Given that Sherlock and Doctor Who share a showrunner in Steven Moffat, it would seem that a crossover episode isn’t just the stuff of daydreams. Some might argue it would even be the least he could do, given how long fans are being made to wait for future Sherlock episodes.
At a Q&A at the Doctor Who premiere in Cardiff this weekend, Moffat voiced his theoretical support for such a crossover—but then said it would never happen, blaming Sherlock stars Benedict Cumberbatch, Martin Freeman, and Mark Gatiss, as well as fellow producer Sue Vertue. “They’re all in the way,” Moffatt said. “I’m not the killjoy, it’s that lot. It’s probably not going to happen.” (Mark Gatiss, who plays Sherlock’s brother Mycroft, has already guest-starred as two different characters on Doctor Who and voiced a third.)
Moffat ultimately agreed that it would be best to keep the Doctor and the detective separate, while also implicitly giving the go-ahead to tomes of fan-fiction:
You know in some ways, I think Mark [Gatiss] has got a point when he says that however good you imagine [the crossover], it would be almost better in your imagination than it would be if the two grand old egotists actually met. They’d just both go off in opposite corners and sulk that there was someone cleverer than them.
Fans are already ahead of Moffat, having made a short “Wholock” video on YouTube, in which Sherlock Holmes meets the Eleventh Doctor, and John Watson is, as usual, left behind looking bewildered.
The eighth season of Doctor Who, starring Peter Capaldi as the Twelfth Doctor, premieres on BBC America on August 23. [via MTV]