‘Doctor Who’ is bringing a Marvel Comics villain to life for its 60th anniversary

Doctor Who‘s incoming 60th-anniversary celebrations promises to be the stuff of dreams come true for Whovians, what with the comeback of both David Tennant and Catherine Tate, the return of Russell T. Davies as showrunner, and Neil Patrick Harris serving as a powerful, new villain. The latest trailer for the series of specials that’ll air across 2023, which dropped on Christmas Day as a festive treat, went and confirmed another reason fans should be hyped for the 60th. One with an obscure Marvel connection.

In the trailer, we see Rose (Yasmin Finney) — a character widely speculated to be Donna Noble’s daughter — interacting with a cute, fluffy alien. “What are they?” Rose asks it. “Monsters,” it fearfully replies, before the trailer cuts to a shot of a troop of insectoid soldiers marching down a London street. Neither of these species has been seen before on Doctor Who, but they do already exist in the wider Whoniverse, in the pages of Doctor Who Weekly, a Marvel UK comic published in the 1970s/80s.

In 1980’s “Doctor Who and the Star Beast,” teen schoolgirl Sharon Davies discovers the pudgy, saucer-eyed Beep the Meep after his pod crashes in her hometown, where he’s soon followed by the Wrarth Warriors who are on his tail. Except it turns out that the Wrarths are actually the good guys — they’re intergalactic police attempting to recapture Beep, who’s really a vicious cosmic criminal and warlord with aims to conquer the galaxy.

By the looks of it, the TV series will adapt “The Star Beast” pretty faithfully, except with Rose in the Sharon role and with the Fourth Doctor (who featured in the original comic) replaced with Tennant’s Fourteenth. Tennant himself no doubt loved getting the chance to bring this storyline to life, considering that he’s known to have been an avid collector of Marvel Comics in his youth, including Doctor Who Weekly.

Beep the Meep’s long-awaited introduction into the TV series might well be the first of many Marvel crossovers now that Doctor Who is part of the extended Disney family. As this reminds us, the Time Lord officially exists in the Marvel multiverse, so the opportunity is there for a team-up with the MCU’s Avengers at some point. Hey, we can dream.