctor Who Magazine comics continuity has Wonderland, an extra-terrestrial division of MI-6 with the mission of proactively investigating and when necessary destroying alien threats. It's the least overtly evil of the three, although it did have the embarassing situation of one of their top field agents turning out to be a psychopathic, sadistic, Absolute Xenophobe who tried to steal the Doctor's TARDIS and use it to spread a virus that would have killed every non-Terran life-form in the universe throughout history (the other members of the group being horrified at this).
  • Merchandising the Monster: This trope is lampshaded in this video on the YouTube channel. When a Time Lord child reviews a LEGO toy of the TARDIS, he points out that a Dalek is among the figures included, and that making a toy out of a all-hating monster that nearly destroyed the universe during the Last Great Time War is rather offensive.
  • Not-So-Harmless Villain: Every so often, a writer will decide to take on one of the TV series' more notorious joke villains and show them as genuinely dangerous. Some particularly glaring examples include the Voord in Doctor Who: Four Doctors, the ineffectual Donald Sumpter incarnation of Rassilon in Doctor Who: Supremacy of the Cybermen, the Monk twice in different canons in long-term story arcs in the Doctor Who New Adventures and Big Finish Doctor Who, the Krotons in the Eighth Doctor Adventures novel Alien Bodies, and the Nimon in the Big Finish story Seasons of Fear. Doctor Who: The Lost Dimension outright parodied this in the Fourth Doctor's issue, in which the breakdown of the multiverse leads to the Fourth Doctor encountering alternate-universe versions of the Quarks, the Krotons, and the Ogrons, all of whom have become the dominent culture in their universes, which apparently don't have the Daleks.
  • Our Vampires Are Different: Ever since the TV series introduced the idea that vampires are real in Doctor Who, the Expanded Universe has been running wild with variations on them. Particularly, the Eighth Doctor Adventures, the Big Finish story arc involving the Forge, the Big Finish arc involving Rassilon and the Big Finish Jago & Litefoot series involve a lot of the blood suckers.
  • Racial Transformation: Various expanded universe canons depicted Time Lords having incarnations of a different race to their TV one(s), well before the TV show ever did:
    • The Fourth Doctor Past Doctor Adventures novel Tomb of Valdemar features a cameo by a black future incarnation of Romana.
    • One incarnation of Iris Wildthyme who appears in the Eighth Doctor Adventures, in particular The Blue Angel, is black and has a Textual Celebrity Resemblance to the singer Shirley Bassey.
    • The unique version of the Master who provided the villainy in one Eighth Doctor arc of the Doctor Who Magazine comic was black, in contrast to all the TV incarnations of the character at the time being white. (In this case, he'd possessed a dead human rather than regenerating.)
    • The Doctor Who (Titan) comic series included an East Asian incarnation of the Master who accompanied the War Doctor for a time during the Time War, and depicted the incarnation of Borusa who actually taught the Doctor at the Academy as being black.
    • The version of Rassilon who appears in a few Big Finish Doctor Who audio dramas is played by Don Warrington, a black actor, although given the medium it's unknown whether the character shares the actor's appearance. The version who appears in Doctor Who Magazine strip "Monstrous Beauty" is definitely dark-skinned, however.
  • Real-World Episode:
    • The DWM comic "TV Action!" (the title referencing a comics magazine in which early Doctor Who strips had appeared) has the Eighth Doctor and companion Izzy following a villain "into our world", ending up in the BBC studios where Tom Baker himself distracts the villain, allowing the heroes to save the day.
    • A similar story is done in the final IDW comic "The Girl Who Loved Doctor Who", in which the Eleventh Doctor ends up in the real world, meets Matt Smith, and suggests Peter Capaldi as his replacement.
  • Timey-Wimey Ball: Even within a single franchise, the rules of time and space get bent a lot. Between franchises, there are about a hundred different ways time travel can work.
  • Restricted Expanded Universe:
    • The post-cancellation novels and audios make changes and reveal great swathes of history. Much of which has to be ignored after the TV series gets a revival over a decade later. Now, this doesn't necessarily mean it's a retcon, what with the setting having considerable Temporal Mutability. On some occasions, Word of God has confirmed that "everything is canon", we're just seeing different possible timelines. For example, one of the post-revival episodes is an explicit retelling of the novel Human Nature, written by Paul Cornell. Likewise in the case of the Doctor Who Magazine comic strips as well as the IDW and Titan comics have been through it in the revival.
    • On July 5, 1969 —two weeks after "The War Games" aired— TV Comic begins a series of stories where the Second Doctor is exiled to Earth. During this period, the Doctor lives in the Carlton Grange Hotel and becomes a newspaper-headlining celebrity. In "The Night Walkers" (November 8-22, 1969), the Doctor investigates a story about scarecrows that walk at night that turns out to be a trap by the Time Lords so they can enforce the second half of his sentence. The scarecrows begin the regeneration process and set the TARDIS controls to dematerialise, leading seamlessly into "Spearhead from Space" six weeks later. So, averted in that case.
  • Trope Codifier:

Top