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On his own again, the Doctor runs into the intergalactic starliner Titanic, and soon finds himself in a disaster movie of epic proportions.

Plot Points – Aboard the starship Titanic, the Doctor meets a pretty waitress named Astrid (pop singer Kylie Minogue), just before missiles disable the ship and send it careening towards Earth, where, if it crashes, it will destroy all life on the planet. The Doctor and a few survivors must make their way through the ruined ship, while trying to avoid the angel-like service robots, who are suddenly trying to kill all the surviving passengers.

Doctor Who? – Once again the Doctor is convinced his tuxedo is bad luck. See “The Lazarus Experiment” and “Rise of the Cybermen.” No doubt about it, this Doctor is far more obsessed with his appearance than any previous incarnation, except possibly for Pertwee. Case in point: the hair. See all of Series Three.

Too Cool – Doctor Who has rarely been this spectacular. The physical effects and CG are all quite exemplary.

Dumb Stuff – The bow of the Titanic that busts into the TARDIS doesn’t quite match the CGI model shown later on. Also, when Astrid has been partially re-incorporated by the teleporter at the end, Mr. Cutter tells the Doctor, “She just atoms.” Well, duh. We’re all “just atoms,” dude. Oh, and the power dive over London and the Queen in her fuzzy slippers… puh-leeze.

The Adams Connection – Though not directly credited, the story is at least partially based on the 1998 computer game Starship Titanic, created by the late, great writer Douglas Adams. In the game, the ship crashes into Earth, and the player must try to assist by interacting with the ship’s computer. Former Python Terry Jones, who also lends voice talent to the game, wrote a novel based on the game confusingly titled Douglas Adams’s Starship Titanic. At one point, the Doctor is calling out numbers trying to find the right security protocol for the robots, one of them is “42,” which is, of course, the answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything.

Classic Who – Let’s break down the Doctor’s little speech point by point. “I’m a Time Lord.” Check. “I’m from the planet Gallifrey.” See “The Runaway Bride.” Reference to “the constellation of Kasterborous” was created by Robert Holmes and first heard in the classic Tom Baker serial “Pyramids of Mars.” “I’m 903 years old.” RTD’s aging of the Doctor has always been controversial for Classic Who fans. The Doctor claimed to already be 953 in Sylvester McCoy’s debut “Time and the Rani,” and by all accounts a buttload of time has passed between this story and “Rose,” where the Doctor claimed to be 900. Tennant claiming to be 903 indicates that only three years of “real time” has passed since “Rose,” which, while not impossible, is needlessly restrictive. Other stuff: The service robots are reminiscent of the droids from the classic “Robots of Death” story. And I don’t know if it will air on Sci-Fi, but the original broadcast was dedicated to Doctor Who’s very first producer, Verity Lambert, who passed away just a day shy of the show’s 44th anniversary, and just over a month before this episode originally aired. Also, not Classic Who, but a reasonable facsimile: the teleportation bracelets and the robot servants prefacing every speech with the word “information” are direct references to the highly popular British space opera Blakes 7.

Lost in Translation – Kylie Minogue is such a huge star in the UK that this was considered the biggest “stunt casting” coup in the show’s history. Personally, I don’t get it, but then I’m an old fogy.  At 13.31 million viewers on its original airing (Christmas Day, 2007), this is the second-highest rated complete story in Doctor Who’s history, outstripped only by the last three episodes of the Tom Baker serial “City of Death” (aired during an ITV strike in the pre-cable days when there were few alternatives), which peaked at 16.1 for episode four.

Final Answer – Well… it starts off okay. For about twenty minutes it seems like it might just be a rip-roaring good time. But ol’ Russell T. Davies just can’t help being his old self. A half-baked cyborg = homosexual metaphor ("You can even get married") seems very perfunctory and knee-jerk, is not used to any meaningful effect, and is in fact thrown away by the final scenes. The fat people (Foon and Morvin) and the weird people (Bannakaffalatta, a cyborg) die, while the normal/pretty people survive – even Astrid, who gets turned into Tinkerbell, continuing the dreadful fairy tale motif Russell trotted out in “Last of the Time Lords.” There’s more tiresome Doctor-as-God imagery: walking in front of a fiery explosion and being carried heavenward by angels. Gosh, kids, in the old days, the Doctor was just a bluff old Time Lord who went around fighting monsters and saving planets – he didn’t need to be deified in every other episode. And get a load of the Doc telling Mr. Copper that “I travel alone” when what he really means is, “I only travel with hot babes, old man.” Plus, “Voyage of the Damned” is just damned noisy. And loud. On the plus side, Kylie makes for a very charming almost-companion, and the special effects and sets are some of the best seen in the series thus far. Mr. Copper – a professor of “Earthonomics”— having all his facts wrong is a funny touch (the ship is named Titanic because it’s “the most famous ship on Earth”), and the Doctor’s line, “Only Britain is Great” is just the kind of wit this series needs, but rarely displays. And it’s always good to see the wonderful Geoffrey Palmer in anything. “Voyage” is by far the best of the three Christmas specials, but that’s rather like saying it’s the least itchy scab on your knee. Sound and fury signifying very little, but rather pretty to look at. So: NuWho in a nutshell then.

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