As an American growing up in the 70s and 80s, my exposure to Doctor Who was, to say the least, limited. Although my home state has been broadcasting the show on public television since 1974, it never even made a blip on my mental radar until I got to college—and then it was more as an indicator of which weirdos to avoid.

Star Trek, on the other hand, was regular fare.

I still remember afternoons after school parked in front of our little TV watching Kirk, Spock, Bones, Sulu, Chekov, and Uhura (not to mention numerous redshirts) in action. My first specific memory is of captain and science officer in a jail with iron bars, and—I’m fairly certain—a comment about Spock’s green blood (probably from the episode “Patterns of Force“).

Later, when Star Trek: The Next Generation came on the scene, it was an easy sell. And just like the Whovian weirdos who met periodically in one of the dorm lounges to watch their show together (though I certainly didn’t recognize the parallel at the time), my dorm floormates and I lugged one guy’s TV into the floor lounge each week to watch the latest episode of ST: TNG together. The floor T-shirt that year was even based on that practice (including oft-used comments from the peanut gallery like “nice angle” and “Worf should kill them all”).

Even having been well indoctrinated in the ways of Trek, though, it never even crossed my mind as a possibility that I might ever go to a Trek (or general sf) convention. It took Doctor Who and its fandom to pull me over to that particular Dark Side (am I mixing enough fannish metaphors yet?). Not only that, but my intense love of the show sparked this very blog. I still can’t picture myself blogging about Star Trek, Star Wars, Firefly, or any of a dozen more universes/franchises of which I consider myself a fan. Doctor Who has stolen my heart.

So imagine my delight when I discovered that my original fandom and my most intense one were about to collide.

Starting in May 2013, a dedicated group of fans of the original Star Trek series (ST: TOS)—entertainment industry professionals themselves—began releasing their webseries designed to round out the Enterprise‘s voyages (the opening credits of ST: TOS cite the ship’s “five-year mission,” while the series only ran for three years). They call their new show Star Trek Continues. To date, three episodes have been produced and released, free to view online. The series has already won awards.

Last week, they announced that the special guest star for their next episode would be none other than Ol’ Sixie himself, Colin Baker. I nearly blew a gasket with excitement. Granted, Six has never been my favorite Doctor (though in my defense, I’ve barely heard any of his Big Finish stories), but that doesn’t matter—he’s the Doctor (and I still love him, in his own way)!

I know that this won’t be a true crossover—I can’t see a batch of ST: TOS fans bringing the Doctor on board the Enterprise—but the mere fact that the Doctor some random character played by Colin will be sparking off her crew has me giddy. And until proven otherwise, I’m going to pretend we’ll be seeing the TARDIS on the bridge. A girl can dream.

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