I Just Found Out Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Snuck A Big Doctor Who Easter Egg Into Season 3, And It Has Me Pumped For Upcoming Episodes

Warning! The following contains spoilers for the Star Trek: Strange New Worlds episode "The Sehlat Who Ate Its Tail." Stream it with a Paramount+ subscription and read at your own risk!

Space may be the final frontier, but it is big enough for more heroes than just the people working in Starfleet? There are plenty of species in the Federation that are working to make the world a better place in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, and that evidently includes one Time Lord. Yes, there was a sneaky easter egg referencing Doctor Who in a recent episode of the streaming series, and I can't wait for future episodes.

Those who have watched "The Sehlat Who Ate Its Tail" might be wondering where the reference is, and I was right there along with them after learning of this special development. As someone who is eagerly awaiting details on where and when Doctor Who is returning, I was pretty surprised I missed a reference until Trekkie diehard @gaghyogi49 showed just how hard you had to squint to spot the TARDIS in the background of the tech-hungry ship enveloping the USS Enterprise:

It would appear some version of the TARDIS was caught by the human scavenger ship that attacked the Farragut and thrust James T. Kirk into his first taste of captaincy. I'm going to assume The Doctor wasn't actively on an adventure whilst the Enterprise and Farragut ships fought for their lives, and trust that Kirk didn't inadvertently kill the Time Lord when he blew up the Scavenger ship. Imagine if Doctor Who ended up being canceled and this served as an unintentional series finale!

Fortunately, I don't think this is Star Trek trying to ensure The Doctor gets a proper send-off, but rather the result of the heads of both franchises coming together and doing something fun for the fans. Russell T. Davies wrote a Doctor Who episode in which The Doctor implied to companion Ruby Sunday that Starfleet was a real organization, and he has openly talked about wanting to do a crossover with the franchise. Maybe the real reason he had The Doctor bi-generate is so David Tennant's Fourteenth Doctor could sneak off for wild adventures like this.

The bad news is that with Doctor Who currently owned by Disney+ and The BBC, and Star Trek owned by Paramount and Skydance, the odds of all these corporate heads coming to the table and making an official crossover happen are slim. The good news is that there does seem to be some agreement in place for each series to reference the other, and we may continue to get references to Doctor Who in upcoming Trek shows and vice versa.

I should also add that there already was an unofficial Doctor Who and Star Trek crossover in the form of a comic published in 2012. The Eleventh Doctor teams up with Jean-Luc Picard and the Enterprise-D crew as they work in tandem to prevent an unholy alliance of the Borg and Cybermen from assimilating everyone in the known universe. It's a fun adventure, though not as cool as it'd be to see an actual iteration of The Doctor team up with a Starfleet crew in canon/live-action.

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Until that happens, I'll be thrilled with anything we get in the meantime and continue to watch new episodes of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds on Thursdays on Paramount+. Season 3 has been a treat for more reasons unrelated to Doctor Who as of late, so be sure to check it out and catch up!