Doctor Who spin-off for Professor Jericho could correct a mistake of the past
The series missed the opportunity to revisit a pair of charismatic supporting characters once more.
On paper, it's perhaps surprising that a TV phenomenon like Doctor Who has generated only a handful of official screen spin-offs across its almost 60-year history – in the scripted field at least, we've had 1981's failed pilot K-9 and Company, the Cardiff-based Torchwood (2006-11), CBBC's The Sarah Jane Adventures (2007-11), the teen-oriented Class (2016) and that, bar the odd animated special or YouTube series, is pretty much it.
But for every sister series to the BBC's sci-fi flagship that made it to air, there were of course many more that were proposed but never materialised – from a Daleks spin-off pilot written in the 1960s to an animated series that was under development in the 1980s to abandoned Billie Piper vehicle Rose Tyler: Earth Defence in the 2000s.
Perhaps though the most famous spin-off that never was – and arguably the biggest missed opportunity – was the case of Jago and Litefoot. The story goes that, having been impressed by the on-screen chemistry between two supporting characters who featured in the 1977 Doctor Who story The Talons of Weng-Chiang – theatre impressario Henry Gordon Jago (Christopher Benjamin) and pathologist Professor George Litefoot (Trevor Baxter) – the production team at the time briefly considered a spin-off featuring the pair.
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It never happened, much to fans' chagrin – at least, not on television. Beginning in 2010, audio drama producers Big Finish took the idea and ran with it, hiring Benjamin and Baxter to reprise their roles for a range of new adventures spanning 13 series which ran until Baxter passed away in 2017 (though a fourteenth series was released earlier this year, in audiobook format).
Still, it's fascinating to imagine what might have been had the creative team behind the classic era of late 1970s Doctor Who followed through on their notion of a small-screen spin-off – with its two charismatic leads in place, a Jago and Litefoot series would doubtless have appealed to the Doctor Who fan faithful but could have established a tone and feel all its own, with its single period setting setting it apart from the space/time traversing of its parent series.
Now we find ourselves 44 years on and history appears to be repeating itself – Doctor Who's latest instalment, Village of the Angels, saw the current version of the Time Lord (Jodie Whittaker) assisted in her investigations by a magnetic character with a highly memorable moniker, brought to life by an esteemed character actor.
In the form of Kevin McNally's Professor Eustacius Jericho, we again have a supporting player who feels as though they could carry their own series – and just as Jago and Litefoot's fog-shrouded Victorian-era setting would've delivered its own flavour, so one can easily imagine a 1960s-set spinoff featuring Jericho channelling vibes somewhere between Nigel Kneale's Quatermass serials and John Wyndham's The Midwich Cuckoos. (Or, as one Twitter user put it, "The X-Files in tweed".)
The good Professor is at least confirmed to appear in the final two episodes of Doctor Who: Flux – Sunday night's Survivors of the Flux and the following week's finale The Vanquishers – but the odds of a spin-off featuring the character feel slim, for the same reasons we elaborated on when discussing Jo Martin's Fugitive Doctor being granted her own series: with showrunner Chris Chibnall looking to wrap up his tenure on Doctor Who and tie up any loose ends, the last thing he’ll be looking to do is embark on a spin-off, with any character.
Like Jago and Litefoot before him though, passing over Jericho for a spin-off feels like a missed opportunity – in just a single episode, the character's established himself as one of the show's all-time great guest characters, with an intriguing background (his work in psychic investigations), compelling backstory (a past spent facing indescribable horrors that has led, directly or otherwise, to him being "loveless, childless, hiding in academia for fear of the real world") and some brilliant turns of phrase ("You are observed! That is my power over you.").
In our wildest dreams, Jericho's own series would correct a mistake of the past. But if this point in time is fixed, fingers crossed at least that with Doctor Who embarking on a whole new odyssey come 2023 under returning boss Russell T Davies and Big Finish presumably being allowed to explore the Jodie Whittaker era of the television series, we get Kevin McNally behind the microphone and returning to the role for a box-set or two (or fourteen).
Read more about Doctor Who:
- Doctor Who: Village of the Angels podcast review
- Doctor Who: Village of the Angels' 10 biggest questions
- Doctor Who: Flux star opens up on "shocking" episode 4 twist - "But she can’t die!"
- Doctor Who's Village of the Angels includes surprise mid-credits scene
- Are the Time Lords returning to Doctor Who?
- Kate Lethbridge-Stewart makes shock Doctor Who return – but is UNIT back?
Doctor Who continues on BBC One on Sundays. For more, check out our dedicated Sci-Fi page or our full TV Guide.
Authors
Morgan Jeffery is the Digital Editor for Radio Times, overseeing all editorial output across the brand's digital platforms. He was previously TV Editor at Digital Spy and has featured as a TV expert on BBC Breakfast, BBC Radio 5 Live and Sky Atlantic.
