DWUSAU - Part 3: The Voyage to NBC Begins (1982 - 1983)

DISCLAIMER:

The following is part three of a multipart alternate history series about the history of Doctor Who if it was an American-made production rather than a British production. It's purely speculative and a work of fiction, although some real-world elements were included and presented for realistic situations and scenarios. Neither this series nor its author are connected to nor reflect the views and opinions of BBC Studios (the owner of the Doctor Who franchise) or any entity or persons mentioned and does not mean to infringe on the copyrights and trademarks of those parties. - JH

“There are fixed points throughout time where things must stay exactly the way they are. This is not one of them, this is an opportunity. Whatever happens here will create its own timeline, its own reality, a temporal tipping point. The future revolves around you, here, now, so do good!” - The Doctor

While the original run of Doctor Who ended on ABC, Universal still had plans for the fan-favorite series. After a brief attempt to create a British version of the series with BBC (the series' broadcaster in the country) and ITV faltered (Channel 4 was still in the pre-launch stage and wasn't ready to invest in foreign co-production this early in its history). It was rumored that English actor Peter Davison would have been cast as the British version of The Doctor, though Universal never confirmed that at the time.  In the end, Universal passed on working with a British broadcasted and decided to work with American broadcaster NBC to give Doctor Who a brand-new regeneration.

NBC goes blue
for Doctor Who
in 1982

In order to secure a new network home for the series, Universal ceded a very minor stake in the Doctor Who franchise to NBC, 15%, which Universal felt was more than reasonable. NBC secured domestic broadcast rights and became a co-producer on all newer Doctor Who-related projects, including any future television, audio, and theatrical productions and spinoffs. In return for that stake, Universal would serve as a domestic and international syndicator of scripted NBC-produced series and made-for-TV movies, including past in-house shows from 1973 to the present but not including The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, Late Night with David Letterman, and Saturday Night Live (under then-current conditions, NBC couldn't legally syndicate its own original programming until federal laws that prohibited that were relaxed and ultimately repealed in the late 1990s).

However, NBC didn't want to just present a new season of Doctor Who. 

Not yet. 

For starters, the previous Doctor, Michael Keaton, had become an in-demand draw for film and television. In addition to getting the lead roles in films like Night Shift and Johnny Dangerously, Keaton signed on to star in his own CBS sitcom, Report to Murphy, which had a brief run for six weeks in the spring of 1982. 

Universal and NBC knew they needed a new Doctor, but first, they wanted to see if audiences would gravitate towards a revival so soon after it ended on ABC. Instead of fully reviving the series, NBC ordered a soft reboot of the series that didn't focus on The Doctor but rather the Voyards, an offshoot of the Time Lords whose core mission was to fix anomalies in time often outside of the scope of the Time Lords. 

The only difference between the two is that Voyards, or, as they would call their time travelers, Voyagers, only had one life (they were typically species from their various worlds and not Time Lords by blood or by birth) and could not regenerate the way that Time Lords could. Also, voyagers only correct time anomalies making them the way they're supposed to be within a certain time frame. Rather than using a TARDIS, Voyagers used Omnis, a small watch-like object that allows the user to travel through a specified time frame, but not dimensions. 

James D. Parriott. a former writer on Doctor Who and the creator of the Voyagers concept, created a unique family series in the vein of the original 1963 Doctor Who series for Universal and NBC. The new hour-long sci-fi adventure series, Voyagers!, premiered on October 3, 1982. It aired Sunday nights at 7 PM E/P, a timeslot that has a lot of history and reverence with Doctor Who fans.

The main cast of 
Voyagers!
(L-R) Meeno Peluce
and Jon-Erik Hexum

Voyagers! starred Jon-Erik Hexum as Phineas Bogg, a Voyager whose Omni malfunctioned and took him outside of his assigned time parameter (he couldn't travel beyond 1970 A.D.) and shifted him forward to the 1980s and without his history guidebook. Fortunately, he encounters a young orphan named Jeffrey Jones, played by Meeno Peluce, who was the son of a history professor and knew quite a lot about world history himself. Jeffrey proved to be more mature and knowledgeable than Phineas, who was all about the action and impressing the ladies. The pair were quite an adventurous team in their journeys through time. 

While the series never mentioned its connection to Doctor Who outright nor featured The Doctor in any capacity, the TARDIS appeared in a pair of episodes, "The Trial of Phineas Bogg" and the finale, "Jack's Back," both of which explored the Voyagers mythology introduced in the  original series and focused on a renegade Voyard named Drake (played by Stephen Liska) who shunned that title and preferred a more fitting Gallifreyan title for his role as a court prosecutor: Valeyard. 

Coincidentally, both episodes aired in 1983, the 20th anniversary of the Doctor Who series. 

Voyagers! ran for 20 episodes with low yet solid ratings, and a second season was all but guaranteed. 

Unfortunately, a pair of factors ended the series forever.

NBC felt that they could take on and possibly dethrone CBS's 60 Minutes on Sunday nights. The network announced that it would move its news magazine Monitor (now renamed First Camera) from Saturdays at 10 PM to Sundays at 7 PM, Voyagers' time slot. NBC attempted to transform Voyagers! as a half-hour series for Saturday mornings as opposed to the hour-long format of the primetime series, but Hexum moved on to other projects during the hiatus. He signed onto a made-for-TV film, Making of a Male Model, for ABC, which aired in October 1983 and made him into a sex symbol. Hexum eventually becomes the lead in the CBS spy adventure series Cover Up, which premiered in September 1984. Hexum's Phineas Bogg was a vital part of Voyagers' success, and rather than recast the role, NBC officially decided to end the series altogether.

Parriott knew that Voyagers! was, more or less, a test to see if audiences would want to see a family-friendly sci-fi series. While initially flustered about not being able to continue Voyagers! for a second season, he and the Voyagers! writing staff stayed onboard and moved onto the next phase of the revival of Doctor Who. With Parriott fully onboard, Universal knew they had the right producer and team to fully revive Doctor Who.

However, instead of relaunching Doctor Who a weekly series, Universal and NBC wanted to present it as a series of quarterly movie events and specials, taking a cue from the pair's previous wheel series, The NBC Mystery Movie. Parriott, who was familiar with the original series' filming schedule and format, would serve as the executive and creative producer of Doctor Who, a role he would continue until the series finale in 1989.

Before Doctor Who returned to the airwaves after two seasons off the air, the series celebrated its 20th anniversary in fall 1983. 

And they did it live from New York. Sort of.