When I was a kid, there was nothing cooler than the crossover. Characters from different fictional universes appearing together was always ratings gold as far as I was concerned. GI Joe meeting up with Transformers? Proto-geek paradise. Daffy Duck playing piano alongside Donald? Exquisite. Any fellow nerd who has ever salivated over the idea of Marvel vs. DC, or Alien vs. Predator, or the U.S.S. Enterprise taking on a Star Destroyer can relate. Sure, not all crossovers are created equal, but they we still almost always exciting.
Good thing, then, that I wasn’t a child in Britain in 1975 when the fourth Doctor, played by Tom Baker, crossed over from Doctor Who to appear on Disney Time; the fusion of these two universes would have been so incredibly cool that I might not have survived. Disney Time was an annual or semi-annual special that appeared on the BBC from 1970-1983 during Christmas and other major holidays. It involved a number of clips from Disney animated shorts and animated or live action features, all linked together by live-action interstitials featuring various celebrities. Baker appeared in character as the Doctor for the Christmas, 1975 special.
The video is of poor quality, and the actual Disney clips have been removed, but you get the idea…
I have to say that aside from wanting more Doctor with my Disney, Disney Time itself is a pretty good concept. The studio is sitting on a vast archive of material, none of which it is utilizing. I grew up on this sort of thing, fed a daily dose of Disney thanks to the syndicated Wonderful World of Disney, but where today will kids get to see True-Life Adventures or Blackbeard’s Ghost? Maybe a regularly-occurring clip show like this would be one answer, and even though Baker has long ago hung up his scarf I’m sure the eleventh Doctor would be glad to make an appearance…
I’m sure between ABC, ABC Family, the Disney Channel, Disney XD, and Disney Junior, they could find some place to put it.
And although I never knew one of my life-long goals was to hear the Doctor talk about the Apple Dumpling Gang, I’m glad to have finally experienced it.
This a decidedly spectacular find. It seems there is a thread of Disney in every single piece of the universe. I never would have quite imagined this connection.
I know. I about fell out of the chair when I discovered this. Things I would NEVER have expected…
Wonderful! What fun it was to watch this. Thanks for sharing it.
This could be more awesome than Little Dog Lost!!! Very cool!
…and, you are very right about Disney needing to show stuff from “the vault” on one of their channels. It wasn’t that long ago that night owls could catch some of this material, and things like Zoro, on the Disney Channel in the wee hours of the morning.
And…something a lot of folks may not know…at the WDW resorts, before the switch to digital TVs, there were a few “hidden” channels on the TVs in the rooms. If you dialed in 98, 99, 100, 101, you got some rather interesting broadcasts. Without derailing the topic too much, I will just say that there were not only constantly running old school Disney cartoons, but also a bizarre sing along channel, and the coolest weather channel ever! The robotic voice telling you the local weather while displaying a simple radar map. Maybe I am too geek for things like this, but I really miss that.
This is simply sublime!! Thank you so much for sharing. I had NO IDEA! But now I must have more!
I’d like to see “Duffy the Bear” crossover into “The Prisoner” as number 2.
[…] This Week On Progress City, U.S.A., Michael waxes poetic about everyone’s favorite nerdgasm-inducing phenomenon: crossovers. He highlights one, in particular, that our Whovian readers are going to love! Ain’t no party […]
It is a wonderful find – and a bit of a coup for Disney marketing in Britain. If only they had given him a better script – something that was a bit more Dr. Who-ish.
Hockey Player – my last trip to Disney they had the sing-a-long channel – to all kinds of songs, half of of which were old, daggy and, well – I’d never heard of them.
What a find! Can you imagine the tardis in Tomorrowland?
Nice to see, and further fuels my admittedly unrealistic dream that a Doctor Who attraction will materialize in the UK pavilion at Epcot.
Of course, for that to happen Disney would have to have some stake in the Who media universe, wouldn’t they?
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