Doctor Who and Sherlock: The Six Cross-Overs

Yes, we know there are more than half a dozen links between Who and Holmes but in honour of the Great Detective’s return in The Six Thatchers, we thought we’d limit ourselves to six of the best! So, here are some of our favourite cross-overs (sort of!) between the Time Lord and the detective…

Peter Capaldi played Sherlock Holmes!

Back in the mid-90s Peter was a regular on The All New Alexei Sayle Show and - as we can deduce from the pic above - in one sketch he played Sherlock Holmes opposite Alexei’s Doctor Watson!

The Doctor once pretended to be Sherlock Holmes!

Okay, he never expected the evil Simeon to take him seriously, but in a hilarious scene in The Snowmen the Doctor swans into his enemy’s HQ dressed in a deerstalker, claiming to be Holmes and firing off wild deductions… ‘I see from your collar stud you have an apple tree and a wife with a limp! Am I right?’ When Simeon snaps back that he doesn’t even have a wife, the exasperated Doctor replies, ‘Bit of a tree? Bit of a wife? Some apples? Come on, work with me here!’

Was Holmes based on Madame Vastra?

The Doctor’s old friend, Madame Vastra, has been called ‘the Great Detective’ – a name normally associated with Sherlock Holmes, and she’s been known to do a bit of sleuthing around the streets of Victorian London… In fact in The Snowmen, Simeon told her, ‘You realise Doctor Doyle [Arthur Conan Doyle – the creator of Sherlock Holmes] is almost certainly basing his fantastical tales on your own exploits? With a few choice alterations, of course. I doubt the readers of The Strand magazine would accept that the great detective is, in reality, a woman…’

Tom Baker Street

The mighty Tom Baker (the Fourth Doctor) left Doctor Who in 1981 and the following year played Sherlock in The Hound of the Baskervilles. Other actors who’ve played Holmes include the brilliant Nicholas Briggs (the ‘voice of the monsters’), Richard Hurndall (who played the First Doctor in The Five Doctors) and Richard E. Grant (Doctor Simeon). Gemma Chan (Mia, pictured below in The Waters of Mars) starred in the second episode of Sherlock, Caroline John (70s companion Liz Shaw) appeared in Tom Baker’s Hound and Frances Barbour (Kovarian) was fabulous as Madame Schirmer in the movie, Mr Holmes!

Once you have eliminated the impossible…

Sherlock Holmes has been mentioned quite a bit in Doctor Who… The Third Doctor insulted the Brigadier’s powers of deduction, scathingly noting the military man was ‘not exactly a little Sherlock Holmes’ and the character’s creator, Arthur Conan Doyle, was referenced in Ghost Light. He’s even been quoted during The Hungry Earth when Elliot told Rory, ‘Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.’

And, of course…

The award-winning BBC drama, Sherlock, has more Doctor Who links than you can shake a deerstalker at. Its co-creators are Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss (I don’t think we need to list their Doctor Who credentials…) and Stephen Thompson (The Curse of the Black Spot and Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS) has written two episodes of the show and co-written a third.

Directors Euros Lyn, Toby Haynes, Nick Hurran, Colm McCarthy and Douglas Mackinnon have all helmed episodes of both Doctor Who and Sherlock and if that wasn’t enough, The Six Thatchers was directed by the brilliant Rachel Talalay whose previous credits include Dark Water / Death in Heaven and Heaven Sent / Hell Bent.

Want a final connection between the two shows? Well, both Sherlock and the Doctor are back in 2017… They’ve both been missed and we can’t wait for their return!

BBC iPlayer users can watch the latest episode of Doctor Who and The Six Thatchers premieres on BBC One on New Year’s Day at 8.30pm. Find out more about the new series of Sherlock now!