Every Doctor Who Multi-Doctor Adventure, Ranked — Which Team-Up Reigns Supreme?

Doctor Who has a habit of chucking logic out the nearest TARDIS door whenever it wants to celebrate itself, and multi-Doctor team-ups are the most glorious example. They started in 1973 for the 10th anniversary and have kept popping up ever since, usually bending the rules of time so hard the Time Lords have to step in with some hand-wavy Gallifreyan tech. Some of these specials are stone-cold classics. Some... less so. Here’s how I’m counting them, and how they stack up.

What actually counts here

I’m talking proper multi-Doctor stories in the main TV series. Not quick cameos (the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it kind don’t count), not regeneration tricks like the bigeneration in The Giggle, and not the excellent Big Finish audio mash-ups. I’m also leaving out the Time Crash Children in Need short with David Tennant and Peter Davison. With that out of the way, let’s rank.

1. 5. The Two Doctors (1985)

   Most multi-Doctor adventures are anniversary parties. This one wasn’t. The BBC ordered it because the last crossover did well. Colin Baker’s Sixth Doctor teams with Patrick Troughton’s Second in a story that is, no joke, an allegory for the meat industry. It’s also weirdly self-critical about nostalgia while being built entirely on nostalgia, which gives the whole thing a sour aftertaste.

   Robert Holmes’ script tilts cynical, and it does the Second Doctor no favors. When he finds out experiments are being run on the Androgums, he doesn’t exactly rise to their defense; he looks down on them as unchangeable 'barbarians.' Then there’s this line:

   "You give a monkey control of its environment, it’ll fill the world with bananas."

   Pair that with the Sixth Doctor’s already prickly, superiority-first era (which too often played like he was negging his own companions), and you end up with two incarnations who feel oddly unlikable. Despite the star power and potential, this one’s widely seen as a misfire.

2. 4. Twice Upon a Time (2017)

   The 2017 Christmas Special is a sentimental curtain call for Steven Moffat and Peter Capaldi, with plenty to love even if it stumbles. Moffat was ready to finish with Season 10, but Chris Chibnall didn’t want to start his run on a special, so Moffat stuck around to keep the Christmas slot alive. The hook comes from a reportedly cut idea from The Tenth Planet that the Doctor once tried to resist regeneration. So Capaldi’s Twelfth collides with the First at the same emotional crossroads.

   David Bradley’s First Doctor is hilariously baffled by modern Who tropes, and the back-and-forth with Capaldi is great. Both end up choosing life: the First allows the change, convinced his future is in good hands; the Twelfth finds his optimism again and regenerates too. There’s reverence all over this thing, including a sweet subplot with the Brigadier’s grandfather (a nod to Nicholas Courtney’s beloved character).

   The caveat: using the First Doctor’s old-fashioned attitudes to comment on social change (casual misogyny, a whiff of homophobia) is a risky swing. You can see what Moffat’s aiming for, but making the Doctor the vessel for that lesson doesn’t entirely land.

3. 3. The Three Doctors (1973)

   The original crossover teamed William Hartnell, Patrick Troughton, and Jon Pertwee for the 10th anniversary, with Bob Baker and Dave Martin crafting a premise where the Time Lords have to engineer the team-up. The stakes are huge: Omega, a legendary Time Lord solar engineer trapped in an antimatter universe, plans to return by leeching all the power from Gallifrey. The Time Lords can only safely reach the Doctor(s), who aren’t stuck on Gallifrey, so the house call begins.

   Pertwee and Troughton spark immediately, their shared 'I’m the smartest person here' energy making for delightful bickering. Hartnell was ill, so he’s used sparingly, appearing in a 'time eddy' to advise the others — and both treat him with due deference. The Brig is mostly comic relief, which some fans side-eye, but it works here.

   The real kicker: this isn’t just spectacle. It ends the long-running Pertwee-era exile arc, with the Time Lords finally lifting the Doctor’s banishment from Earth. It also plants a seed that will keep growing through the Pertwee and Tom Baker years — the Time Lords using the Doctor as their reluctant pawn.

4. 2. The Five Doctors (1983)

   For the 20th anniversary, Terrance Dicks delivered a lean, feature-length romp with Jon Pertwee’s Third, Patrick Troughton’s Second, and Peter Davison’s Fifth. Richard Hurndall steps in for the late William Hartnell as the First, and Tom Baker appears via footage from the unfinished Shada (he declined to return in person). The Doctors are yanked to the Death Zone on Gallifrey — a nasty remnant of the Dark Times — to survive a gauntlet of classic foes while unraveling the real threat: Gallifreyan president Borusa (Phillip Latham), who thinks immortality sits at the heart of the Zone.

   This is the crowd-pleaser — nostalgia-forward but tight, faster on its feet than The Three Doctors, and anchored to the Fifth Doctor’s stakes in a clever way: as other incarnations are plucked into danger, he literally feels himself diminishing. If any of them dies, parts of his timeline could vanish. The twist that he becomes President at the end is promptly ignored by the show, but as a one-night event, it hums.

   And yes, it parades enough former companions and villains to feel like a genuine 20th birthday party. Short of convincing Tom Baker to fully come back, it’s hard to imagine a cleaner version of this idea.

5. 1. The Day of the Doctor (2013)

   The 50th anniversary special went full blockbuster: a worldwide theatrical simulcast, Matt Smith ’s Eleventh and David Tennant’s Tenth bouncing off each other, and John Hurt unveiled as a previously unseen 'War Doctor.' Moffat finally opens the door to the Time War — long teased since 2005 — and reframes the ending we thought we knew about Gallifrey’s destruction.

   The vibe is pure joy. Tennant and Smith are a riot, Hurt gives a soulful turn as a battle-scarred Doctor on the brink of giving up on his own people, and Jenna Coleman’s Clara deftly plays against all three. Billie Piper returns in a clever way as the interface of The Moment, the ancient Gallifreyan weapon with a conscience. And yes, Tom Baker pops in for a perfect final cameo.

   It also flips the series’ status quo in a huge way by restoring Gallifrey’s hope. We even get a split-second of Peter Capaldi’s 'attack eyebrows' — effectively his first on-screen moment as the Twelfth Doctor — that brought theaters to life. It’s hard to imagine the show ever mounting a celebration this big again, and it earns the top spot without breaking a sweat.

Agree? Disagree? Tell me your personal top multi-Doctor pick — and why I’m wrong, obviously.