Crossovers ahoy!

[thisbluespirit]

As anyone who knows me, one of my other loves in fanfic is a good crossover. It's the one thing you really can't have in the actual show (because of pesky rl considerations, like copyright, actors now being consideably older / dead etc.) and Doctor Who is built for it. Where other shows have to beat about the bush trying to explain the crossover, or just making it crack!fic to get away with it, all any DW fanficcer has to write is 'The TARDIS lands...' and we're away.

What crossovers would you like to see more of? Or those you'd just love to see? Are there any real crossover no-nos when it comes to Doctor Who? I've always been of the opinion that you can cross it with anything, but maybe there are limits.

What ideas does everyone have?

Comments

[moon-blitz.livejournal.com]

First, I swear I will get back to the Stargate SG-1/Doctor Who fic I started a while back. It's just that writing two big bangs have taken up most of my muse and writing time. Moving on...

I've read several good Star Trek XI/Doctor Who crossover fics, and I was working on a Defying Gravity/DW crossover fic with another LiveJournal user. That series in particular needs more fic, and Doctor Who is a perfect fit for it.

I'd love to see some Moonlight/DW fics, especially since the actress who played Reinniete/Madam de Pompadour in S2 also starred in Moonlight. I'd also love to see a Full Metal Alchemist/DW crossover where the 9th Doctor is teasing Ed about his height and is trying to explain away alchemy.

Finally, a Torchwood/Carnivale crossover where Jack goes undercover with the Carnavale troupe to investigate the strange events that always seem to happen when they're around.

Personally, I don't think there are any limits when it comes to crossing Doctor Who with another series, since the TARDIS can go pretty much anywhere in time and space. As long as the author can come up with a decent explanation as to why the Doctor is in that particular place/time/universe, I'd say go for it.

[persiflage-1.livejournal.com]

While it's absolutely true that Doctor Who can be crossed with anything, I've read some really rubbish x-overs (no, I'm not going to name names) because it *can* be hard to do it really well as I know 'cos I've tried with Wallace & Gromit, Law & Order: UK, The Adventures of Luther Arkwright, Highlander (unfinished), and Sanctuary (unfinished).

But when it's done well, then it's absolutely brilliant and lots of fun.

Personally I'd love to see some good x-over fics for the following fandoms (fair warning, I'm a huge fan of Martha so most of these feature her!):

The Mentalist - I'm thinking Patrick Jane and Martha would be an interesting combo, because she'd not let him get away with half the cr4p that Lisbon does, after dealing with Ten's cr4p!

Highlander - Martha discovering she's an Immortal, and learning sword-fighting from Methos would be awesome!

Sanctuary - yes, I want to put Martha and Peter Wingfield's James Watson together. So sue me for being a Martha fan AND a Peter W fan! :P

The Scarifyers (ask me for more info if you're interested, but let me just mention that Nick Courtney and Terry Molloy, aka The Brig and Davros play the leads!) - Three and Liz running into Lionheart and Dunning would be awesomesauce on awesomecake!

Queen of Swords - Martha and Ten meeting Dr Robert Helm and the Queen of Swords would be great fun - I can just see the ladies ganging up on the guys! *smirks*

Murdoch Mysteries - Martha and Ten meeting Dr Julia Ogden and Detective William Murdoch - Martha could empathise with Julia over her travails in being a woman Doctor in the c19th.

[clocketpatch]

I did a paper on fic a few years ago and done of the reference books I was using mentioned a Wheel-of-Fortune/Who crossover published in a fanzine back in the eighties. I've been looking for it ever since...

Of course, a game show crossover is weird, because does that count as its own universe or as RPF. Whatever, it still amuses me.

I've been wanting to see a crossover between Who and Dark Angel for a bit. I can just see the Doctor being mistaken for one of the genetic experiments...

[curuchamion.livejournal.com]

I have trouble answering this question because, basically, you give me any two fandoms I know and I can theoretically come up with a crossover bunny - if I don't know of a fic that's already done it! To me, there are no crossover no-nos at all.

(Except LOTR. Somehow, crossing LOTR never quite works. It's so extremely unique.)

I'd like to see more crossovers featuring companions without the Doctor. And if I had to pick one fandom to have more Who crosses in, it'd be Sapphire & Steel!

[john_amend_all]

It's possible to cross a lot of things with Doctor Who, but I'd hesitate to say 'everything', just in case. Obviously, it depends what type of crossover you're writing. You might manage a Watership Down crossover drabble, for example, but trying to extend it would be difficult. Even if the TARDIS allowed the Doctor and his companions to talk to the rabbit characters, I don't think the rabbits would hang around long enough to discover that.

If you wanted to leave the premise of one or both series intact after the crossover, that would rule out various other possibilities. Particularly if the other series is driven by some long-standing problem that the Doctor could solve in seconds with a wave of the sonic screwdriver. I should think that any Doctor from say, Four, onwards, with a working TARDIS, would be able to get Voyager home, and he'd have to have quite a good reason not to.

There could also be Universes where the problem would be differences in the underlying philosophy: 'Things are dreadful and this Must Not Change' versus 'Nine times out of ten, things will be considerably better once the Doctor has paid a call'.

One other crossover thought: I don't much care for the thing where two villains in the different universes are identified as the same entity, despite having precious little in common. This is directed, I hasten to add, more at things like the New Adventures' habit of trying to force all sorts of Doctor Who monsters into the Lovecraft pantheon, rather than casting gags about characters who happen to be played by the same actor; heaven knows I'm as guilty of that as anyone!

The other thing that can cause trouble in a crossover is where you've got two sets of heroes, either of whom would normally be expected to be able to solve the problem on their own, and the author has to contrive situations where they're both necessary. Some ways around that might be:

• Have the villain from one setting battle the hero of the other.
  
• As curuchamion suggests above, have companions going solo.
  
• Have the two sets of heroes working at cross-purposes. Here's a skeletal plot I came up with for a Star Trek TNG crossover, though I'm sure it would work just as well with other Trek crews: The Enterprise arrives at a planet, which has a problem with rock monsters or earthquakes or a falling moon or whatever. There's a fairly simple fix, which they proceed to put into effect. At the same time, the Doctor and his companion have also landed on the planet, and the Doctor also attempts to correct the problem. The two proposed solutions interact damagingly, making matters worse. Repeat two or three more times, until in the end the last two desperate plans (by this point, not expected to work) happen to reinforce each other, leaving everyone relieved but completely baffled as to what happened. Picard and the Doctor would never meet, though they'd just miss bumping into each other a couple of times.
  

[pedanther]

Crossover bunnies I've been visited by include:

Modesty Blaise: While the Doctor and Modesty put their heads together to save the day, Leela and Willie compare bosses, discuss knife-throwing technique, etc.

The Anubis Gates: Irving Braxiatel wants a copy of William Ashbless's memoirs for posterity - which entails going back, tracking Ashbless down, and persuading him to write them.

Kage Baker's Company series: The Doctor keeps running into agents of the Company in different time periods, leaving them puzzled as to who he is and how he fits into what they believe they know about history and time travel. (I have an answer in mind, but I don't know if it actually works, because so far I've only read one of the Company novels and I gather the series does an Everything You Know Is Wrong moment later on.)



The latter two are both interesting in that they're crossovers with works that have time travel, with rules that initially seem to contradict the observable rules of the Whoniverse. I think they're doable, though.

Classic Who Crossovers And Writing Difficult Crossovers

[derekmetaltron.livejournal.com]

One thing I'm always fond of given how often I ferment Fanfiction.net and its lovely Crossover searching system is seeing more Crossovers with the Classic Series - it makes sense of course that the Tenth and Eleventh Doctors (and to a lesser extent Nine) dominate since naturally many writers will be people who came in from the New Series (and long may you write, my fine fellows!) but it's always a rare joy to find a well written Classic Who crossover, much less with a show I recognise of course. But anyway, it's only a slight pet peeve.

I have a few DW crossovers I've started to write over the years but theres a great amount of difficulty into getting them realised, far more than regular Who fiction (or indeed any other non-crossover fic) because you have to sinch up those two universes in some way (has there been some Void crossing, is it a shared universe and if so how much?) together with the characters. Worse is that I then come up with another dozen ideas in the midst of that planning and I get that terrible fiction split-personality thing where one half wants to carry on and the other wants to try something new. And whilst the latter is tempting I feel uncomfortable with umpteen unfinished crossovers on my plate.

Thank the lord for dwstraybunnies then, gives me the chance to share some of the more feasible ideas and see if a more focused writer can make better sense of them.

For example I have this very complex Alien vs Predator crossover with DW which has been in my thoughts for at least two years. When I came up with it orginally it was just the Aliens and the Daleks, the latter attempting to exploit the Xenomorphs on an infested world and the Tenth Doctor, Martha Jones and Jack Harkness (I think the idea was this was going to be an untold adventure sometime after they beat the Master but before Martha finally decides to leave the TARDIS in Series 3 - I wanted a medical person basically) togther with a bunch of Marines trying to stop them. Then last year it became the 11th Doctor with Rory and Amy, first between 'Amy's Choice' and 'Hungry Earth', then after the Series 5 Finale in their honeymoon period. And then the new AVP Sega Game came out and I realised the story would make a perfect foil as a sort of sequel.

The Daleks kept switching from Classic to RTD to Paradign versions (the former because I realised that the AVP universe is sometime after the 2167 Dalek Invasion of Earth, so the Marines would be aware of Daleks) and I had Bishop and the Weyland-Yutani Corporation in as an 'evil human' group, just as keen to exploit the Daleks as they are the Xenomorphs and the Hunters who try to stop them. I actually started writing a timeline, suggesting that Weyland-Yutani had pieced together Dalek tech from incidents in 1963 and 1984 and the 'Vulcan Colony disaster'. And I was even intending to have (as per the game with its set of storylines) perspectives from multiple sides - the Doctor and the Marines, Weyland's crew, the Daleks, the Xenomorphs and the Hunters. As you can tell, it was very ambitious and is still on the cards in theory, but... it might be rather too ambitious really, I'd have to see. Besides, I have to really finish other stuff including a SW crossover with Who, so I'll have to think about it.

Hope that wasn't too long but I figured I'd have my say about Who and crossovers in general.