I saw this video about an American Doctor Who series a while ago and never paid it much mind. After having read several Doctor Who timelines, I wondered if anything approaching this list of American Doctors could be realistic. It is based off this buzzfeed listicle;
https://www.buzzfeed.com/newu456/what-if-doctor-who-was-american-5pxx?utm_term=.sn4kppnYP#.brRYZZxNX
In order and with their supposed dates, they are;
1. Meredith Burgess (1963-1966)
2. Dick Van Dyke (1966-1970)
3. Vincent Price (1970-1974)
4. Gene Wilder (1974-1981)
5. Kyle MacLachlan (1981-1984)
6. Christopher Walken (1984-1986)
7. Tony Shalboub (1987-1989)
8. Jeff Goldblum (1996)
9. Nicholas Cage (2005)
10. Sam Rockwell (2005-2010)
11. Donald Glover (2010-2013)
12. Bryan Cranston (Present)
Also Harrison Ford as the War Doctor.
So first things first, as have been portrayed, it can be done so that America has its own version of Doctor Who - The Yankee Doctor for example or have Sydney Newman bring it to the states instead of BBC.
As seen on the list, it is clear that they did a lot of historical parallelism with each of the actors roughly corresponding to an OTL actor and serving the exact amount of time.
As for the actors, Gene Wilder doing seven years is never going to happen - which is a shame because he would make a fantastic doctor. Nicholas Cage, Harrison Ford and Christopher Walken are also probably not going to actually make the list.
Meredith Burgess - maybe. Dick Van Dyke, if for some reason his movie career got derailed after his own show ended could possibly do Doctor Who. Kyle MacLachlan would be incredibly young and a complete unknown at the time this list gave him so while later in his career, he could well play the Doctor, I'm not sure if he would play him so young.
Now Tony Shalboub is one of the actors I could actually well see playing the Doctor at the time this list gave him. He is around in the same direction. Donald Glover is a hard maybe - he has his rap career to think about and he might reject it based on that.
Bryan Cranston and Sam Rockwell (he didn't have much going on at that time was truly significant as I can see) are maybes if they are a huge fan of Doctor Who in this world.
Thoughts?