Doctor Who’s Huge New Event Nearly Got Scrapped by the Coronavirus

Move over, Daleks: you’re now officially less likely to scrap the Doctor’s plans than actual respiratory viruses.

Earlier this year, the BBC revealed Time Lord Victorious, an ambitious Doctor Who crossover covering three different Doctors—the Eighth, Ninth, and Tenth incarnations—across comics, novels, audio dramas, and even live events, as they came together to fight monsters, a grand threat to the nature of existence itself, and an Ood named Brian.

Suffice to say: it’s a lot. It’s one of the most ambitious things the series has done outside of its prime time TV form in years, and according to producer James Goss, it was almost waylaid entirely by, well… the state of the world in which we currently live.

“I was trapped in Turkey for a week [after the country closed its borders], and by the time I got back, the world had ended?” Goss said as part of Time Lord Victorious’ Comic-Con at Home panel, which naturally mainly focused on Titan Comics’ graphic offerings that form part of over 30 different products being released as part of the timey-wimey transmedia shenanigans. “I was convinced [Victorious] was gonna be over.”

But thanks to a combination of efforts from the likes of Big Finish and Titan, Victorious isn’t just alive and kicking, but on track to launch as if the team hadn’t been working their way through a global pandemic. “Oddly, madly, Titan has just got on and done their stuff because it’s almost business as usual,” Goss continued. “Big Finish were recording with the Doctor using his son’s garage band equipment in his garden shed, the immersive theater project has been finding ways in which they can reopen safely and still have a full immersive theater experience. The escape room is looking at how social bubbles could work, so they can reopen safely. The books are just so epic and extraordinary—the great thing about books is that you can actually write a book without actually needing to be in an office!”

“The thing that keeps on happening whenever I have a meeting about [Victorious] is not just how exciting it is but how lucky we are—because I genuinely thought the project would’ve been cancelled,” Goss concluded. “But because the licensees have all gone at every single stage ‘Don’t worry, there’s a way through, we’ve found a way of carrying on…’ It’s amazing.”

For the Doctors, the biggest mystery of Time Lord Victorious might just be how they’ll get out of a conflict with the literal architects of the concept of death. For me, now it’s going to be wondering which of these stories—and which Doctor—is actually saving all of time and space from the comfort of their garden shed.

You can check out the rest of the panel above. Time Lord Victorious is expected to kick off later this year.

For more, make sure you’re following us on our Instagram @io9dotcom.