What was your first encounter with Doctor Who in video game form? Sean Millard: My very first job in the games industry was designing, drawing and animating characters and levels for Dalek Attack! It was an 8-Bit and 16-Bit Doctor Who game coming from 221B Software in Sheffield. Sylvester McCoy was The Doctor at the time. It was published by Alternative Software, if I remember correctly.


Nick Holden: For me, it was in Destiny of the Doctors, the PC adventure game that my development team made in 1997.


Richie Turner: I was fortunate enough to work on Doctor Who: Dalek Attack! right at the beginning of my career, way back in 1992! I wrote the Atari ST and Commodore Amiga versions. Whereas it wasn’t the first Doctor Who video game, I think it was the first one to be an eight-way scrolling shoot-em-up. You can definitely tell we were playing a lot of Turrican at the time!


Peter Hickman: Even though I’ve been a fan since I was very young, it was a 1983 issue of C&VG that had a type-in listing for a Doctor Who game on the Atari 400. Although I only had a ZX81 at the time, it really sparked my imagination for what might be possible in the future.


Christopher Dring: It was 1992’s Dalek Attack from Alternative Software and folks like Richie and Sean. I still have it, the Amiga version, and it was actually my first ever video game. Doctor Who wasn’t on TV back then. Well, there was an Eastenders and Doctor Who Children In Need crossover for the 30th anniversary in 1993, but we don’t talk about that. It was a rare ‘new’ Doctor Who thing. It even had the prototype Dalek in


it that Ray Cusick, the original Dalek designer, drew for Doctor Who Magazine a few years earlier. It had music, voice work, all sorts of Daleks… But, in hindsight, it wasn’t really a Doctor Who game at all. It was a platformer-shooter. I know now the Doctor wouldn’t have a gun. But to seven-year-old me, it was a thrill to play.


What needs to happen for Doctor Who to become as big a video gaming franchise as Star Trek or even Star Wars? Sean Millard: I think it’s difficult for the Doctor to attain the same levels as Star Trek and especially Star Wars – it’s a


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comparatively niche franchise, without modern movies to compete with those broad competitors, and its universe, while expanded on TV with Sarah Jane Adventures and Torchwood, still feels a bit like low-bowling compared to Ashoka, The Mandalorian, Picard, Discovery and all the rest.


Nick Holden: I find Doctor Who is more a patchwork of ideas strung together with dialogue than either Star Trek or Star Wars. This makes it harder to imagine Doctor Who as an extensive, consistent universe. Also, Star Trek’s morality and Star Wars’ the force create a sense of unity that Doctor Who doesn’t really have. Finally, The Doctor as a character is not particularly grandiose, and is more of an unlikely hero, with flaws.


Richie Turner: Whilst Doctor Who has a nostalgic appeal that spans generations, it still needs to be broader if it’s to grow to the size of Star Wars. A lot of that comes down to budget but also the quality of the writing. Over the years it’s had some great writers, but the overall direction can wander off course from time to time. It needs a champion to iron out the inconsistencies, someone who can take the reins and steer it in the right direction, like Kevin Feige did for Marvel and Dave Filoni is doing for Star Wars. Davies and Moffat did great work, but it has suffered a bit recently. It also skews young, and that doesn’t need to be the case. I enjoy watching the Star Wars show as much as my eleven- year-old, because those shows don’t aim for a younger audience. I think that’s when Who is at its best, too, as it was in the Ecceleston, Tennant and Smith years.


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