How many licensed Doctor Who spinoffs are there?

Cross-Media Discussions
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I’m a compulsive list-maker and fascinated by compiling lists. So I’m curious, how many licensed Doctor Who spinoffs are there?

Of course on TV there’s K-9 and Company, Torchwood, The Sarah Jane Adventures, K-9, and Class; then there’s all the many Big Finish spinoffs including Gallifrey and Jago & Litefoot; and those that cross media and publishers like Bernice Summerfield and Faction Paradox. But there are yet more obscure and newer ones like Cwej: The Series, the Lethbridge-Stewart novels, and the Lucy Wilson Mysteries; older and yet more obscure ones spun off by writers from their own Whoniverse work like Time Hunter and The Minister of Chance.

But how many are there really? Is there a list of them somewhere? They’re on the wiki I’m sure, at least for the most part, but collecting and collating them is looking like a deeply time-consuming process. (although I’ll probably be working on it that way anyway lol)

I thought I’d ask the people of the forum for their opinions!

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I do depends on how you count as well. Is the MR and Tenth Doctors Adventures a spin-off or not?

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You’ve also got something like the Cutaway Comics like Paradise Towers, Orcini, and Lytton. But I’m not even sure if they have an official license for it.

And K9 the series wasn’t actually licensed by the BBC was it?

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It certainly wasn’t produced by them or coproduced, and K9 immediately changing appearance to a bad looking redesign was because they didn’t have rights to the original design.

Oh, also, I found the tardis wiki’s spinoff page:

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I don’t think I’d count anything that predominantly was about the Doctor themself as a ‘spin-off’. Tardis Wiki may disagree with me but to me I think a spinoff is only something like Gallifrey or SJA where it’s in-universe and maybe has appearances from the Doctor, but is about something else

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What if someone were to do a spinoff about John Smith and Martha, set in a gap in Human Nature/Family of Blood, or, say, Rose and the Meta-Crisis Doctor on Pete’s world?

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I would still argue that both of those are spin-offs because they’re not about the Doctor Proper. As I would probaby say for the Fugitive Doctor too. Which I realise gives us the thorny problems of ‘who counts as ‘the Doctor’?’ and ‘what is a spinoff?’ but that makes sense in my head that if you’re not a main TV timeline Doctor (and honestly I think I include War in that too), then you’re spinning off

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Same would go for a story about the Valeyard and the Master, then, I’d take it, or continuations of the Curse of Fatal Death.

How about Devious, an incomplete fan film about Tony Garner as the 2.5th Doctor which actually has Jon Pertwee as the Doctor at one point in his last filmed appearance as the Doctor?

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Hmmm, these are making me think! Curse of Fatal Death I wouldn’t exactly call a spin-off, but I definitely wouldn’t call it part of the ‘main’ canon. I think it might be off in its own little bubble. But you’re right, a spin-off of that I probably would call a spin-off.

As for Devious… a. thank you for making me have to look something up! I love it when I don’t know about a niche little pocket of DW, it makes me feel far less deranged about this show :rofl: but again, hmm. I think possibly this sits too in the weird little Curse of Fatal Death bubble - not quite core canon, but not quite a spin-off.

I guess what we’ve learned here is I presonally categorise in three ways - core canon, spin-off, and Wilderness :rofl: and of course, I’m sure there are others who totally disagree with me! But in my head, you’re either about the Doctor or you’re not (or you’re a secret third thing about a not-quite Doctor)

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Yeah, I basically consider Curse to be an alternate timeline, likely affected by the time war. I’d actually love to see a spinoff of it, since I’d be happy with more of either Rowan Atkinson or Joanna Lumley as the Doctor.

No problem on Devious! I ran into Devious on the tardis wiki, and thought it was pretty interesting, especially since 12 minutes of it ended up as a bonus feature on an official Doctor Who DVD! Seems to have its own youtube channel, too.

It’s always fun to probe at edge cases on things like this…

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Oh god too many to list I’d bet

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I think I would only consider a ‘spin-off’ to be a series or story set in the world of Doctor Who but not featuring the Doctor as the main character - regardless of that Doctor’s ‘canonicity’.

On TV that would be:

K9 & Company
Torchwood
Sarah Jane Adventures
Class
K-9
The War Between Land and Sea

and including 'straight to video): PROBE, Auton, Zygon, Shakedown, Wartime, Downtime, Sil and the Devil Seeds…, The White Witch of Devil’s End, Daemos Rising

Audio-wise: Gallfrey, Countermeasures, UNIT, Missy, Bernice Summerfield, Jenny, Lady Christina, Donna Noble: Kidnapped, Rose Tyler, Cyberman, Dalek Empire, Diary of River Song, The Robots, Susan’s War, Sarah Jane Smith, Paternoster Gang, Jago and Litefoot, the Year of Martha Jones, Eighth of March, Beyond Bannermen Road, Charley Pollard, Doom’s Day, Master!, Graceless, Vienna, Iris Wildthyme, Lone Centurion, Kaldor City, the various BBV strands, the Psychic Circus (must buy that one!) and many many many many more.

Books: Lethbridge-Stewart and Lucy Wilson, Erimem, Faction Paradox and more

Comics: Paradise Towers, Omega, Lytton, Miranda and more

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That’s basically my view as well. Anything that takes characters or elements (other than the Doctor themself) from Doctor Who and does their own thing with them is a spin-off. Both the War and Fugitive Doctors are incarnations of the Doctor, even if the precise placement of the Fugitive Doctor is a little vague. So I wouldn’t class anything featuring them as a spin-off personally.

Also - to go back to the title of the thread - most of these spin-offs are licensed by the BBC. But those that aren’t are produced with the permission of the various rights holders of those characters. So, for example, the Lethbridge Stewart books are produced with permission of the Haismann estate who hold the rights to the character.

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I meant to mention that. All the BBV, Reeltime etc stuff from the Wilderness Years was able to happen because the creators went straight to the rights holders for those characters whether it was Robert Banks Stewart for the Zygons or Robert Holmes’ estate for the Sontarans and Autons. Stephen Wyatt is behind the Paradise Towers comics and obviously Bob Baker was instrumental in K-9.

And in the past there have been problems when the proper permissions weren’t sought for characters such as the Quarks appearing in the TV Comic strip without the permission of Haisman and Lincoln or Raine appearing in UNIT Dominion without the permission of Andrew Cartmel.

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It’s all very interesting. In Star Trek: Voyager, Tom Paris was supposed to be a character from TNG until they had to alter him so as to not pay the creator of the original character. But somehow, having the same actor with a similar backstory was fine.

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That’s one of two stories that’s been told about Nick Locarno. The other was that they felt what Nick did was irredeemable, and they wanted a redemption arc, so they rewrote it as a new character with similar backstory and the same actor.

Robert Duncan McNeil has said: “I think Locarno was a bad guy who pretended to be a good guy. Deep down inside, he was rotten. In contrast, inside Tom was a good guy who pretended to be a bad guy. He sort of wanted everybody to think he didn’t give a damn and that he was a lone wolf, but deep down he wasn’t like that.”

Of course, at this point, he’s played both Tom Paris and Nick Locarno on Lower Decks…

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K9 and Company?

Edit: It’s literally right there at the top, I can’t read

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Wait nevermind, I was being thick, I know what k-9 and company is, I just managed to read that list three times and miss it lmaoo

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Or the Great Intelligence and the Lethbridge-Stewarts appearing in series 7 without them first consulting the Haisman Estate!

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