K-9 (TV Series) - Connections To Doctor Who

Connections To Doctor Who

As this is not a BBC production, direct references to Doctor Who are not legally allowed for rights reasons. However, Baker and Tams have confirmed that this K-9 is the original K-9 Mark I, who appeared in Doctor Who from The Invisible Enemy (1977) to The Invasion of Time (1978). This model was last seen in the possession of Leela on Gallifrey; in the first episode, the robot dog is damaged and undergoes a "regeneration" into a new, more advanced form capable of flight. He then explains that most of his memory was damaged, as he cannot remember the Doctor. In "The Curse of Anubis", when Starkey and Jorjie steal the Anubians book and in the book is a list of drawing of creatures the Anubians have enslaved which include a Sea Devil (as seen in The Sea Devils and Warriors of the Deep), a Mandrel (as seen in Nightmare of Eden) and an Alpha Centauran (as seen in The Curse of Peladon and The Monster of Peladon). While K-9 and the Professor perform diagnostic tests on K-9's damaged memory drive in episode 1, "Regeneration", K-9 plays a three-note cue from the Doctor Who theme, but cannot identify the music. Much like the TARDIS exterior appearance as a 1963 police box, the Professor's laboratory & home is in a disused police station, still bearing its police lamp next to the front door. In the episode, "The Cambridge Spy", Starkey and K-9 follow Jorjie into the past to when the lab was still a police station - specifically to the evening of 23 November 1963, the evening when Doctor Who premiered with "An Unearthly Child". The same evening had been visited by the Seventh Doctor and Ace in Remembrance of the Daleks. The principal adult character, Professor Gryffen holds comparable academic rank to the Doctor and is likewise nearly always addressed by his honorific, "Professor". In the pilot episode, K-9 Mark I gave his own life by self-destructing in order to kill the hostile aliens and save humans in London, just as K-9 Mark III did in "School Reunion".

The decision to launch the show in the UK on 3 April, the launch date for Doctor Who's The Eleventh Hour, which introduced Matt Smith as the Eleventh Doctor, was interpreted by the Gawker Media blog io9 as a way of taking advantage of the latter show's popularity to boost interest in the new show.