"I'm the Doctor. I'm a Time Lord. I'm from the planet Gallifrey in the constellation of Kasterborous. I'm nine hundred and three years old, and I'm the man who's gonna save your lives and all six billion people on the planet below. You got a problem with that?"
Episode #193: Voyage of the Damned.
Companions: 10th Doctor.
Air Date: 25th December 2007.
A spacecraft set on an apocalyptic collision course with Earth, a host of killer robot angels and an evil severed-headed mastermind — it's just another Christmas for the Tenth Doctor.
Voyage of the Damned was the Christmas special for 2007. While the Christmas is the setting for the episode the story is more relevant to old disaster movies like The Poseidon Adventure. This is good for me as quite frankly I am sick to death of the Christmas special's being so firmly entrenched in Christmas. How many times can the Doctor be caught in seasonal adventures?
So, the story is simple. After leaving Martha being and a brief encounter with his 5th self, the Doctor's TARDIS is struck by a spaceship designed to look like an old Earth cruise line and appropriately called the Titanic. Things start to go wrong when the Captain turns off the shields and she is struck by flaming meteorites and starts to go down. The Doctor and a handful of survivors must try to save the ship, protect the Earth and find out the cause of all what has happened.
The story to Voyage of the Damned is really rather good. I like the old 60's and 70's disaster movies so it is right up my street. The effects look good especially the design of the star ship Titanic. In these elements the BBC were spot on. Shame that sometimes the same level of detail isn't applied to the regular episodes.
The special guest star is no other than Austrialia's queen of pop, Kylie Minogue! That must have been quite the coup to get someone as famous as her to make an appearance, even on such a popular show. She plays a doomed waitress named Astrid Peth who might have been a companion had she not given her life to save the Doctor.
We also get a brief meeting with Wilfred Mott before his introduction in the following season. I don't know whether it was the intention at this time to add his character to show or not however. Wilfred is played by veteran actor Bernard Cribbins who already has a connection to Doctor Who as he played a companion in the cinematic adaptation of Dalek Invasion of Earth.
If I like this episode so much what lets it down and reduces it to a average 3 rating? Well, to start with I dislike the elements involving the Queen. As the ship plummets to its doom over London, it is heading straight for Buckingham Palace and the Doctor rings up the Queen to have her evacuate. As he saves the ship she is seen waving and calling out "thank you Doctor". It is played for laughs but it feels so out of touch and it spoils the ending. There is also an scene where the Doctor snaps his fingers, summons a pair of robot angels and has them carry him aloft. The scene once more smacks of the godhood element that has been relevant of late. In fact that scene received many complaints from the Catholic viewers because of the connotation. It is the little elements that spoil an otherwise good episode. If they had been handled better or not included at all I would have been more generous with the rating.
Even so, Voyage of the Damned is one of the best Christmas specials so far.
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