Strictly Come Dancing stars to make unexpected Doctor Who cameo

Judge will appear with show’s professional dancers on returning sci-fi show

Doctor Who is set to feature a rather unexpected crossover, as it was revealed that stars of Strictly Come Dancing will be appearing on the show.

With the BBC’s long-running sci-fi series celebrating its 60th anniversary this month, Doctor Who is running three special episodes with the return of Russell T Davies – the man responsible for rebooting the show in 2005 – and 10th Doctor David Tennant.

On Tuesday, Davies appeared on BBC’s Morning Live to discuss Doctor Who’s return this coming Saturday and talked about the guest stars appearing in the new specials, from Miriam Margolyes voicing the Meep to Neil Patrick Harris playing classic Who villain the Toymaker.

“I’m just thinking, there’s someone else in this studio that might be appearing, potentially, on Doctor Who,” host Gethin Jones suggested to Davies, who replied: “Do you mean the top secret information that Shirley Ballas is going to appear in Doctor Who?”

The camera then panned to fellow Morning Live guest Ballas, who delightedly said: “Well, I can tell you, the filming was one of the best days of my life.

“We’re doing a guest appearance with Jojo (Johannes Radebe), where I actually get to perform with Jojo and so many other dancers on the show. So I’m very, very excited for people to watch.”

Davies’ comments suggest that the Strictly cast will feature in the soon-to-air anniversary specials, rather than the new episodes starring Ncuti Gatwa as the Fifteenth Doctor. Gatwa’s first full episode, titled “The Church on Ruby Road”, is airing on Christmas Day.

Ballas will have a cameo role on the show (PA)

While Ballas’s cameo may seem a little unexpected, Doctor Who has a long history of nodding to pop culture on the show.

During Tennant’s time in the Tardis, celebrities including Trisha Goddard and Bill Turnbull played versions of themselves on Doctor Who. When the Doctor’s nemesis The Master (John Simm) came to earth disguised as Harold Saxon in 2007, Sharon Osbourne, Ann Widdecombe and McFly were among the famous faces backing his campaign to become prime minister.

The show’s most notable nods to pop culture, however, came in the 2005 episode “Bad Wolf”. Here, the Ninth Doctor (Christopher Eccleston), Rose Tyler (Billie Piper) and Captain Jack Harkness (John Barrowman) find themselves stuck in the year 200,100 on space station Satellite Five.

Tennant is returning as the Doctor (Alistair Heap/Bad Wolf/BBC Studios)

The station has been renamed The Game Station, with each character stuck within a different reality TV show or game show. The Weakest Link, Big Brother and What Not to Wear were among the shows parodied, with Anne Robinson, Trinny Woodall and Susannah Constantine all voicing their robot counterparts.

Ahead of the anniversary specials, Davies offered a warning to families planning on watching the show with young kids. Stressing that Doctor Who is “not a children’s show”, the writer said that while opener “The Star Beast” would be the most appropriate for children, the next two would not.

“The second one, ‘Wild Blue Yonder’, is darker. Not scary – it’s genuinely weird,” he said. “We do very scary stuff. Some stuff is quite violent. It’s not for children, it’s about children.”

Doctor Who returns Saturday 25 November at 6.30pm on BBC One.