A Friday Visit with Jim Korkis: Doctor Who and Disney

By Dave Shute

Welcome back to Fridays with Jim Korkis! Jim, the dean of Disney historians, writes about Walt Disney World history every Friday on yourfirstvisit.net.

DOCTOR WHO AND DISNEY

By Jim Korkis

Doctor Who is the main character in a long-running British science-fiction television series of the same name. He is a time-traveling, humanoid-looking alien Time Lord whose method of transportation is the TARDIS that from the outside looks like a typical blue British police call box.

In April 1981, Doctor Who producer, John Nathan-Turner had approached Disney’s London office with the idea of setting a story at Walt Disney World where The Doctor would be tracking down an alien who was hiding there. After all, an odd looking character would seem to fit in very easily at WDW.

Arni Halling, Disney’s Sales Promotions Director, wrote back that the whole idea had been quashed by the American head office, stating, “It is against our policy to allow settings like Disneyland and Walt Disney World to be used as background for a program in a non-Disney television series.”

When Michael Eisner became CEO in 1984, he was actively looking to purchase franchises like the Muppets. Disney made several attempts to buy the rights to the Doctor Who franchise and its video library. At one point, it looked like a deal might finally be made just as the show went into an indefinitely long hiatus in 1989.

Eisner was looking for something to revitalize Tomorrowland. Preliminary plans were drawn up for a walk through attraction at Disneyland’s Tomorrowland that would have taken guests through the inside of the TARDIS. They would enter the phone booth and find themselves in a much larger show building and just as in the television show the interior was much larger than the exterior.

The show building was also to include some type of a dark ride that would have taken guests through an adventure in time and space.

There were discussions about Disney making a film based on the franchise with an elaborate official announcement of the new Doctor to be made at a special press conference in Tomorrowland. Unfortunately, negotiations stalled, and Disney partnered with George Lucas for Star Tours.

In 1987, The Seventh Doctor (Sylvester McCoy) appeared in a three-episode serial entitled Delta and the Bannerman. The premise was the Doctor and his companion, Mel, and a bunch of aliens were to spend a week at 1959 Disneyland. However, when their Nostalgia Tours bus hits an orbiting satellite, they all then end up at a holiday camp in South Wales which was more appropriate for the BBC budget.

In the third novel about The Ninth Doctor (Christopher Eccleston), the companion Rose Tyler says she would like to go to Disneyland and the Doctor responds that he can take her to a place with real talking mice.

In the August 1975 edition of Disney Time, a BBC TV series that was shown three or four times a year and featured clips of Disney cartoons and films since the U.K. did not have a weekly Disney television show, Tom Baker attired as the Fourth Doctor appeared as the host for those clips and both appeared and disappeared in the TARDIS at the movie theater showing them. The following Saturday was the first episode of Doctor Who Season 13 featuring Baker.

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Thanks, Jim! And come back next Friday for more from Jim Korkis!

In the meantime, check out his books, including his latest, The Unofficial Walt Disney World 1971 Companion: Stories of How the World Began, and Secret Stories of Walt Disney World: Things You Never You Never Knew, which reprints much material first written for this site, all published by Theme Park Press.

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