It would have been bad. So bad. Really, really bad.

Michael Jackson in Doctor Who? Well, it seems like this was closer to happening than you might think.

Look, scientists have long speculated that we could be living in just one universe out of a multitude. Somewhere out there is a reality where JFK survived the assassination attempt. Where Star Trek was canceled after a single season, and I never heard from them again. There’s one where Battlefield Earth was a colossal box office hit that swept the Academy Awards.

We can be particularly thankful that we didn’t end up in that latter timeline, but I’d take it any day over living in the universe where Michael Jackson played the Doctor in a big-screen Doctor Who movie. Which, by the way, is a totally real thing that could have happened.

When Matt Smith was announcing he’d be wrapping up his run as the Time Lord, there was lots of speculation as to who will inherit the TARDIS keys next.

Whoever winds up nabbing the iconic role, I think it’s safe to assume they’ll be a considerably better choice than Michael Jackson.

Hell, even Michael Jackson right now — the dead one — would be a better choice for the role than any of his living incarnations. But The Times reported that Paramount Pictures was keen to have the King of Pop as their Doctor when they were trying to put together a big-screen movie adaptation of Doctor Who back in the ‘80s. He was their first choice for the role.

Here and we thought David Yates had the market cornered on insane Doctor Who movie schemes.

As the Times explains, the news actually comes from the book, Charles Norton’s Now on the Big Screen: The Unofficial and Unauthorised Guide to Doctor Who at the Cinema.

According to Norton, Paramount wanted to make a Who movie in 1988, and they thought Michael Jackson was a perfect candidate to play the Time Lord, presumably because it was the 1980s and everybody was on drugs.