A Who’s Who on Doctor Who: a Who & A on 40 years of the Time Lord’s video games

The Doctor has been adventuring in space and time for 60 years, though more consistently across TV screens than gaming displays. Vince Pavey pulled aside some of the renegade time lord’s friends and collaborators from the British games industry to find out why.

1. Christopher Dring is the head of games B2B at ReedPop, but you might also remember him as the former editor of MCV. He’s also a big fan of Doctor Who, and has been published in Doctor Who Magazine more than once!
2. The 1997 action video game Destiny of the Doctors was directed by Nick Holden. It allowed fans of the Whoniverse to explore the TARDIS in 3D for the very first time, as well as take on Anthony Ainley as The Master in his final live action appearance as the character.
3. Peter Hickman spent over six years at BBC Studios working on titles starring different incarnations of the Last of the Time Lords, including Doctor Who: Legacy, Doctor Who: The Edge of Time and Lego Dimensions.
4. Warp Digital’s Richie Turner was one of the programmers on an early ‘90s video game called Dalek Attack, where The Doctor took on a Dalek invasion in a shoot-em-up, having learned to use his sonic screwdriver to shoot lasers. It might not be the most canon thing, but it was bloody good fun.
5. Sumo Digital’s creative director Sean Millard also worked on pixel art for Dalek Attack back in the day, and then went on to work on the episodic Doctor Who: The Adventure Games, one of which won a Welsh BAFTA!

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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 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 Ahsoka, 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 Eccleston, Tennant and Smith years.

Sean Millard: The Doctor’s a difficult character to build gameplay around if you’re remaining true to the brand values. Conflict is resolved through discussion and reason, there is a skeleton key in the Sonic Screwdriver, and the dialogue – which makes the franchise so special and unique – is difficult to convey with the same meaning and intensity in a game. It can easily get in the way of the gameplay, so it’s necessary to draw it back a bit, which means it can lose a bit of its humour and intensity. This is all compounded by the desire to make Doctor Who action-games, rather than more cerebral challenges, which might suit the character and universe better.

Christopher Dring: I would argue that Star Trek isn’t exactly the world’s biggest games IP, either, but, to put it simply, it needs to grow globally. Doctor Who is a huge brand in the UK, and it has grown quite a bit in the US, but it’s not exactly a mega franchise. It’s been living off of BBC special effects budgets, in an age where movie sized TV productions based on Star Wars and Lord of the Rings have been taking place. What I think it needs is for the BBC to sign a big international partner, maybe someone like Disney … and to cast a cool, sexy, young and talented lead actor in the title role. Like maybe that chap from Sex Education on Netflix. That should do it.

Peter Hickman: I agree that it really needs to have a larger global mainstream audience. The show is still perceived by non-fans as a very niche British programme, so getting deals through to big publishers is a real challenge. Ideally, to build the franchise it needs the support of a big US channel and some consistency in broadcast frequency. Retaining audiences is tough, and it’s made tougher when you have some years with a full season, some years with a few specials and some years with no Doctor Who at all.

What do you think are the core things to consider about The Doctor and his friends when creating a video game?

Nick Holden: Oppositional games will face an issue with balancing the ability of the player with the player’s opponent. It’s hard to play as a Time Lord unless everyone else also has Time Lord levels of power. Also, Doctor Who presents problems which are, essentially, solved by The Doctor through a series of conversations with his companions. If the TV series has ‘mechanics’ they are the conversations that The Doctor uses to figure out the way to fix the problem he’s wrestling with.

Richie Turner: The Doctor has never used violence to solve problems, always looking for a peaceful solution, and that rules out many of the standard video game staples such as shooting … although we managed to get away with it! Some of the best Doctor Who games focus more on exploration and problem solving.

Sean Millard: The previously mentioned Sonic Screwdriver, and not just having the assistant as someone who is escorted or waiting for the Doctor to complete their task. They need valuable gameplay goals of their own – but equally, you don’t want to divide the gameplay too abrasively. It’s a delicate balance. Lastly, there is a very unique tone to Doctor Who’s storytelling. With The Adventure Games we were blessed to have Phil Ford involved in the scripts and to work really closely with the TV production team to help guide us on the narrative and how to have it meet the gameplay demands we required. It was a really interesting process.

Peter Hickman: The Doctor is a multi-faceted character, and each regeneration brings their own strengths and weaknesses, so make sure any game idea makes best use of that regeneration. The story is not just about The Doctor, but also the companions. Since Russell T Davies rebooted the show, they’ve definitely played a more active role in the stories.

Also, the Doctor Who Universe is huge. There are hundreds of companions, monsters, planets and gadgets to draw from – your choices don’t just stopat Daleks and Cybermen, even if they are the show’s most well-known antagonists. Do you include guns and violence? Well, although these are not the things people immediately associate with Doctor Who, remember the Doctor spent an entire season marooned on Earth working for UNIT, who spent quite a lot of time running round shooting and blowing things up. People die in Doctor Who, all the time, sometimes in the most horrible of circumstances. Steven Moffat once made a huge point of the Ninth Doctor shouting “Everybody lives, Rose! Just this once! Everybody lives!”. Still, if you are going to kill a character, make it for a good reason!

Christopher Dring: Doctor Who is a real challenge for developers. Do you make a game based on the current Doctor? If yes, you’re potentially alienating all those older fans of the show. What is the gameplay hook? The Doctor doesn’t shoot or hit or take part in any form of combat if they can help it.

I’ve seen Doctor Who games try to be all things to everyone. There’s a key to time, and you play as multiple Doctors, and you fight Daleks, then Cybermen, then it turns out the Master is behind it all, or really it was Davros the whole time… But I’ve also seen it try and do things very specific. I had to admire Maze Theory’s found phone game that acted as a sequel to Blink. A 2021 mobile game based on an episode from 2009… that’s quite the niche proposition. But it was a really good effort.

In fact, Maze Theory doing the whole Weeping Angels in VR thing. When they first showed me that demo, I got goosebumps just at the thought of it. So clever. Doctor Who is about a hero who wins through thought, not fighting. It’s frightening and silly and funny and emotional. All wrapped up in stories that can take place basically anywhere. Wouldn’t it be amazing if we could get a game like that?

Doctor Who can go anywhere, at any point in time. What do you reckon are the unique challenges that poses for a developer on perhaps a AA (or er, BBC) budget?

Sean Millard: The TARDIS’ ability to go anywhere and anywhen isn’t the challenge; ultimately, it’s just appearing in a new level or world for the gamer to enjoy. The challenges are far more about pacing the gameplay, staying true to the brand and honouring the audience.

Nick Holden: It’s a challenge of imagination in design and creativity in production, but a faithfully designed Doctor Who game wouldn’t have much in the way of action in it. The Doctor often solves mysterious problems using a logic that is never fully made clear.

So, the game’s environment might present a mysterious puzzle and an environment where the companions explore and talk to help The Doctor clarify the mystery and how he might solve the issue. I think a faithfully designed Doctor Who game doesn’t need a huge budget.

Richie Turner: A flagship property such as Doctor Who should get much more funding, admittedly, it’s been better since the “reboot”, but it’s started to show its purse-strings again recently. Shows like The Mandalorian have led the way recently with new technologies such as The Volume AR soundstage, which show how sci-fi can be done at a relatively lower cost.

Peter Hickman: The biggest problem with Doctor Who gaming is that people automatically assume that you’ll be jumping around different time periods with lots of art and audio assets – not true! Think about the show itself, very rarely does The Doctor spend the episode jumping between planets and time periods. Generally, the TARDIS lands, The Doctor becomes embroiled in a mystery and the story plays out as The Doctor discovers what the mystery is, who is causing it and ultimately solving and stopping it.

The BBC can do a lot to help out as well with 3D scans of the TARDIS interior, style guides and access to actors. Making a Doctor Who game on an AA-scale budget should not be a scary thing. Something smaller that is high quality and fun is absolutely possible. Of course, Doctor Who is a licensed property, so there are lots of stakeholders and approvals for all aspects of any game, but the team at BBC Studios work very hard to make things as straightforward as possible.

Christopher Dring: I actually think this makes Doctor Who an interesting opportunity for proper big games that already exist. The Doctor can go anywhere. They can turn up in EVE Online. They can pop into Fortnite. I’d love to see the TARDIS land in Sea of Thieves, personally. We’ve actually seen a bit of that already.

Have you ever played another game and thought, ‘this setup would work for a Who game’?

Peter Hickman: When you are working on the brand at BBC Studios, you think about it all the time. That said, the first time I ever considered it was when I was playing 3D Monster Maze on the ZX81. I always thought that a Dalek chasing you through the maze rather than a T-Rex would have been really cool.

Nick Holden: I think of dialogue based games like The Stanley Parable: I believe it would work to have the play-off between video game conventions and the player – as seen in The Stanley Parable – applied within a Doctor Who game. It could be combined with other elements such as story threads containing intergalactic diplomacy, inter-species relations and technology puzzles.

Sean Millard: I’d love to see a really good ‘point and click’ style adventure that features The Doctor. Charles Cecil of Revolution Games worked really closely with us throughout the development of The Adventure Games. I often thought a really good format for Who would be his puzzle led gameplay and brain-busting conundrums. Check out the more recent games from Revolution and imagine them Who-ified. It’s an easy connection to make.

Christopher Dring: I want an XCOM-style game set in the world of Doctor Who. Perhaps set during the Time War. The Doctor and their companions could be non-combat characters, alongside those that do a bit of shooting. Fun fact: original XCOM creator Julian Gollop made an unofficial Doctor Who game called Time Lords. It was his first video game that he made at school. I bet that would look great today.

Avoiding the more obvious ones like Daleks and Cybermen, which Doctor Who antagonists do you think would be an interesting challenge for game designers and/or players – and why?

Sean Millard: Everyone is going to say the Weeping Angels, surely. Amazing inventions of this latter period, and it’s obvious why they’d make for interesting stop and start challenges. I remember we had fun with the Vashta Nerada and light and dark gameplay too.

Christopher Dring: I already mentioned the Weeping Angels in VR… what a terrifying idea. If anyone can come up with a way The Silence could work in a Doctor Who game, where you forget they are there… Now that would be clever.

Nick Holden: We used The Master as a background force in Destiny of the Doctors, using his creative deviousness to motivate other enemies, and that works. It almost doesn’t matter who the enemies are. I particularly liked the Adipose and the Boneless on the show – both were really creative creatures.

Peter Hickman: The Yeti always come to mind. I think probably because The Web of Fear is one of the scariest and most tense in the history of the show. Set in a London that is completely covered in an eerie fog, the TARDIS crashes after being pulled from space by a powerful web. It was almost entirely shot in sets that recreated the London Underground and featured the first appearance of Nicholas Courtney as Alaistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart. The story featured huge lumbering Yeti that were the servants of The Great Intelligence, an old adversary. The Yeti carried guns that fired webs that could cover and suffocate a person, and they weren’t afraid to use them! They were also quite happy to give a chop with their huge furry arms to break somebody’s neck.

Secret scientific bases under London, alien intelligences, dark and claustrophobic tube tunnels and The Doctor trying to escape from and foil the plans of a seemingly unstoppable enemy. It was the perfect scenario. The Yeti might look like lumbering monsters, but they are immensely strong and tough. The best way to kill them is to destroy their control spheres hidden in a stomach compartment, or if you can get hold of that control sphere, you could get the Yeti to work for you. I feel like hiding behind the sofa just thinking about it.

Where else have you seen Doctor Who’s influence in games, or thought, “Yeah, these guys watch a lot of Who.”?

Christopher Dring: I used to hunt out Doctor Who references. The stone TARDIS in Assassin’s Creed. The TARDIS in Fallout… but it’s got to be the stone angels that move in The Witcher 3? I fear they’ve removed that now. But that was a lovely, albeit somewhat freaky, little nod.

Nick Holden: In Zelda: A Link Between Worlds, Link went into 2D as a way of navigating in some parts of the game. I saw parallels to the Boneless in the Flatline episode, when Peter Capaldi was playing the Doctor.

Peter Hickman: Doctor Who is everywhere, especially the TARDIS. There are a lot of subtle references in other games as well. Quotes. A scarf here, a fez or a bow tie there.

Of course, the game that paid the biggest fan service to the show was Lego Dimensions and the TT Games team (led by the late Mark Warburton) were huge Doctor Who fans. That’s why there are an enormous number of characters (voiced by the actors who played them) in the game: all of the first 12 Doctors, Daleks, Cybermen, Missy, Strax, Captain Jack and many, many more!

Richie Turner: Well Doctor Who has been around for 60 years now, so I think anyone making anything in the genre must have been influenced at some level, even subconsciously.