10 Doctor Who Futures That Are Now In The Past

When Doctor Who started in the 1960s, dates like 1986 and 2020 felt impossibly far away

Surely Doctor Who wouldn't be on TV by then. And yet, the longer the show goes on, the more it risks crashing into its wild predictions for the future

And in case anyone's wondering, the next crossover point will be 2049, when the moon is revealed to be an egg

So make sure to put that date in your diary. Until then, many of Doctor Who's distant futures are now far behind us

I'm Ellie for Who Culture here with 10 Doctor Who futures that are now in the past

Number 10. The Chase, 1966. Terry Nation's outright Dalek comedy The Chase takes place across all of time and space

One particular interlude in the Dalek's pursuit of the first Doctor and his companions

is a trip to the observation deck atop the Empire State Building in New York

This took place on an undisclosed date in 1966, placing it at least a year after the actual broadcast of the episode

As far as historical records can tell, the Daleks never did visit the Empire State Building

so this prediction never came true in our own version of 1966

The closest the Daleks got to America was when the 1965 Peter Cushing movie

Doctor Who and the Daleks, premiered in the US in July 1966

to a less than enthusiastic commercial response. I tell you what, the producers missed a trick by not promoting the movie on top of the Empire State Building

Other notable Dalek events from 1966 included the broadcast of the Daleks' master plan

and a group of Daleks arriving at the Blue Peter studio to review cakes

Oh, Great Scarrow Bake Off, anyone? I'd watch that. Number nine, The Underwater Menace, 1970-ish

The exact date of The Underwater Menace is never made explicit, but Polly dates events to roughly 1970

That's because she finds a discarded 1968 Mexico Olympics bracelet. This effectively means that Doctor Who is predicting

that a Professor Zaroff type will discover Atlantis in the years following The Underwater Menace's 1967 broadcast

While it seems like a wild prediction, it's clear that the writer, Jeffrey Orme

had read about the prophecies of American clairvoyant Edgar Cayce. In the 1930s, Cayce stated that, and I quote

a portion of the temples may yet be discovered under the slime of ages and seawater near Bimini

Expect it in 68 or 69. Well, perhaps Jeffrey had come across Cayce's prediction

and turned it into the first of Doctor Who's many forays into the mythical lost city of Atlantis

However, the predictions didn't come true and a mad scientist didn't use Atlantis to destroy the Earth in 1970

And yet, in 1968, a group of divers discovered Bimini Road just off the coast of the North Bimini Island in the Bahamas

The mysterious rock formation was described by the divers as a quote pavement and some believe it may be the road to Atlantis Number 8 The Tenth Planet 1986 In the 1966 serial The Tenth Planet

Doctor Who confidently predicted that in 1986 we would discover a tenth planet in our solar system

In the real 1986, the Voyager space probe had only made it to Uranus, the seventh planet from the Sun

The progress of human space exploration hadn't been nearly as quick as writers Kit Peddler and Jerry Davis predicted

William Hartnell's final Doctor Who serial also predicted that at the height of the space race

humanity would have abandoned national borders to embrace an international approach to space exploration

Well, sadly, this wasn't true either, and the Chernobyl disaster and ensuing Soviet cover-up

was a particularly bleak example of the lack of trust between nations in 1986

The only saving grace of the 10th planet's vision of the future is that 1986 didn't see a race of cybernetically augmented humanoids and a Z-bomb nearly destroy the Earth

Silver linings. Number 7. The Chase, 1996. 30 years after the Daleks landed on top of the Empire State Building, they rocked up at the Frankenstein's House of Horrors attraction at the 1996 Festival of Ghana

Haunted House attractions were much more technologically advanced in Doctor Who's version of 1996

The robotic Dracula and Frankenstein were so convincing that the first Doctor believed the TARDIS and the Daleks

had somehow managed to materialise inside the dark recesses of the human mind

Perhaps the convincing nature of the horrifying monsters was why the attraction and the festival was apparently cancelled by Peking

Though quite what the People's Republic of China would have to do with a festival in a West African nation is anyone's guess

In that same year and a thousand miles away, the 11th Doctor crash-landed in the Garden of Amelia Pond at the start of the 2010 episode, The 11th Hour

And now get ready to have your mind blown, because where 1996 was 30 years in the future for William Hartnell

it was already 14 years in the past for Matt Smith and Karen Gillan

Mind blown. Number 6. Battlefield 1997 Set eight years after broadcast, Battlefield is a more accurate depiction of 1997 than the underwater menace's wild depiction of three years into the future

There are still good old-fashioned English country pubs, even if the price of a pint has gone up considerably

The Gore Crow Hotel has its own microbrewery, a good decade before every Johnny-cum-lately-craft-beer pub

Geopolitically, Battlefield reveals that things are still tense around the world as the battle between Morgaine and King Arthur

becomes a metaphor for the futility of nuclear war. While nuclear holocaust wasn't as pressing an issue as it was during the Cold War

concerns about dangerous materials being ferried about places like Battlefield fictional village were still on people minds in 1997 So the only glaring difference from the real 1997 five pound for a water and a lemonade aside is the fact that a group of Arthurian knights caused merry hell in an English village

nearly triggering a nuclear apocalypse. Par for the cause when it comes to Doctor Who, really

Number 5. The TV Movie 1999-2000 At the turn of the millennium, the master almost turned the universe inside out during his battle

with the Eighth Doctor. With the Eye of Harmony open, the very fabric of reality became malleable

which would have only made the first hangover of 2000 even more painful

Thankfully, predictions of widespread devastation at midnight on the 1st of January 2000 never came to pass

We came close thanks to the millennium bug, but like the master's plot with the Eye of Harmony

its effects were rolled back and caused minor disruptions. Airing in 1996, the Doctor Who TV movie wasn't the only bit of science fiction

to predict the end of life as we knew it as we inched closer to the year 2000

so it needn't feel bad for getting it wrong. Interestingly, Torchwood would later reveal that Captain Jack's predecessor killed himself and his team at the turn of the century

because he feared what was coming. The TV movie did make one accurate prediction for the future, though

The Doctor would be doing a lot more kissing from the year 2000 onward

The Tenth Doctor certainly made good on that promise when he arrived in 2005

Number 4. Aliens of London, 2006 From the moment the Ninth Doctor accidentally drops off Rose 12 months later in the 2005 episode Aliens of London

the RTD era of Doctor Who takes place in the very near future

From the death of the Prime Minister to the rise and fall of Harriet Jones to the election of Harold Saxon

the big moments from RTD's Doctor Who lore took place roughly a year ahead of our own reality

Hilariously, the political unrest during this period of Doctor Who does bear comparison with parallel events in UK politics

After replacing the murdered Prime Minister at some point after Aliens of London and World War III in 2006

Harriet Jones is then ousted by the Tenth Doctor's whispered message, Don't you think she looks tired

In the real world, Gordon Brown replaced Tony Blair in 2007 after a similar scandal involving what the Slothene refer to as

massive weapons of destruction. Both Harriet Jones and Gordon Brown were then replaced by villainous politicians

who ruined Britain's reputation on the world stage. So something else to add to Doctor Who's list of accurate predictions, I guess

Number 3. Dalek and Fear Her, 2012 Utah, 2012 A narcissistic billionaire and powerful figure in the United States of America

keeps a Dalek in his basement After his recklessness almost causes global destruction at the hands of said Dalek

he's ousted from his position and will never ever again interfere in American politics

Written by Robert Sherman and set in 2012 2005's Dalek seems utterly prophetic

albeit four years early and with a much happier ending for the American people Across the Pond in 2012 as depicted in the 2006 episode Fear Her the UK was preparing to host the Olympics

but disaster struck at the hands of some magic crayons. The opening ceremony was disrupted by the disappearance of the collected guests and athletes

who were captured inside a drawing. The day was saved, the attendees returned

and the Tenth Doctor heroically took up the Olympic torch and marked the start of the competition

Magic crayons aside, Dodopter did carry the Olympic torch in The Real World 2012

but it was the 11th incarnation and not the 10th, as David Tennant had regenerated a few years earlier

Number 2, The Enemy of the World 2018. The year 2018 must have seemed impossibly futuristic to David Whittaker when he was writing The Enemy of the World in 1967

Although the easy access to hovercrafts and the devastating volcanic eruptions in Central Europe never came to pass

there's still something quite prescient about Whittaker's view of 2018. At its heart, the enemy of the world is Doctor Who doing a James Bond movie

with a charismatic villain and some big action set pieces. It's also a political thriller about how the rich can wheedle their way into global politics

If Whittaker had lived in 2018, he may have been alarmed at what he got right about humanity's future

Looking back on the enemy of the world now, the themes of a tanned megalomaniac who feeds disinformation and fake news to his global audience

feel all too real. Patrick Troughton's performance as Salamander may look outrageous and over the top

but is it any more outlandish than the performance of 2018's actual leader of the free world

Just saying. Number 1. The Hungry Earth 2020 2020 will never be anyone's favourite year

but come on, let's not get into another debate about the Timeless Child. Of course, 2020 was a rough year for everyone as we lived with the COVID-19 pandemic

and the world began to feel like a particularly bleak sci-fi dystopia

Doctor Who couldn't predict this, but it did visit 2020, in the Chris Chibnall penned two-parter The Hungry Earth and Cold Blood

which aired in 2010. In Chibnall's version of 2020, the Silurians awoke in a small mining town in Wales

where they attempted to retake Earth from the humans. After negotiations stalled, the Silurians were returned to their hibernation

in the hope that one day a peaceful accord could be reached. Fast forward 10 years and Chris Chibnall was Doctor Who's showrunner in 2020

He didn't revisit the Silurian revival, but there's nothing to say that it didn't still happen

while the 13th Doctor was dealing with Ruth and the Jadoon in Gloucester. One thing he did get wrong was that the future Amy and Rory

wouldn't have turned up to greet their past selves on account of their deaths in New York decades earlier

Oh, and now I'm sad. And there you have it, but while we're on the topic of the future

why not check out 10 times Doctor Who accidentally predicted our future

In the meantime, I've been Ellie for Who Culture, and in the words of Riversong herself, goodbye, sweeties