During the "Classic" era (1963-89), Doctor Who did not seem to celebrate Christmas, but since the show's revival in 2005 Christmas specials, of which this was the third, have been a noted feature. (The doctor's earlier lack of interest in the festival seems curious, given that we learn here that he was present in person at certain events in Bethlehem 2000-odd years ago and even took the last room at the inn). "Voyage of the Damned" borrows its title from a 1976 movie about a shipload of Jewish refugees from Nazism and its plot is an equally obvious piece of borrowing from various seagoing disaster movies, notably "Titanic" and "The Poseidon Adventure".
The Doctor finds himself on board a luxury space liner called the "Titanic" which has not only been named after the notorious ocean liner of that name but has also been designed to resemble it. Aboard the ship are people from the planet Sto who are on a cruise to observe the Earth, which they regard as a primitive culture. When you call a fictitious ship "Titanic", of course, you know exactly what is going to happen to it, and it is not long before the ship is severely damaged in a collision. Even a writer as resourceful as Russell T Davies could not conjure up an iceberg in outer space, however, so in this case the damage is done by a meteor. The Doctor and an assorted group of survivors have to fight to save the stricken ship and to prevent it from plummeting towards the Earth. The Doctor also has to find out who was responsible for sabotaging the ship, and why. (And it was indeed sabotage. Purely natural disasters are rare in "Doctor Who"; whenever disaster threatens it has normally been caused, either deliberately or inadvertently, by the acts of some conscious being or group of beings).
This being a Christmas special, there have to be some specifically festive features. It is Christmas down on Earth, and Mr. Copper, the ship's resident historian, is lecturing the passengers upon the salient features of the festival. (Although the passengers are supposed to be from an alien planet, they all, apart from the cyborg Bannakaffalatta, look recognisably human and even bear obvious Earthling names. Besides Mr Copper there are also characters named Max, Astrid, Captain Hardaker and Alonso Frame). Another, rather odd, Christmas-themed detail is the Heavenly Host, robots in the form of angels, who are supposed to assist the passengers and crew but who after the collision run amuck and start killing anyone they see. (The idea of killer robots struck me as a direct plagiarism from the Fourth Doctor adventure, "The Robots of Death", where the robots bore a certain resemblance to those featured here).
Kylie Minogue has had such a long and successful career as a singer that younger viewers might not realise that she actually started off in showbiz as an actress in the Australian soap opera "Neighbours". "Voyage of the Damned" represents one of her occasional forays back into acting; she plays Astrid Peth, a waitress who becomes one of the Doctor's allies. Kylie was never a great actress- she was probably well-advised to concentrate on her singing more than her acting- but here she does enough to make Astrid a sweet and likable heroine. (There has been speculation that Astrid was given her name because it is an anagram of TARDIS).
In the original script for the show, Astrid survives, but in the version that was actually broadcast she is killed off, apparently because Davies preferred Kylie in a one-off role rather than as a regular companion. For a programme that was originally broadcast during the season of goodwill, there is a surprisingly high death toll among the more sympathetic characters, which means that the tone can at times be rather mawkishly sentimental. This sentimentality does not always sit well with the episode's more comic interludes, generally centred upon Mr Copper, whose knowledge of the Earth and the customs of its inhabitants turns out to be ludicrously inadequate- we learn, for example, that the British worship a god named Santa and his wife Mary. Nevertheless, David Tennant's rather quirky Tenth Doctor personality works well enough to hold the whole thing together and make it enjoyable Christmas viewing. I for one enjoyed it when I first saw it with my then teenaged niece and nephew on 25 December 2007, and they certainly did too.
The Doctor finds himself on board a luxury space liner called the "Titanic" which has not only been named after the notorious ocean liner of that name but has also been designed to resemble it. Aboard the ship are people from the planet Sto who are on a cruise to observe the Earth, which they regard as a primitive culture. When you call a fictitious ship "Titanic", of course, you know exactly what is going to happen to it, and it is not long before the ship is severely damaged in a collision. Even a writer as resourceful as Russell T Davies could not conjure up an iceberg in outer space, however, so in this case the damage is done by a meteor. The Doctor and an assorted group of survivors have to fight to save the stricken ship and to prevent it from plummeting towards the Earth. The Doctor also has to find out who was responsible for sabotaging the ship, and why. (And it was indeed sabotage. Purely natural disasters are rare in "Doctor Who"; whenever disaster threatens it has normally been caused, either deliberately or inadvertently, by the acts of some conscious being or group of beings).
This being a Christmas special, there have to be some specifically festive features. It is Christmas down on Earth, and Mr. Copper, the ship's resident historian, is lecturing the passengers upon the salient features of the festival. (Although the passengers are supposed to be from an alien planet, they all, apart from the cyborg Bannakaffalatta, look recognisably human and even bear obvious Earthling names. Besides Mr Copper there are also characters named Max, Astrid, Captain Hardaker and Alonso Frame). Another, rather odd, Christmas-themed detail is the Heavenly Host, robots in the form of angels, who are supposed to assist the passengers and crew but who after the collision run amuck and start killing anyone they see. (The idea of killer robots struck me as a direct plagiarism from the Fourth Doctor adventure, "The Robots of Death", where the robots bore a certain resemblance to those featured here).
Kylie Minogue has had such a long and successful career as a singer that younger viewers might not realise that she actually started off in showbiz as an actress in the Australian soap opera "Neighbours". "Voyage of the Damned" represents one of her occasional forays back into acting; she plays Astrid Peth, a waitress who becomes one of the Doctor's allies. Kylie was never a great actress- she was probably well-advised to concentrate on her singing more than her acting- but here she does enough to make Astrid a sweet and likable heroine. (There has been speculation that Astrid was given her name because it is an anagram of TARDIS).
In the original script for the show, Astrid survives, but in the version that was actually broadcast she is killed off, apparently because Davies preferred Kylie in a one-off role rather than as a regular companion. For a programme that was originally broadcast during the season of goodwill, there is a surprisingly high death toll among the more sympathetic characters, which means that the tone can at times be rather mawkishly sentimental. This sentimentality does not always sit well with the episode's more comic interludes, generally centred upon Mr Copper, whose knowledge of the Earth and the customs of its inhabitants turns out to be ludicrously inadequate- we learn, for example, that the British worship a god named Santa and his wife Mary. Nevertheless, David Tennant's rather quirky Tenth Doctor personality works well enough to hold the whole thing together and make it enjoyable Christmas viewing. I for one enjoyed it when I first saw it with my then teenaged niece and nephew on 25 December 2007, and they certainly did too.