Is Star Wars: Ahsoka part of Doctor Who’s 60th Anniversary?
By Zachary Schulman
During episode six of Star Wars: Ahsoka, our Fourteenth Doctor, David Tennant, voices, “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…”
David Tennant’s character, Professor Huyang, became the first canonical being in Star Wars to read Star Wars. For whatever it’s worth, I loved it. Beyond Disney’s deal to distribute Doctor Who, what connections tie the two sci-fi/fantasy powerhouses together? I believe it’s important to consider that Doctor Who has been within Star Wars for a long time, and that the two stories share a symbiotic relationship that has grown considerably stronger in recent years.
In the mid-2000s, I fondly recall a meme about the Tenth Doctor’s age, beginning with Jedi Master Yoda’s line “When 900-years-old you reach, look as good you will not” and ending with a very handsome over 900-year-old space wizard smiling in his suit jacket. The connection, there, between the two stories wasn’t something that I thought would grow—nearly two decades later—into a memetic link that can be measured in canon.
In 2012, David Tennant started voicing Professor Huyang, a Jedi architect droid, in the George Lucas-produced animated series Star Wars: The Clone Wars. Huyang’s introduction reminds me of John Hurt’s role—our War Doctor—as Olivander in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. Huyang even states that he remembers when Padawan Yoda traveled to the icy world, Ilum, to construct his own lightsaber, evincing that the droid that has lived for over “a thousand generations” is older than the renowned Jedi Master. I imagine that I’m not the only one who has found—what I feel to be—this narrative nod to the Doctor’s age to be deeply amusing. And yet, one question that begs to be asked is whether George Lucas intentionally cast “Doctor Who” into this role. While the burden of proof could be provided with a future interview with either George Lucas or series co-producer Dave Filoni, we don’t need the answer to be “yes” in order to continue our inquiry into the two stories’ symbiotic relationship.
Another important question we must consider while exploring the connection between Star Wars and Doctor Who is, “Who do we believe has the right to tell the story of Star Wars, if not its creator, George Lucas?” Since 1977, Star Wars has popularly been the story of masters and apprentices, and apprentices who become masters in turn. Disney has even released a brief documentary/promotional video titled Master & Apprentice: A Special Look at Ahsoka about how—in part—Dave Filoni is continuing Lucas’ legacy as the creator’s own chosen apprentice. The statement “Dave was his apprentice” is made by Jon Favreau, and the idea has been forwarded a number of times over the years since Lucas and Filoni worked together on The Clone Wars. How appropriate it is that the man who created Anakin Skywalker and “The Tragedy of Darth Vader” takes as his apprentice the man who created Ahsoka Tano, Anakin’s apprentice. The narrative of George Lucas himself having an apprentice is a powerful one for the meta franchise to adopt. It seems that, as a lover of the story, I for one am willing to tell it as such. Is Doctor Who part of the legacy that Filoni is inheriting? The answer to that question is yes.
While David Tennant’s casting as Professor Huyang in 2012 loosely links Doctor Who to Star Wars, we know that Doctor Who has had some influence on George Lucas because he says so himself. In a 2011 interview for the Director’s Guild of America between Christopher Nolan and George Lucas about the success of Star Wars, Lucas takes us back to a long time ago… in the mid-1970s when Star Wars was being filmed in England. During that time, the Doctor whom most folks would have been thinking about happened to be Tom Baker’s Fourth Doctor. Once upon a time, George Lucas didn’t know that Star Wars would be successful, and in the 2011 interview he shares his doubts about the presence of so many costumed aliens: “[the original Star Wars crew] thought it was a very bad version of Doctor Who.” By revealing his cultural awareness of other speculative fictions, Lucas demonstrates how ideas do meme from one story to another—intentionally or otherwise. Maybe the mobile planet as a battle station plot of the 1964 serial “The Dalek Invasion of Earth” isn’t part of the inspiration behind the Death Star. Maybe George Lucas is a fan of Doctor Who and respects its legacy. These aren’t the answers we’re looking for.
In 2022, Disney licensed the publication of Star Wars: Brotherhood, a novel about Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker set after Episode II: Attack of the Clones, which features an exciting origin for Professor Huyang. The canonical text reads, “Professor Huyang was so old that the ancient droid supposedly arrived at the Jedi Temple in a big blue box thousands of years ago before ever teaching lightsaber construction.” While the author, Mike Chen, may simply be having some fun connecting Doctor Who to Star Wars, Huyang’s TARDIS-like origin resonates because it builds off of the connections that fans of both stories have been making for years. The idea of previous incarnations before the First Doctor has circulated since the 1970s, and hadn’t been canonized until “The Timeless Children” premiered in March, 2020. Idea germs, like seeds, take time to grow into forms that would make the foundation of future stories.
Now, if we hold to the belief that Dave Filoni is the appropriate inheritor of George Lucas’ narrative legacy, we must first consider how much power Dave Filoni has at Disney. Does Dave Filoni approve everything that enters into (Disney) canon? No. The sequel trilogy diverged completely from what George Lucas envisioned. Lucas shares his sequel trilogy scaffolding in an interview published in Star Wars Archives. 1999-2005 (2020), detailing how Crime Lord Maul (whom Lucas resurrects in The Clone Wars) would be the main antagonist and Leia would be the third Chosen One, the Light-side Force-sensitive leader to parallel Emperor Palpatine. In 2014, after the Lucasfilm acquisition by Disney, Dave Filoni was not yet authorized by the company, the legal owner of Star Wars, to lead the production of the sequel narrative. Star Wars: Ahsoka, and its source material Heir to the Empire may fit more comfortably into Lucas’ vision of the galaxy after the Battle of Endor, with various warlords vying for power (as is the case in Filoni’s and Favreau’s series The Mandalorian). What’s perhaps most notable about Lucas’ vision for the sequel trilogy, as shared in the published interview, is that Lord Maul’s apprentice wasn’t created by Lucas.
In 2006, John Ostrander’s Dark Horse comic book series Star Wars: Legacy features a returned Sith Order after the Battle of Endor, including a woman named Darth Talon. In the Star Wars Archives. 1999-2005 interview, Lucas mentions Darth Talon by name. Lucas liked the idea of the female Sith so much that he adopted her from another creator to be featured in his unproduced sequel trilogy to function as a new Darth Vader. There’s a strong case to be made, here, about how stories blend into one another, and how memes may enter into canon.
After the Disney acquisition of Star Wars, Dave Filoni worked on a new animated series titled Star Wars Rebels, which also features a pivotal cameo from Doctor Who. On the “quiet world” of Atollan, Kanan Jarrus, Jedi Knight, meets the Bendu, an ancient Force-sensitive being voiced by Tom Baker, the Fourth Doctor himself. Much like the alien Doctor, the Bendu offers our young protagonist a new perspective on the universe that questions “what is good and what is evil.” The use of the Bendu, however, is an idea that Filoni inherited from Lucas. The Jedi-Bendu, widely released through the publication The Star Wars (based on the original 1974 rough draft), are memetic ancestors to the Jedi. The Jedi-Bendu were more Kurosawan than the Jedi that audiences were introduced to in 1977; more closely emulating samurai/ronin protagonists who fought, and won, using their rage. Beings who identify as Bendu also previously appeared in John Ohstrander’s and Jan Duursema’s graphic novel series Star Wars: Dawn of the Jedi. The Bendu, like the Doctors, ultimately walk solitary paths. Although I wonder if Ahsoka herself walks the path of the Bendu, she doesn’t need to be a Bendu in order to learn from their ways. Dave Filoni canonized the Bendu using the Fourth Doctor, Tom Baker, who was the star of Doctor Who when the first draft of Star Wars was written.
On July 6, 2017, Dave Filoni tweeted the story of Ahsoka Tano and the Bendu’s brief meeting (in a clip not voiced by Tom Baker) during Star Wars: Rebels. Since the Bendu walks in both ashla and bogan, the light and the dark, one might say that the character is a Hybrid of good and evil. With the Bendu’s Force sight, synthesized from the clarity afforded to those who see the light and the dark, he forewarns Ahsoka of her upcoming meeting with Darth Vader and the change she will endure from learning about her former master’s “death.” The ability to conjure visions of the future through Force-sight has been seen in Star Wars: Rebels, as Bokken Jedi Ezra Bridger partnered with Crime Lord Maul to synthesize the power of both Holocrons—Jedi and Sith, ashla and bogan—to see their own futures. Similarly in Doctor Who, during the mystifying ending to the 50th Anniversary, The Curator implies that Gallifrey survives the supposed death of the Time Lords, and that the world’s discovery will impact the Eleventh Doctor’s future.
During Lucas’ and Filoni’s run on Star Wars: The Clone Wars, Ahsoka learns that she needs to leave her people, the Jedi, in order to avert what she rightly felt that they were turning her into. Just as the Doctor left the repressing Time Lords to avoid becoming the Hybrid, both he and Ahsoka found it impossible to shake off their former identities—despite their shame. Ahsoka is still referred to as a Jedi, decades after her leaving the Order, by those who see her from the outside, just as the Doctor is ever still a Time Lord, despite surviving the traumas that they’ve inflicted upon him and his wish to be different.
In Star Wars: Ahsoka, Huyang advises the return of the Jedi. And yet, it’s imperative that the Jedi don’t return as they were before—as “prisoners of ashla,” or deniers of the dark. Family, a force that the Doctor would agree is “stronger than blood,” will hopefully make the post-Skywalker Saga Jedi stronger and kinder than the Temple Jedi who came before. Perhaps Ahsoka will choose to identify as a Bokken Jedi, “or perhaps it doesn’t matter either way.” Ahsoka can learn from Huyang without having to share the same identity as Huyang, just as she may learn from the Bendu.
What we, as viewers, stand to learn from these connections is that ideas descend from one another. The connectedness of these things harkens back to Lucas’ own spiritual intrigue regarding symbiosis. Whether by deliberate intention or by synchronicity, Doctor Who and Star Wars are linked. The answer to the question that is the article’s title may very well be no, but let’s imagine that the answer is yes. Let us celebrate all these permutations of ideas we love, that Ahsoka and the 60th Anniversary of Doctor Who are only months apart and that the energy will be shared by many millions of people. Ultimately, these many connections may not necessarily be enough to define a directly-linked financial relationship between Star Wars: Ahsoka and the Doctor Who 60th Anniversary that would constitute an empirical “yes” to this article’s titular question (at least not until new episodes of Doctor Who start streaming on Disney+). Nevertheless, these stories are connected through our connections with them, and as Obi-Wan Kenobi has said, “What happens to one of you will affect the other. You must understand this.”
