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Many of Doctor Who's futures are lightyears away, but some are already in the distant past...
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00:00When Doctor Who started in the 1960s, dates like 1986 and 2020 felt impossibly far away.
00:07Surely Doctor Who wouldn't be on TV by then? And yet, the longer the show goes on,
00:11the more it risks crashing into its wild predictions for the future. And in case anyone's
00:16wondering, the next crossover point will be 2049, when the moon is revealed to be an egg.
00:20So make sure to put that date in your diary. Until then, many of Doctor Who's distant futures
00:24are now far behind us. I'm Ellie for Who Culture, here with 10 Doctor Who futures that are now
00:29in the past. Number 10, The Chase, 1966. Terry Nation's outright Dalek comedy The Chase takes
00:36place across all of time and space. One particular interlude in the Daleks' pursuit of the First
00:41Doctor and his companions is a trip to the observation deck atop the Empire State Building
00:46in New York. This took place on an undisclosed date in 1966, placing it at least a year after
00:52the actual broadcast of the episode. As far as historical records can tell, the Daleks never
00:57did visit the Empire State Building, so this prediction never came true in our own version
01:01of 1966. The closest the Daleks got to America was when the 1965 Peter Cushing movie, Doctor
01:07Who and the Daleks, premiered in the US in July 1966, to a less than enthusiastic commercial
01:13response. I tell you what, the producers missed a trick by not promoting the movie on top of
01:17the Empire State Building. Other notable Dalek events from 1966 included the broadcast of the
01:23Daleks' master plan, and a group of Daleks arriving at the Blue Peter studio to review
01:27cakes. Oh, Great Scarrow Bake Off, anyone? I'd watch that. Number 9, The Underwater Menace,
01:331970-ish. The exact date of The Underwater Menace is never made explicit, but Polly dates events
01:39to roughly 1970. That's because she finds a discarded 1968 Mexico Olympics bracelet. This effectively
01:46means that Doctor Who is predicting that a Professor Zaroff type will discover Atlantis in the years
01:51following The Underwater Menace's 1967 broadcast. While it seems like a wild prediction, it's clear
01:56that the writer, Geoffrey Orme, had read about the prophecies of American clairvoyant Edgar Case. In the
02:021930s, Case stated that, and I quote,
02:05"...a portion of the temples may yet be discovered under the slime of ages and seawater near Bimini.
02:10Expect it in 68 or 69." Well, perhaps Geoffrey had come across Case's prediction and turned it into
02:16the first of Doctor Who's many forays into the mythical lost city of Atlantis. However,
02:21the predictions didn't come true, and a mad scientist didn't use Atlantis to destroy the
02:25Earth in 1970. And yet, in 1968, a group of divers discovered Bimini Road, just off the coast of the
02:31North Bimini Island in the Bahamas. The mysterious rock formation was described by the divers as a,
02:36quote, pavement, and some believe it may be the road to Atlantis.
02:41Ooh.
02:42Number 8. The Tenth Planet, 1986.
02:46In the 1966 serial The Tenth Planet, Doctor Who confidently predicted that in 1986,
02:52we would discover a tenth planet in our solar system. In the real 1986, the Voyager space probe
02:57had only made it to Uranus, the seventh planet from the Sun. The progress of human space exploration
03:02hadn't been nearly as quick as writers Kit Peddler and Jerry Davis predicted. William Hartnell's
03:07final Doctor Who serial also predicted that at the height of the space race, humanity would have
03:12abandoned national borders to embrace an international approach to space exploration.
03:16Well, sadly, this wasn't true either, and the Chernobyl disaster and ensuing Soviet cover-up was
03:21a particularly bleak example of the lack of trust between nations in 1986. The only saving grace of
03:26the Tenth Planet's vision of the future is that 1986 didn't see a race of cybernetically
03:31augmented humanoids and a Z-bomb nearly destroy the Earth. Silver linings.
03:35Number 7. The Chase, 1996.
03:38Thirty years after the Daleks landed on top of the Empire State Building, they rocked up at
03:43the Frankenstein's House of Horrors attraction at the 1996 Festival of Ghana. Haunted House
03:48attractions were much more technologically advanced in Doctor Who's version of 1996.
03:53The robotic Dracula and Frankenstein were so convincing that the first Doctor believed the TARDIS
03:57and the Daleks had somehow managed to materialise inside the dark recesses of the human mind.
04:02Perhaps the convincing nature of the horrifying monsters was why the attraction and the festival
04:07was apparently cancelled by Peking, though quite what the People's Republic of China would have
04:11to do with a festival in a West African nation is anyone's guess.
04:15In that same year and a thousand miles away, the Eleventh Doctor crash-landed in the Garden
04:19of Amelia Pond at the start of the 2010 episode, The Eleventh Hour. And now get ready to have
04:24your mind blown, because where 1996 was 30 years in the future for William Hartnell,
04:29it was already 14 years in the past for Matt Smith and Karen Gillan. Mind blown.
04:35Number 6. Battlefield, 1997.
04:38Set eight years after broadcast, Battlefield is a more accurate depiction of 1997 than the
04:44Underwater Menace's wild depiction of three years into the future. There are still good
04:48old-fashioned English country pubs, even if the price of a pint has gone up considerably.
04:52The Gore Crow Hotel has its own microbrewery, a good decade before every Johnny-come-lately-craft
04:58beer pub. Geopolitically, Battlefield reveals that things are still tense around the world
05:03as the battle between Morgaine and King Arthur becomes a metaphor for the futility of nuclear
05:07war. While nuclear holocaust wasn't as pressing an issue as it was during the Cold War, concerns
05:12about dangerous materials being ferried about places like Battlefield's fictional village
05:16were still on people's minds in 1997.
05:18So, the only glaring difference from the real 1997, £5 for a water and a lemonade aside,
05:24is the fact that a group of Arthurian knights caused merry hell in an English village, nearly
05:29triggering a nuclear apocalypse.
05:31Par for the cause when it comes to Doctor Who, really.
05:33Number 5. The TV Movie, 1999-2000.
05:37At the turn of the millennium, the Master almost turned the universe inside out during his battle
05:42with the Eighth Doctor.
05:43With the Eye of Harmony open, the very fabric of reality became malleable, which would have
05:48only made the first hangover of 2000 even more painful. Thankfully, predictions of widespread
05:52devastation at midnight on the 1st of January 2000 never came to pass. We came close thanks to the
05:58millennium bug, but like the Master's plot with the Eye of Harmony, its effects were rolled back
06:02and caused minor disruptions. Airing in 1996, the Doctor Who TV Movie wasn't the only bit of
06:08science fiction to predict the end of life as we knew it as we inched closer to the year 2000,
06:13so it needn't feel bad for getting it wrong. Interestingly, Torchwood would later reveal
06:17that Captain Jack's predecessor killed himself and his team at the turn of the century, because
06:22he feared what was coming. The TV Movie did make one accurate prediction for the future, though.
06:27The Doctor would be doing a lot more kissing from the year 2000 onward. The Tenth Doctor certainly
06:31made good on that promise when he arrived in 2005.
06:34Number 4, Aliens of London, 2006. From the moment the Ninth Doctor accidentally drops off Rose 12
06:41months later in the 2005 episode Aliens of London, the RTD era of Doctor Who takes place in the very
06:47near future. From the death of the Prime Minister to the rise and fall of Harriet Jones to the election
06:52of Harold Saxon, the big moments from RTD's Doctor Who lore took place roughly a year ahead of our own
06:57reality. Hilariously, the political unrest during this period of Doctor Who does bear comparison with
07:03parallel events in UK politics. After replacing the murdered Prime Minister at some point after
07:07Aliens of London and World War 3 in 2006, Harriet Jones is then ousted by the Tenth Doctor's whispered
07:14message, don't you think she looks tired? In the real world, Gordon Brown replaced Tony Blair in 2007
07:19after a similar scandal involving what the Slothene refer to as massive weapons of destruction. Both
07:25Harriet Jones and Gordon Brown were then replaced by villainous politicians who ruined Britain's
07:30reputation on the world stage. So something else to add to Doctor Who's list of accurate
07:34predictions, I guess? Number 3. Dalek and Fear Her, 2012. Utah, 2012. A narcissistic billionaire and
07:41powerful figure in the United States of America keeps a Dalek in his basement. After his recklessness
07:46almost causes global destruction at the hands of said Dalek, he's ousted from his position and will
07:51never ever again interfere in American politics. Written by Robert Sherman and set in 2012, 2005's Dalek seems
07:58utterly prophetic, albeit four years early and with a much happier ending for the American people.
08:03Across the pond in 2012, as depicted in the 2006 episode Fear Her, the UK was preparing to host the
08:09Olympics, but disaster struck at the hands of some magic crayons. The opening ceremony was disrupted by
08:14the disappearance of the collected guests and athletes, who were captured inside a drawing. The day
08:19was saved, the attendees returned, and the Tenth Doctor heroically took up the Olympic torch and marked the
08:24start of the competition. Magic crayons aside, Dalek did carry the Olympic torch in the real world
08:302012, but it was the eleventh incarnation and not the tenth, as David Tennant had regenerated a few years
08:35earlier. Number 2. The Enemy of the World, 2018. The year 2018 must have seemed impossibly futuristic
08:42to David Whittaker when he was writing The Enemy of the World in 1967. Although the easy access to
08:48hovercrafts and the devastating volcanic eruptions in Central Europe never came to pass, there's still
08:53something quite prescient about Whittaker's view of 2018. At its heart, The Enemy of the World is
08:58Doctor Who doing a James Bond movie, with a charismatic villain and some big action set pieces.
09:03It's also a political thriller about how the rich can wheedle their way into global politics.
09:08If Whittaker had lived in 2018, he may have been alarmed at what he got right about humanity's future.
09:13Looking back on The Enemy of the World now, the themes of a tanned megalomaniac who feeds
09:18disinformation and fake news to his global audience feel all too real. Patrick Troughton's
09:23performance as Salamander may look outrageous and over the top, but is it any more outlandish
09:28than the performance of 2018's actual leader of the free world? Just saying.
09:32Number 1. The Hungry Earth, 2020. 2020 will never be anyone's favourite year. But come on,
09:38let's not get into another debate about The Timeless Child. Of course, 2020 was a rough year for
09:42everyone as we lived with the COVID-19 pandemic, and the world began to feel like a particularly
09:47bleak sci-fi dystopia. Doctor Who couldn't predict this, but it did visit 2020 in the Chris Chibnall
09:53penned two-parter The Hungry Earth and Cold Blood, which aired in 2010. In Chibnall's version of 2020,
09:59the Silurians awoke in a small mining town in Wales, where they attempted to retake Earth from the
10:04humans. After negotiations stalled, the Silurians were returned to their hibernation in the hope that
10:09one day a peaceful accord could be reached. Fast forward 10 years and Chris Chibnall was Doctor Who's
10:14showrunner in 2020. He didn't revisit the Silurian revival, but there's nothing to say that it didn't
10:19still happen while the 13th Doctor was dealing with Ruth and the Jadoon in Gloucester. One thing he did
10:23get wrong was that the future Amy and Rory wouldn't have turned up to greet their past selves on account
10:28of their deaths in New York decades earlier. Oh, and now I'm sad. And there you have it, but while we're on
10:34the topic of the future, why not check out 10 times Doctor Who accidentally predicted our future?
10:39In the meantime, I've been Ellie for Who Culture, and in the words of River Song herself, goodbye,
10:43sweeties.
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