Behind the Sofa - The Collaborative Doctor Who Blog

Frankly, I Don't Give a Damned

Voyage of the Damned

It's like old times.  I'm full of cold, dosed-up on Day Nurse and close to hallucinating.  And so here is my Voyage of the Damned review.

It takes a strong will and an angry mind to apply criticism to Voyage of the Damned.  The show itself was so lightweight, fluffy and sloppily written that the overwhelming instinct is to shrug and say “Why bother?”.  And since Neil vented his spleen so entertainingly and accurately a few days ago, there's even less of an impetus to waste electrons on a similarly-minded review.  Worst of all there are the majority of massed denizens of the Doctor Who Forum standing on the sidelines waiting to wag their collective finger while saying “Well eight billion people watched it, and it had an AI of 2 x 10¹⁰ so by all means have your crazy opinion but don't for a moment think it actually counts for anything”.

I felt more of an emotional attachment with Mario in 'Super Mario Galaxy' then I did with either Astrid or Alonso the Chimp Boy

So I'll keep it brief.  I liked the first 30 minutes or so, and I loved Clive Swift.  Judging by their on-screen chemistry I imagine that David Tennant was distraught to learn that Mr Copper won't be continuing as a new companion.  As a disaster movie fan, I loved all The Poseidon Adventure stuff, but I didn't really see it in terms of an Eric Saward “dark” massacre as disaster movies are just another Christmas staple.  Deaths in such films are just not the same as deaths in anything else, and as most of this story looked like a Playstation3 game then I doubt that the kids watching were particularly disturbed either.  Certainly I felt more of an emotional attachment with Mario in 'Super Mario Galaxy' then I did with either Astrid or Alonso the Chimp Boy.

Phil Collinson is clearly a man at the end of his tether as he was the only person on the planet who didn't realise that Max Capricorn was going to be the villain.

The last forty minutes have already been demolished by better men than I, but something so unsound only needs a tap with a hammer to bring it crashing down.  What is really odd is how much of this was also revealed by the BBC audio commentary on the programme. It may not seem like it sometimes, but I actually have a boundless admiration for Russell T Davies, Julie Gardner and Phil Collinson and their achievement in bringing back Doctor Who. But my word they sound tired.  Davies commented on how pained he felt when he read Blink and realised it featured angels, and who wouldn't sympathise with his eventual rationalization about the hosts “They've got nothing in common with weeping angels”.  Of course they haven't.  Apart from being angels.  Phil Collinson is clearly a man at the end of his tether as he was the only person on the planet who didn't realise that Max Capricorn was going to be the villain. Even Davies sounded stunned by that.     Later on both Gardner and Collinson murmured supportively as Davies explained his technique for rescuing his original ending “He's got to be a cyborg and she's got to attack him in a fork-lift truck”.  Somebody get them a holiday!

camp frothy nonsense

So it's all about context in the end. A creative decision has been made: “Christmas specials must be about spectacle” and in stretching to achieve that some of the holes show through.  The script looked rushed and didn't make sense a lot of the time, and some of the effects (especially Astrid and Max toppling into the engines) looked poor.  Apparently the BBC wanted an extra ten minutes, whereas the whole thing would have been better over fifty minutes at most.  But in many ways (despite Davies's weird messiah stuff – I'm not even going there as doubtless we'll be wading through it in series 4) Voyage of the Damned was still an achievement.  When it worked it was engaging, funny and spectacular which made its many lowpoints all that much lower.  I'd still rather have the nation watching Doctor Who on Christmas night than Holby “It's a Wonderful Life” City, but I suspect, a la Ricky Gervais, a lot of the nation is saying “Did you see Doctor Who on Christmas Day?  Just what we wanted – a bit of camp frothy nonsense.”  And as between Christmas 2008 and Christmas/New Year 2009/10 we'll only be getting specials, I do hope that they aren't all in the vein of Voyage of the Damned as that'll mean for a whole year Doctor Who really will be nothing but camp frothy nonsense.

Now where's that Day Nurse?  None left. OK – pass the Vosene, that'll do.

Kylie in a Forklift

The Voyage of the Damned, or The Christmas Inferno, or Kylie in a Forklift

Here are some of my thoughts on the 2007 Christmas special Voyage of Damned.

It’s The Poseiden Adventure meets Enlightenment meets Robots of Death meets Douglas Adams’ Starship Titanic.

It was completely, totally and utterly bonkers, but in a good way. It is unlikely that you will see anything quite like it ever again. You may never want to see anything quite like it ever again but I quite liked it. I mean where else will you see Kylie Minogue dressed in a waitress outfit driving a forklift truck? Only in something as bonkers as this, or perhaps in an alternative history where Kylie’s career is on the skids, and she is forced to appear in adverts for B&Q or Homebase.

The new theme. I am not sure what to think of the new version of theme. It’s the same theme, but it just sounds like Murray Gold has let Buckethead into his studio and let him jam along with the theme. I didn’t mind it after I had watched it again and, boy, it sounds good loud! It’s the heavy metal version of the theme! Still it could have been worse Murray Gold could have written some lyrics to the theme and had Kylie sing them. Imagine the furore if that had happened!

The end credits were a bit quick, but with these new fangled videos and dvd’s they have today with a pause function they can easily be read after the event. It could have been worse they could have squeezed them into a little box in the corner of the screen thus not even giving you the chance to pause them to read them. I wouldn’t imagine that they would be any quicker when they are released on DVD either.

There was some brilliant work from the Mill on display here most notably the external shot of the Titanic drifting through space and the vastness of the Titanic’s engines. That really did give a sense of the scale of ship.

I thought that Kylie did a good job in her rather limited role of Astrid. She was sweet and looks damn good for a woman nearing 40. She was almost perfect companion material for the old series: humanoid but not human, no friends or family, actually wanted to travel with the Doctor, even though she just wanted to jump his bones, which is not traditional companion behaviour but is par for the course in this new version of the show and it was quite sad that her character died. Well she sort of died anyway. She might as well have died but perhaps they felt that it would be slightly too grim to actually kill her off properly. I am not sure.

I always thought that no matter who Kylie played she was never going to be any more than a single story companion (although I thought the same of Donna and look who is returning in series four so what do I know!)I have no doubt though that there will be an Astrid 5” figure very soon. It will be the only one to be a scale model of the actress herself!

Banakaffalata was another interesting character and another great part for the mighty Jimmy Vee. Just like the Moxx of Balhoon he might have been a baddie but turned out to be nothing of the sort and he also died. I have no doubt that there will be a figure of him out very soon as well.

The last ten minutes did seem a little bit tacked on and the sudden change from the grimness of the previous 45 minutes or so to the high camp comedy of the last ten minutes did seem to jar a little bit it was almost as if they didn’t fancy ending it on such a grim note at Christmas (as with Astrid), but look at the average Christmas episodes of Eastenders. For me they could have cut from the bit before the Doctor flew with the angels to the last scenes on board of the Titanic before the Doctor and Mr Copper went back to Earth and it would have made it a little bit tighter as I am sure the silliness of the last ten minutes was not necessary.

The final scene between the Doctor and Mr Copper was a nice little scene. I liked the joke about the snow not being real snow. As we all know it never snows on Christmas day and hasn’t for some years now. At least Mr Copper will be able to find a room for the night, as even though its Christmas the whole population of England has buggered off except for the Queen and Bernard Cribbins

On the subject of Bernard Cribbins wasn’t he good in his little role of Wilfrid Mott, the newspaper seller. I never noticed till it was pointed out to me that he had a U.N.I.T. insignia badge on his bobble hat perhaps he is the Brigadier fallen on hard times and under some sort of witness protection programme? We know that he is coming back in the new series, and the fact that U.N.I.T. are set to return so perhaps that is not as insignificant as it might appear to be at first.

Geoffrey Palmer was another one who had a nice cameo in the special although his character wasn’t particularly sympathetic was he? Even though he wasn’t able to bring himself to kill young Midshipman Frame, he wasn’t exactly bothered about either the rest of the ships crew, passengers and the population of the Earth.

The direction by James Strong was very good and it certainly looked very cinematic, which all of the episodes he had directed, so far, have done.

The Heavenly Hosts were a quite good invention for this episode far better than the robot santas that we have had in the previous two Christmas specials. I am, though, a little disappointed that they were not in face Axons. They were however a lot like the Voc Robots in Robots of Death (even down to one of them having their hand trapped in a door) but without the personality that they managed to muster.

Clive Swift was also very good in his role as Mr Copper and I just loved his little speeches about the Christmas customs on the planet Earth. Great stuff.

Wasn’t Rickston Slade the single most unpleasant character ever to be seen in the new series? Killing him off wouldn’t have been at all dramatic as most people would have been happy if he were one of the first ones to die!

I think that the main problem with the story is the fact that you don’t really care if any of the characters in the story live or die. Apart from Rickston who is the only character you actually want to die the others don’t really register as anything other than ciphers who we don’t really know enough about to care.

If Astrid had been played by anyone other than Kylie I don’t think that her demise would have been that noteworthy either because her character is rather one-note but perfect for an original series companion as I noted earlier.

The characters of Morvin and Foon who are reasonable comic relief characters in the story who, only have the fact that Rickston is being mean to them because they are both big people, as a reason that you want them to survive rather than him.

I enjoyed Voyage of the Damned. It wasn’t perfect, but then what is?; it wouldn’t win any awards for originality, but then neither did the entire Hinchliffe era. It won’t stand up to close scrutiny, granted, but I found it enjoyable which, at the end of the day, is the one thing that is really important.

In fact I would say that it was the most enjoyable of the three Christmas specials to date.

Diddly dum, diddly dum, diddly dum...Oooooo-eeeee-oooo

The new series of Who has gone from strength-to-strength and 2007 will take some beating. The final two episodes were somewhat questionable but the rest was truly strong drama. Blink (personally) was amongst the best bit of television drama seen in recent years. Charlie Brooke (for those familiar with the wonderful Screenwipe) agreed with this. It was when I was watching Smith & Jones that the bile and disgust I had for all things New-Who fell away and I finally got what it was all about and I could now, for the first time, enjoy both the old and the new. Boy was that a wonderful feeling! I got what it was about and now and I could enjoy MY show once more. Despite all that I wasn't too keen on The Sound of Drums and The Last of the Time lords nevertheless I was sad to see yet another series go by and now the anticipation of next year quickly hit home. Thank goodness for the Christmas Special: it takes some of the pain away.

Well...it was decent. The Runaway Bride was a great deal better but this was OK. Nothing really to complain about other than the really stupid stuff including Elizabeth II. I feel that the plot could have been better: just because it is Christmas does not mean we cannot deal with heavier plot lines. 1984 saw Yes, Minister have its own Christmas special and apparently Eastenders (the soap that followed the broadcast of Voyage of the Damned) gained large viewing figures (and that was dealing with some bleak having an affair with my step-daughter plot). However, it was bleak in the amount of characters that got killed on and off screen. Something that I rather enjoyed, it was nice for a family-viewing programme to cover how crap Christmas can be which is something most families will know (hell, I've been through my fair share of really shit Christmas days).

Being serious for a moment, I wonder if there is anything else that should be considered really bleak about this episode and wasn't mentioned on screen but was supposed to be subtle level for those who know that Voyage of the Damned is a movie from 1976 which deals with the true events of Jewish people escaping Nazi Germany in 1939 for a life in Cuba. The government of Cuba and later, America reject them and they are forced to return to Europe. The passengers decide to jump into the sea rather than return to Germany. If this is indeed the case then this gives the passengers and the plot greater depth. Of course you can look into these things too much and the tile is probably just a lack of imagination.

Anyway, the characters were dealt with in a wonderful manner both in terms of how they were written and performed. It was nice to see the miser get to live simply for the wonderful moment: if we could decide who would live and who would die, that would make us monster (excuse the paraphrasing). There were also nice kisses to the past, mainly in regard to The Robots of Death. I also found the mixed up meaning of Christmas and Mankind's history rather funny and I enjoyed that. So, there were things to enjoy with this episode and as such it can be regarded as a good episode.

However, some moments were rather bad. I was a big niggled that this didn't really continue from Time-Crash. Anyway, it is getting on my nerves the amount of times that R.T.D. feels duty bound to keep involving Earth being in mortal danger. I know this may seem hypocritical because I do think that Pertwee's time as the Doctor was bloody brilliant but for some reason, there is something about it this time round that makes it feel superfluous. Surely it would have been more than enough just to involve all in the space-liner being in mortal danger. The characters were fleshed out in a wonderful way (both in writing and acting) that we can easily identify with them in some way and as such feel for them...as well as it being Christmas! We don't want anyone to be murdered let alone in this season of thanksgiving and stuff.

Also, as I've mentioned before, that stuff with the Queen was just stupid and despite its intentions, wasn't funny. Another thing that grated is/was the religious significance that R.T.D is giving the Doctor. He did it in The Last of the Timelords and he has done it here again. Why? Why should we think that the Doctor is Jesus? Is it not enough that we think of him as a hero without having him endowed with more power. It was OK in Battlefield for the Doctor to be Merlin, mainly because Merlin is a fictitious character and it is also clever (well, I think it is). Yet, this is not. If you think this is because I think that the Doctor and religion should be kept apart then you are right. If you are one of those who will be disagreeing with me, then get a grip! Are you seriously trying to tell me that that Doctor should be hinted at as being the Son of God (the Bible says Son of Man, but that is a debate for somewhere else) as well as God--or that he is a prophet? Ridiculous! R.T.D. maybe an Atheist but...well, let me put it like this: if it were not for Jesus you wouldn't have the chance for a Christmas special!

Also, I felt that turning Kylie into that Blue-dust stuff ruined her sacrifice. It was a good moment when the Doctor realised he could not bring her back but having her as Tinker-bell and then the dust stuff was ruining a good part of the episode. It reminds me of The Trial of a Timelord when Peri is killed (which is shocking) and then it is explained that it never happened (which rid the series of a dramatic moment).It was sad that Astrid died mainly as she was a lovely character (wonderfully acted by Kylie) but that is what made her sacrifice all the more powerful and then R.T.D. pissed all over his OWN good work just making the episode feel somewhat redundant and pointless.

So, there were good moments and there were bad: and they did not overpower the other. It wasn't good and it wasn't awful. Therefore, the episode just made me feel somewhat cold. It was exciting to see the preview of Series 4 and I do hope it is a great series that somehow beats the third. I have a strong feeling that it will and yet somehow I have a feeling that Voyage of the Damned will mark some sort of end in Doctor Who. It certainly has with Behind the Sofa which is a huge shame as it has brought much joy over the years.

Happy 2008! To the future.

Have Your Say in a Tachyon TV Podcast!

Tachyon TV will be releasing a brand new podcast very soon and we have a different and exciting feature that we want to introduce called 'Have Your Say'. This is aimed at anyone who has the ability to record themselves in an audio format so we can use it in the next release. Your comments can be positive, negative, or just plain silly.

This month we'll be looking at Voyage of the Damned. So, if you've got something interesting, witty or urgent to say about the Christmas special let us know!

To take part you'll need to be quick - the deadline is next Friday, January 11th.

Please email your contribution as an mp3 or a wav file (no more than 5-10mb, please!) or put it on your own webspace or other online storage space and email me the details.

The address: neil.perryman@gmail.com

We only ask that you begin your contributions with the words "Hello, I'm ____" so when we edit the soundbites together the listeners will be able to identify you. However, be aware that we may have to edit comments for length.

If you have any questions feel free to ask!

We look forward to hearing what you have to say...

Earth vs. The Spider

Well, blast!  I've been away too long, and, now that I've suddenly found the time to contribute, they've decided to put the poor blog out of its misery, giving me but a scant few days in which to post some reviews.  I know many of you have been eagerly awaiting my imminent missives on "Inferno" and "The Revenge of the Slitheen".  Unfortunately, I'm afeared that I can't get to those quite yet, as I'm eager to write this timely review of the 2007 Doctor Who Chri'tmas Special.  I'd better get going, before it's too late and no longer "of the moment"...so, without further ado, here's my second ever review.

I must admit that I had a certain amount of trepidation going into the Christmas Special for a number of reasons: a new stunt-casted guest companion; yet another a script from the inconsistent hand of Russell T. Davies; a comic-cliffhanger to resolve from the end of the season finale, the inevitable dash of religion...danger at every turn.

Despite my understandable misgivings, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that, aside from a few major missteps, Davies has penned a tightly-scripted, enjoyable romp with room for character development, some clever humour, and relatively few gaping holes in the plot.  Sure, there were some familiar stock plot items (pursuit by killer robots controlled by a broadly-drawn malevolent antagonist, a threat to the entire population of the Earth, David Tennant gurning and shouting, use of a sonic scwoodwivah), but I wasn't that bothered by this lack of originality...who knows, they may well end using these elements for two or three Christmas specials in a row?

This year's yuletide festival of Doctor Whoness begins with Catherine Tate (as Donna Noble) getting sucked into the TARDIS just as she's about to get married to a smarmy git named Lance.  The flabbergasted Doctor returns her to Earth, where she is promptly pursued and captured by the previous year's robotic scavengers, still in period costume as department-store Santas.  The Doctor heroically saves her a couple of times before figuring out that the robots were under someone else's control the entire time.  The villain is revealed to be a creature from the "dark times", the Queen of the Racnoss, some sort of cross between Gozer the Gozerian and a 1975 Volkswagon Beetle.

Following the Battle of Canary Wharf the Queen of the Racnoss has apparently squatted an abandoned Torchwood facility and, with the help of Lance (who has thumbs), is sifting ancient "huon" particles out of the filthy water of the Thames (you'd be amazed what you can find in there), and using it spike Donna's coffee.  (If you think Torchwood's only huge shaft belongs to John Barrowman, think again--this place has one that penetrates all the way to the center of the Earth.)  Donna, now the Keymaster, is intended to help bring about the end times, and if it weren't for you meddling kids The Doctor, she'd have gotten away with it, too.

Overall I was pleased that Davies managed to reign in his more extravagant tendencies with the plot, and actually managed to turn out a story that was largely internally consistent, much like good science fiction.   Rather than resolve the plot with deus ex machina supernatural powers, the Doctor relied on mechanisms that were plausible within the already-established setting of the story.  In order to have the TARDIS materialize around them, he used the same property of huon particles defined earlier in the programme.  ("If you think about it, the particles activated in Donna and drew here inside my spaceship.  So, reverse it...the spaceship comes to her.")  Even using the sound system at the reception to amplify a sonic screwdriver isn't as arbitrary as it might seem.

(Okay...here's a niggling plot-hole sort of thing...if they didn't need Donna to be "the key" anymore, then why did they bother to use the huons to bring her and the TARDIS back from billions of years earlier?  If they could bring Donna back, why did they bother to do the whole foie gras thing with Lance to make him into the new key?)

While there seems to have been substantial controversy surrounding the TARDIS "chase scene", I found it to be quite exhilarating.  It's always nice to watch the Doctor (any Doctor) operate the TARDIS: pulling levers, twisting knobs, wheels, gears, sparks, hammers, etc.  (I'm glad the doctor hasn't replaced his console with a new "laptop" version, where we can only watch him crouch over a tiny mouse-pad thing  and click at things on the screen.  This is why the laptop has killed electronic music....)  Then we got to see the police box bounce and careen its way down the M4 for a dramatic rescue.  When the kids in the back of the car punched the air at the successful rescue, so did we at-home viewers.  Even the accompanying music was thrilling.  We also got the excellent exchange: "I'm in my wedding dress!" "Yes!  You look lovely!  COME ON!"

If there was one particularly glaring weak point in the 2007 Doctor Who Christmas special, it was the over-the-top scenery-chewing of the antagonist, as portrayed by Sarah Parish, pictured here:

While Parish's performance may have had less subtlety than electrodes on the genitalia, she was also clearly limited by the script, which forced her to utter cartoonishly ridiculous lines such as, "By the Great Parrot of Hades, you shall pay for this with the last drop of your blood!  Every corpuscle, do you hear? Mister Fibuli!" and "By the curl-ed fangs of the Sky Demon, how I have looked forward to this moment!"  Every "Moons of Madness!" or "And your little dog, too!" or "By the bursting suns of Banzar, Mr. Fibuli, where are my crystals?" had me cringing.

Months before this Chri'tmas special found its way onto our televisions, irate fans were pulling their hair out about Catherine Tate's casting and predicting utter disaster.  While the character of Donna ends up being a somewhat mixed result, I don't think most of the problems lie in Tate's portrayal so much as they stem from writing that can't decide whether she's a genuine character or low comic relief.  For the first 10 or 15 minutes of the programme Tate's character just brays at the top of her lungs like she's having difficulty being heard over a shouty David Tennant.  When the character finally starts to deepen, as she and the Doctor are chatting on top of some roof after she's missed her own wedding, it's sabotaged by a flashback that's at least as misguided an idea as "Alien vs. Predator", where she's annoyingly hounding Lance to marry her.  The script continuously throws obstacles in the path of character development, alternately giving the character some emotional depth and then going to ridiculous lengths to portray Donna as both shallow and thick (I can remember when those were opposites....)  Her obliviousness to the Christmas and Cyberman invasions and "I thought July" were clever bits of fun, but "can't find  Germany on a map"?   "A woman who thinks the height of excitement is new flavour of Pringle?"   It's like RTD wants us to find her annoying.  Nevertheless, in less than an hour she's actually been able to develop from a bellowing, arm-flailing caricature into a character with some degree of depth and pathos that I could actually care about, and a damn sight faster than Mickey Smith, who took more than a season to overcome his annoyance status.  At least some of this is the result of Catherine Tate doing some genuine acting when the script gave her something to work with. 

And at least they didn't do anything ridiculous like have the Doctor immediately fall in love with her before she sacrifices herself and an innocent forklift plunging the Racnoss Queen into the bottomless pit; that wouldn't work at all.

There were a number of other fine things to enjoy about the 2007 Doctor Who Christmas special.  As one would expect, Euros Lyn's direction and pacing were excellent.  The Mill turned in some excellent special effects, particularly in the sequences depicting the formation of the earth and the Thames flooding the shaft.  I even rather liked the spidery parts of the Racnoss.

Incidentally (no pun intended) I rather enjoyed much of Murray Gold's rollicking contribution to "The Runaway Bride".  High points include the upbeat bit while The Doctor is waiting impatiently for his turn at the cashpoint and the outright lifting from Gershwin while he's looking out over the Thames flood barrier.  Come to think of it, I think Gershwin haunted much of the proceedings.

Other random items that deserve a mention:

• The best David Tennant character moment in the entire programme was the Doctor's exasperated "I'm...I'm not...I'm not, I'm not from Mars...."
• Another fine line: "Only a madman talks to thin air...and trust me, you don't want to make me mad.  Where are you?"
• This exchange was a lovely in-joke: "What...there's, like, a secret base hidden underneath a major London Landmark?" "I know!  Unheard of."
• I rather enjoyed seeing a religious symbol like the "Star of Christmas" turned into an instrument of destruction.  Maybe next year they can depict the baby Jeebus as the bloodthirsty spawn of an alien abduction, or even, dare I imagine, the cross as some sort of torture device.
• The pockets!  Bigger on the inside than the outside!  It's like two references to earlier in the episode in one!
• While I quickly tired of Lance once he became an abusive asshole, he does get the  clever "Director of Human Resources"/"This time, it's personnel!" quip.
• Why does everything seem to happen to the Earth?  This time not only is there some event happening on the Earth with galaxy-spanning ramifications, but the entire planet only exists as a hiding place for baby Racnosses.

So, in conclusion, while there was certainly room for improvement in "The Runaway Bride", my overall impression is positive.  It was an entertaining slice of well-plotted fun.

Well, at least they didn't pad the bloody thing by another ten minutes, and turn it into a bloated, hamfisted, cliche-ridden disaster-movie panto with piss-poor science, massive plot-holes, the Queen of England, and an annoying tiny red metaphor named after a coffee drink.  That would be bad.

The biggest disappointment I'm coming away with after this programme is that, after the development the character has had in just these short 60 minutes, Donna has declined to become a companion of the Doctor, and now we'll never see what might have resulted from that possibility.

I guess now we'll never know.

Light Years

It is rather fitting that Voyage of the Damned was the succulent meat in the centre of a wholemeal old-school EastEnders sandwich on Christmas Day. Not simply because this helped create the perfect storm of a ratings juggernaut that the evening became for BBC One, but because the EastEnders storyline in question revolved partly around the character of Tanya Branning, played by Jo Joyner whose performance as Lynda-with-a-Y forever won the hearts of many a Doctor Who fan back in the good old days of 2005, when the world was young and all things seemed possible.

Astrid is perhaps forever to be preceded by the expression ‘poor old’ from hereon in.

Anyhow, this was a fitting piece of scheduling because it’s Lynda-with-a-Y who most comes to mind as a comparison when you come to think of another character perhaps forever to be preceded by the expression ‘poor old’ from hereon in. Astrid Peth, played, as if you didn’t know, by ‘Pop Princess’ (yes, it’s a legal requirement to use that prefix, too) Kylie Minogue.

She gets her name in the titles and everything!

Kylie – come on, everyone calls her that – is one of those pieces of casting that transcends character. We care more about her, or are at least more interested in or more aware of her, because of by whom she is played by than because of any character traits, no matter how sympathetic and endearing they might be. She is a genuine pop culture icon in the UK, and to try and shy away from that would be counter-productive. It’s as if they had actually managed to persuade Laurence Olivier to play the mutant in Revelation of the Daleks – you’d focus on that small part all the more simply because of who was playing it.

You know, you just know as soon as he uses the word ‘promise’ that he’s not going to be able to do it.

The casting is one of the reasons Astrid evokes Lynda, because you know pretty much from the start that both of them are doomed. In both cases, the Doctor promises these eager young one-off companions that he will save them, and take him with them on further adventures. And you know, you just know as soon as he uses the word ‘promise’ that he’s not going to be able to do it. With Lynda, it was simply because that was always the way the story was going. With Kylie, because of who she is, you knew the moment she asked to travel with the Doctor, and he said that she could, that she would die. She couldn’t go with him. They could never have kept her.

Which is a bit of a shame in one respect, as it would be nice to go into these things blind with a bit of genuine surprise, but even without the casting aspect, there are so few surprises we fans allow ourselves to enjoy these days that anybody could have played the part and we would still have known she was doomed. That’s no reason not to cast her, and I enjoyed Minogue’s performance – without wishing to sound too patronising, I thought that she made Astrid a rather sweet character. A woman just beginning to pass from youth into middle age, who has realised that she is in danger of allowing life to pass her by, and has taken one last chance to see those alien skies before it is all too late.

At least she did actually get to see that sky and touch the surface of an alien world, and her little off-world trip was all the better for allowing us to enjoy Bernard Cribbins’s cameo as the newspaper vendor. This is where the knowledge of fandom can be a positive thing, because we can look forward with great anticipation to his return, knowing that he will be reappearing in series four. Hurrah!

As Barry Norman wouldn’t say, ‘and why not?’

He only briefly got to interact with the Doctor, unlike most of the rest of the supporting cast who formed a core group of survivors with the Doctor as their leader, along the tried and tested pattern of any standard Hollywood disaster movie of the 1970s, definitely one of the templates Russell T Davies used for Voyage of the Damned. And as Barry Norman wouldn’t say, ‘and why not?’

One of the central points, the founding philosophy perhaps, of Davies’s vision for Doctor Who is that the Doctor is a character who makes people better – not simply in a medical sense, but a moral one. He brings out the best in those around him, or encourages them to bring out the best in themselves.

He cannot save everyone, though, and the Doctor’s pain and frustration at being unable to save Astrid – “I can do anything!” – was a nice counterpoint to the Godlike-powers this incarnation has been imbued with at times. It’s nice to see that he can’t win everything, and he is sometimes vulnerable.

Midshipman Frayme getting shot in the stomach appears to have bothered people in some of the online verdicts I have read on the episode, because by the time the story comes its end he’s pretty much walking around as if he received nothing more serious than a light scratch. While this is true, I didn’t really see it as a problem – and it certainly didn’t bother me on first viewing, but perhaps I am simply too forgiving a viewer. In any case, it is pretty clearly established that none of the passengers and crew are human, so Framye’s alien – presumably Stowish – physiology could well help him to recover more quickly from injuries, and he is shown to be treating himself at points during the story, probably from the bridge’s medical kit.

Apparently the BBC high-ups liked it so much that they allowed it an extra ten minutes, but I think they could probably have done with being a touch more ruthless.

Voyage of the Damned was by no means a perfect episode though, let’s be clear about that. Part of this was, I think, down to the running time – apparently the BBC high-ups liked it so much that they allowed it an extra ten minutes, but I think they could probably have done with being a touch more ruthless. If had been tightened up a little and brought down to the same sixty-minute length that the previous specials came in at, I think it would have been a better – and certainly more streamlined – story overall.

A chunk of this could have come from the excising of the filmed slow-motion scenes at the end, which I found to be rather mawkish and almost comedic, seeming more like a parody of melodrama than something from a melodrama itself. I am sure I have read or heard an interview or possibly a commentary with Russell T Davies in the past where he has expressed a dislike for such scenes, so it was something of a surprise to find that this sequence was included.

I also didn’t much like the scene where the Doctor calls the Hosts to him and then orders they flightwards with a click of his fingers. It seemed oddly like the beginning of a pop video, and jarred rather with everything else that was going on during the special… Just a slight misstep with the direction, really, which is a pity as overall I thought that James Strong did his usual… erm… strong job.

It was so unashamedly silly that I think they just about got away with it.

As for the bit with the Queen thanking the Doctor for his help and wishing him a Happy Christmas… It was very silly, but on the other hand it was so unashamedly silly that I think they just about got away with it. It certainly made all of the general audience types I was watching the programme with laugh, in any case, if that’s any justification for it, and oddly I can actually imagine it being the sort of thing the Hartnell era production team might have shoved into a Christmas special if they had thought that they could get away with it.

All in all, this was a fun, entertaining and yes, even at times moving little episode, which I think is exactly the sort of thing you’re after for this sort of show in this sort of slot. And what’s more, it had that fantastic-looking series four trailer at the end – I cannot wait for Donna’s return, now. Every time I see or read about more of her, she feels increasingly like exactly the sort of character the show needs to give it a bit of a push in a new direction.

Roll on 2008!

Raise the Titanic

First things first. I would like to begin my review by tackling the spurious argument that you can't expect anything as good (or as challenging) as Blink or Human Nature to go out at Christmas, a statement that gets trotted out whenever somebody has the temerity to criticise this lazy piece of grandstanding garbage. I just don't get it. Is it because you honestly believe that the audience prefer camp and frothy spectacle over plot and characterisation, or is it that they simply can't bear the thought of genuine and complicated emotions invading their post-turkey stupor? Is that how EastEnders ended up with even more viewers than Doctor Who's remarkable 12 million? I'm not suggesting that Doctor Who has to be grim, dark and miserable - at any time of the year - but surely audiences want mystery, suspense, a few laughs and some proper drama. I'm really sorry but Voyage of the Damned falls disastrously short at almost every turn.

Andre Previn wasn't draped in tinsel...

But credit where credit is due: the premise to Voyage of the Damned is great. In fact, the first 35 minutes really touched a nerve with me and I was genuinely enjoying every daft moment of it, especially the sight of aliens reacting to a Specsavers shop front like we would the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. And I can't get enough of disaster movies; as John has already pointed out, it's a genre that has become inexplicably linked with Christmas after appearing perennially on the box during the holidays when I was a kid, and in the case of Die Hard and The Poseidon Adventure, by actively taking place during the festivities themselves. I just hope that they skip the obligatory Christmas theme altogether next year. Having recently re-watched all of Morecombe and Wise's Christmas Specials I was immediately struck by the distinct lack of Christmas trappings up there on the screen. Andre Previn wasn't draped in tinsel. Angela Rippon wasn't a dancing Santa Claus. Somersaulting newsmen were on a bloody beach, for christsake! And the added bonus is that you can watch these shows all year around. Admit it, you can't really do that with a Christmas-flavoured special. Point of fact: try watching The Runaway Bride in early January. Within ten minutes you'll finding yourself feeling ill disposed towards it because you are in the midst of the back-to-work post-Christmas blues. It's a real downer.

Russell plunders from two classic Who stories, and one really shit one...

And of all the Christmas themes you could plunder, like the classic ghost story, the historical period piece (Capra or Dickens?) or even a Christmas future, why does Russell insist on plunging contemporary earth in mortal danger every bloody year? He even has to shoe-horn in a stupid (but ultimately necessary) reference to how everyone in London has done a runner. And if the rumours are true then Bernard Cribbens was playing Donna Noble's granddad, which just makes that scene ten times worse, if you ask me.

Anyway, the initial set-up was pretty engaging. Sure, it was derivative but who cares? The very best Doctor Who's of old were always derivative, it's what they did with the source material that really mattered. And if you are going to steal then you may as well steal from the best, and I don't care what anyone says, The Poseidon Adventure is one of the very best, and I defy anyone - even James Coleman - to dismiss Gene Hackman's final tirade to God as anything but a classic moment in cinema history.

Russell also unashamedly plunders from two 'classic' Who stories (Enlightenment and The Robots of Death) and one really, really shit one (Delta and the Bannerman). And I loved it. For large swathes of the audience this would be their first exposure to the concept of flying ocean liners, homicidal servo-bots with art deco heads and goofy, ill-informed alien tourists, and I didn't have a problem with that at all.

Strangely, the one thing that Voyage of the Damned doesn't really riff on is the most obvious contender of all - James Cameron's Titanic. Where was the moment where the Doctor and Astrid are standing on the prow of the ship in some sort of sonic screwdriver-ed oxygen bubble, as they stare wistfully out towards the galaxy, just as the asteroids make a bee-line for the ship? It can't have been that expensive - even Barry Letts could pulled that off. It couldn't have been because they didn't have the time either - the episode had more padding than Shelly Winters stunt double - and it certainly can't have been because it would have been too cheesy. Maybe it wasn't cheesy enough, given what's coming...

Anyway, up until the moment when our merry band of heroes set out along that strut I was having a whale of a time. Geoffrey Palmer was utterly fantastic as the affable uncle about to commit genocide for the sake of his kids (why couldn't he have been the villain of the piece?) and the initial disaster was portrayed wonderfully, climaxing in that great moment when the petty officer got sucked out into space. As the Doctor delivered his chilling  'Kasterborous' speech I settled into a mildly euphoric belief that everything was going to be OK.

And then everything went tits up as Russell hit his own personal iceberg: his lack of self-restraint.

Meet Max Capricorn.  The fact that he was the bad guy wasn't surprising to me in the least. No, the real surprise was the fact that he arrived in the guise of a comedy Davros! He looked like he'd been cooked up by a couple of hard-up fans in a garage! Gliding into view as a bizarre cross between the travel machine in Kinda, an ASDA shopping trolley and one of those grab-a-prize cabinets you find in amusement arcades, you just can't take him seriously. A boo-hiss pantomime villain would have been bad enough, but a boo-hiss pantomime villain stuck in a box? Oh dear.

But Max's laughable entrance isn't the worst part of it. No, his arrival also heralds the moment when the plot holes suddenly converge and engulf the entire script. A disaster within a disaster, if you like. I'm not talking about problems with the metallic consistency of asteroids, or whether the Queen's flag should ripple a bit more, or even the miraculous healing powers of the officer who has been shot in the gut. No, I'm talking about the really serious problems, like: why is Max Capricorn on the Titanic in the first place? And why are the Hosts killing witnesses who are all going to die in a nuclear explosion in the next few minutes anyway? It just doesn't make any sense!

Any why bother with a villain at all? You didn't see Gene Hackman investigating the source of the Tsunami that overturned the Poseidon, did you? No, he was content with just getting off the bloody ship! Why not concentrate on that aspect instead? Surely it would have been more exciting and dramatic than facing off against a villain that no one seems even remotely interested in taking seriously.

A disaster within a disaster...

And then, just when you think things can't get any worse there's that moment with the fucking Queen. What was Russell thinking? Has he never seen Silver Nemesis? Is he after a quick knighthood? What? Was there anyone in the audience who didn't groan when that scene unfurled, like a tape-worm, on screen?  Do you think Primeval would stoop so low as to have a velociraptor attacking a Gordon Brown look-a-like? I think I would have preferred it if Tennant had turned to the audience back home and wished us all a Merry fucking Christmas.

And RTD should never be allowed near numbers. Each and every time he hits a numerical key on his keyboard an alarm should go off and someone with a rudimentary grasp of mathematics should rush into Russell's flat so they can check that what he's just written isn't "oh, that'll do" bollocks. Or employ a script editor. Whichever is easiest. Just look at the evidence: he can't get the Doctor's age right, he locates adventures in the year 5,000,000,000,000,000,000,004, and he creates societies where people travel 10cm in 10 years. Why won't somebody stop him?

The most shameful example of Russell's numerical dyslexia can be found in Voyage of the Damned. I am, of course, talking about the revelation that Shelly Winters' phone bill, the one that will take her 20 years to pay off (yes, 20 years!), is approximately 100 quid. I've seen ming-mongs on the forums desperately trying to wave this away by insisting that Shelly Winters must be on a really low wage, conveniently forgetting the fact that Mr Copper, a glorified tour guide, believes that a million quid's worth of credits is enough to spend on a few trinkets, which therefore implies that 5,000 credits must be worth (factoring in exchange rates and inflation) a couple of quid, tops. Shameful.

But it's not just RTD's grasp of numbers that winds me up, it's his preoccupation with messianic imagery. Just like that other raging atheist, JM Straczynski, he too feels compelled to litter his sci-fi opus with god-like beings of light and resurrected heroes with mystical, magical powers. And it makes me cringe every single time. However, I guess this is counterpointed by the fact that the Doctor isn't really harder than Jesus in the final analysis. He can't stop Astrid from dying for a start; he can only postpone her agony so he can give her a quick tongue sandwich. You know, it says a lot when the Doctor snogging the face of a woman is only mildly irritating when placed next to the image of him being lifted up on the wings of angels. It managed to make his Obi-Wan levitation in Last of the Time Lords look like something out of fucking Akira!

More padding that Shelly Winters' stunt double...

I suppose I'd better talk about Kylie. I'm not a fan of the songstress and the whole thing stank of stunt casting from the very beginning to me. Despite the fact that I may have tapped my toes to a couple of her more recent gramophone records I wasn't exactly sold on her acting credentials. Neighbours and, er, um, Street Fighter?! Still, I decided, it could have been a lot worse - it could have been Catherine Tate again. Or, failing that, another sitcom star with an equity card. This is why Andy Millman being asked to appear in the show during last night's Extras felt so right to me - he's a shit comedian in a low-brow sitcom, of course he's going to be invited to appear in Doctor Who!

Having said all that, Kylie was pretty good as Astrid. The problem is she wasn't given that much to do. OK, so she kills the villain, snogs the Doctor (twice), gets herself killed (twice) and then turns into Tinkerbell (don't get me started on that), which looks like quite a lot on paper, but in reality it's hard for me to really give a damn about anything she does because her character is so two-dimensional. Even Bannanakafka made more of an impression on me and he was a walking deus ex machina! And why make Kylie look so dowdy? She's a glamourpuss in a maid's outfit and yet she still managed to come across as bit, well, meh. That takes some doing. And who wasn't laughing their ass off when Astrid picked up Capricorn on that pallet truck? What should have been a gut-wrenching scene that conjured up images of Ripley taking on the Alien Queen, it had as much dramatic gravitas as a bad French and Saunders sketch.

The fact that the Doctor falls for Astrid within moments of meeting her (despite a distinct lack of on-screen chemistry) is either more evidence of his incessant longing for Rose (Astrid's blonde and a bit feisty, you see) or it's just really bad writing. And then there's the bit at the end where the Doctor dumps Mr. Copper in Wales because he wants to travel alone. You might interpret this a battle-damaged Doctor trying to protect Mr. Copper from further harm, or maybe, if you're like me, you'll believe he can't be bothered with Mr. Copper because he a) isn't blonde b) hasn't got a pair of magnificent tits and c) he hasn't flirted with him for the last hour. Sad, isn't it?

And there you have it. Yet another expensive looking Christmas cracker stuffed with bad jokes, shiny bits of disposable tat and paper-thin, er, hats. Quite a nice bang, though.

If the Doctor Who Christmas Special really is the franchise's shop window then isn't it about time we got the Fenwicks treatment instead of another gaudy sale at 'What Everybody Wants?'

Allons-y!

U R DOIN IT WRONG

"And Christmas bells that ring there
Are the clanging chimes of doom"

Even when I was a kid and such things would normally go straight over my head, I can remember listening to that line from "Do They Know It's Christmas" and thinking "Crikey o'reilley, that was a bit bleak." However, that theme's been dragged to hell and back by everyone else on this blog; my problem with Voyage of the Damned was not that it wasn't very Christmassey, it was that it wasn't very Whoey.

I'll attempt to qualify that.

Remember those Pertwee stories where he'd do nothing for six episodes at a time apart from hang upside down under some machinery looking all macho and sweaty in a tight
white T-shirt? VOTD kind of put me in mind of that stuff. Let's get one thing ABSOLUTELY straight - the Doctor doesn't triumph every time because he's smarter, quicker and immortal-er than everyone else. He wins because he's THE DOCTOR. It's all down to his precious empathy. And mercy. And stuff.

Bananas. Cricket balls. Shops in hospitals. Even a bit of Tennant's trademark "AWWWWR, THAT'S BWILLIANT THAT IS!" would have been welcome. What did we get instead?

Problem with Damned is that there's no real element of character, moral fibre or suchlike apart from "Screw you all, I'm The Doctor." It's not a problem that's limited to the main character either - despite an absolutely STELLAR cast pretty much everyone from Palmer to Minogue could have been anyone.

It's not even as if it would have been a particularly tricky situation to remedy. We're Who fans. We went a decade without any output. We're not fussy. It would have been elementary to just toss us a few trappings from the show. Bananas. Cricket balls. Shops in hospitals. Even a bit of Tennant's trademark "AWWWWR, THAT'S BWILLIANT THAT IS!" would have been welcome. What did we get instead? The return of the Allonso running gag. Oh, NICE ONE, Russ. I'm sure that absolutely NOBODY was glad to see the back of that particular meme. Jesus.

In its defence, I will point out that the Doctor screaming "I CAN DO ANYTHING!" in rage was an absolute stroke of genius. This is everything great about the tenth Doctor - cut free of any controlling influence, with the resources of the greatest civilisation that ever existed to use as he feels fit, reduced to childish impotence by the stark realisation that sometime life is just a c***. Sadly it's one great moment in a seventy minute special which barely contained enough material to justify an episode.

In conclusion, I reckon that things have reached  a pretty pass when RTD cacks out something that's meant to be a crowd-pleaser, and all you can do is screw up your forehead and go "Whuh?" If there was one thing that you couldn't take away from the man before, it was that he was good at what he set out to do. If the Christmas special is anything to go by though, it seems that not only is he not even getting that far any more, but that nobody can even figure out what he was trying to do in the first place.

Damned if you do, Damned if you don't

Welcome aboard the good ship Tachyonic. Please blog carefully

Voyage of the Damned

Christmas time. Good will to all men. Peace on Earth. Except, it seems, on the Doctor Who spitting boards. Another episode, another ruckus amongst the ming-mongs to claim intellectual superiority in the I love/ I hate RTD-and-all-that-sail-in-him brigades. If Doctor Who is a religion to some then it’s about time that the more fundamentalist of its followers took a deep breath and stepped back.

Me? I cringed for at least half of this bloated seventy-minute farrago of disaster movie clichés and trowel-laden moralising that would make even Steven Spielberg at his saccharin worst blush. But that’s okay. Because if there’s two things I’ve learnt from watching Doctor Who these past three years it’s that a) you can’t argue with the mass majority who probably loved this and b) what’s the point anyway, as they’re not watching the show in the same way as you are. And thus hangs the eternal dilemma of being a card-carrying Whovian in the 21^st Century: hiding your head in shame as the latest RTD epic rewrites all known laws of logic and narrative coherence, whilst at the same time hearing that it’s the second most watched programme on Christmas day and being unable to wipe the enormously proud grin off your face.

trowel-laden moralising that would make even Steven Spielberg at his saccharin worst blush

So the only way to view these things seems to be in the spirit of Christmas itself. Accentuate the positive and brush all your misgivings under the carpet where the pine needles are starting to gather. And ‘Voyage of the Damned’ is nothing if not choc-full of positives, starting with that bombastic new mix of the theme tune which almost blows you out of the armchair with twangy guitars and Keff McCulloch drum bass. Though it’s a bit of a shame that they didn’t take the opportunity to revamp the title sequence as well; the stars’ names zooming out at you like in Superman the Movie is already starting to look so 2005.

And still on the positive that opening half-hour pretty much tricks all the boxes when it comes to disaster movie-aping dramatics with a Who spin. A group of broadly drawn clichés each with a secret to hide; some nicely sinister robots who have clearly been watching ‘The Robots of Death’ too much whilst getting a vocal makeover from Alexander Armstrong; and the Mill going to town with some startling eye candy which genuinely would not look out of place in your modern multiplex blockbuster.

But then the meteors hit and it all goes horribly wrong.

Now, I dunno whether to blame RTD or director James Strong more for this. Okay, the plot of any disaster movie tends to peter out once the proverbial hits the fan; but are they usually as threadbare and head scratching as this? And Strong’s direction at times is so pedestrian that you’d be forgiven for thinking that this was a disaster movie set in a supermarket rather than on board (nominally) the most infamous passenger liner of all time. Tasteless or just fair game? I can’t honestly see how the BBC need to apologise for evoking bad memories for 1912 survivors, myself. Though as for apologising to the campaigners for quality drama, now that’s another matter.

that bombastic new mix of the theme tune almost blows you out of your armchair

But what’s most mind-numbingly, spirit-crushingly disappointing about ‘Voyage of the Damned’ is that it’s another RTD script that reaches for the stars and grabs a load of old cobblers instead. I’m all for him having his Christmas fun each year - I mean, would you rather a Moffat or Cornell masterpiece being wasted on the post-turkey indulgers - but for once I’d like to see him try for something within his narrative scope. Something small and intimate, perhaps. And without a shoe-horned-in threat to six billion people. Small is beautiful, Russell. Remember that.

And then there’s the schmaltz. Now nu-Who has given us some of the most emotional TV of the past three years, but too often in RTD’s hands such ventures into the touch-feely just have you reaching for the sick bag. We know it’s a terrible thing when unsuspecting, innocent people die horrible deaths through no fault of their own; we don’t need the moral equivalent of a sledgehammer around our bonce whilst Murray Gold sets the controls for meltdown. Is it heartless of me to say I felt absolutely nothing at the deaths of Bannakafallata, thingy or whatsisame (though at least Shelly Winters a.k.a. Foon the Balloon fulfilled her remit as doomed fatso)? Or am I just a little tired of TV thinking that it has to slice the emotional equivalent of onions in front of my eyes before I can have empathy for a character? Answers please on a used tissue to the usual address.

another RTD script that reaches for the stars and grabs a load of old cobblers instead

And that final twenty minutes is just taking the piss, surely? Astrid does the slo-mo self-sacrifice as Michael Bay takes over behind the lens, followed by arguably the most embarrassing crossover between sci-fi and public figures since the end of For Your Eyes Only. So, our Maj is a Who fan; does that really warrant some sub-June Brown cameo that completely shits over any attempt at gravitas the episode previously had? And what in the name of sweet Jesus is Max Capricorn about? A failed businessman reduced to a Davros wannabe in a power loader, whiling away his time between insurance scams and impressions of Brian O’Blivion from Cronenberg’s Videodrome.

But on the whole it wasn’t all bad, just less than it should have been. Cameos from the likes of Geoffrey Palmer’s hangdog expression were so note perfect as to make you tear your hair out that they were so brief. And as for Ms Minogue, she hardly put a foot wrong; the only surprise coming from the fact that when given the pulling power of arguably one of the world’s most famous women, RTD instead reduces her to the part of bit player when even Catherine Tate got her fifteen minutes. But at least wee Jimmy Vee got something more to do than cement his reputation as the John Scott Martin of vertically challenged bit-parting; even if it was as a Twiki-wannabe with a novelty dildo for a head.

Which only leaves one more question: if everyone bar the Queen and Bernard Cribbens has quit London for Christmas, then who the bloody hell is gonna buy all those newspapers, eh?

Coming Soon: some pulse-pounding snippets of Season 4 set to a Murray Gold musical explosion. Donna. Martha. Sontarans. Agatha Christie. And Raquel from Coronation Street doing the hard-faced Apprentice bitch-thing. But what, no Daleks?!?

(The Bumper Book of Made-Up Doctor Who Facts has this to say about Voyage of the Damned: Nintendo have already optioned the Halo fight scene as a tie-in game on the Wii)

Give Me Just A Little More Time ...

The original cancellation of Doctor Who dovetailed nicely with the period when I first started to like the girls and the girl I tended to like was Kylie Minogue.  She seemed perfectly attainable despite such impediments as apparently living Australia (or the UK it was very confusing), being nothing like her character in Neighbours (at least as far as I could tell from a rather stilted interview she gave on Get Fresh) and being a much older woman (all of six years).  But I bought the all the records, filled scrap books with articles and lyrics from Smash Hits, covered my wall with posters and kissed her calendar every night before I went to bed.  It was a level of dedication which some religions would consider unhinged and yet there I was praying at the alter of Locomotion (see this post at my own blog for further devotional tales). 

Of course, the teenage heart is a fickle thing and when it decided that Better The Devil You Know wasn’t a great single and that Lost In Your Eyes sounded purer, it was down with the Kylie posters and up with the Debbie Gibson ones.  But you never forget your first love so it there was no more curious experience watching the two merge into one another last night.  Post Charlene, Kylie’s not really had a respected acting career (my heart died a little when I sat through Street Fighter – oh yes I’ve seen everything) but she was really good in this, totally holding her own within the ensemble and particularly against Mr Tennant, not afraid to make fun of her height by standing on a box to kiss him.  These one-off companions are difficult because they have to mark themselves out in a very short space of time and make us care and I do think she did that, imbuing Astrid with a likeable wonder but also making her sacrifice entirely plausible.

Plus it’s Kylie dressed as a waitress.  What’s not to like?

Elsewhere, writer Russell T Davies was playing the genre game, tossing the Doctor into a disaster movie to see what that would be like.  Apparently he’s always wanted to do this since The Poseidon Adventure was the only VHS he had to hand as a kid.  Oddly enough, it’s not the first time the franchise has attempted something like this.  Fans with long memories might remember that Christopher Bulis’s Vanderdeken's Children, an Eighth Doctor novel, had many of the same figures you’d expect in an Irwin Allen spectacular eventually scuppered by a far too complex plot.  It’s not an impossible fit though; Doctor Who stories tend to develop through set pieces and that’s exactly what you find in something like The Towering Inferno and indeed that’s exactly what you got in Voyage of the Damned as the Doctor led a band of familiars from one end of the ship to the other, with the monetary scam and villain an added appendage to explain the disaster. 

These were good set pieces, the bit in the corridor, the bit in the stairwell, the bit on the strut.  If anything the template was used too well; disaster films are about death; so is Doctor Who apparently but did this really have to be so unremittingly grizzly?  Here’s something being served up as pre-watershed family entertainment on Christmas Day which featured mass murder and suicide.  I shuddered as I wrote that since it’s clearly what Mediawatch UK were thinking too as they scribbled down all of their criticisms in crayon but I can’t lie and say I didn’t cringe a little bit as the Doctor amongst other things failed to save Astrid and provide a happy send off.  Perhaps we should be excited that the show is still willing to bounce off the curve letting the hateful character lives, but the last thing we need at this point is to lose the family audience because parents think the show is too scary, too raw, too ugly, particularly on the holiest of holies.

That said, The Poseidon Adventure is a PG these days.

But as I said in the introduction still managed to raise a chuckle and not just during the closing moments.  As well as Mr Copper’s bizarre verbal mincing of Christmas traditions (which when you consider what we actually do aren’t that odd – apart from the boxing) there was the discovery that the residents of old London town had taken the logical step of deserting the place around the festive period based on previous experience.  It’s not the first time they’ve done this – remember Invasion of the Dinosaurs – but in a way it’s a shame that the episode couldn’t have been expanded to explore that idea instead; it felt thrown away here but perhaps that’s the big new arc story which will be looked at in the new series, Cribbins included.  And wasn’t he marvellous – weren’t all of the guest cast?  Some will say that Geoffrey Palmer was wasted but it needed and actor like that for you to believe that Captain would be capable of what he did, just as it needs George Costigan to turn up at the end and be plausibly villainous.

It was certainly one of the best designed episodes of the new series.  Some money was clearly spent on the interiors and although the geography of the ship wasn't too clearly defined the strut area may well have been one of the best sets of the series, recalling the propeller room from The End of the World.  The exterior shots of the Titanic itself are majestic too although I had a soft spot in particular for the shots of the TARDIS hurtling towards the Earth.  It really does make a change to see the Earth from a non-North American point of viewing, seeing Europe and UK floating below us.  There’s no denying that the design of the Hosts must have been inspired by some other robots of death – particularly the hair – and it’ll be very surprising if they don’t inspire some merchandise partner to create tree decorations for next Christmas.

I really liked Voyage of the Damned. It wasn't perfect, but as a Christmas Day post everything slice of action adventure with a dash of heart it was fine and in the end I laughed like a drain because sheer audacity of it all.  I mean really what else could you do at the sight of the Titanic dodging the roof of Buckingham Palace with her Madge, in her rollers, thanking the Doctor for saving the world one more time, with Nicholas Witchell reporting on events.  Sure it’s pretty camp and arch and typical of many of the things that some despise nu-Who for, but it’s also hilarious and doing everything which you never thought you’d ever see in a television programme, least of all the one you were brought up on.  If it didn't quite make up for some of the darkness which had gone before, at least it prepared some viewers for the shitstorm that was about to hit them in the episode of Eastenders that followed.

If it wasn’t quite as affecting as either of the other two specials it's because it didn’t feel like part of the fabric of the series.  The Christmas Invasion was clearly all about the regeneration and The Runaway Bride dealing with the loss of Rose.  Even though he’d only just dropped off Martha, this felt like a very separate story, rather like an example of spin-off fiction in that you didn’t really need to know about anything else which had happened in the series to enjoy it.  Certainly that was the case for the first two or three decades but it threatened here to make the piece inessential.  Despite all the murder and mayhem there wasn’t anything as gut busting as the moment when the Prime Minister ordered the destruction of the Sycorax ship or the Doctor watched as the Queen’s children drowned at least not with the sense that it’d have consequences.

But then again, for all we know this could have been the most important episode of the lot, especially as it proved that actually even though he is the Doctor he can't do everything.  Roll on the fourth series – “What d’you mean miss?  Do I look single?” etc.

Fuck Me, Who Let Eric Saward Into The Building?

Irwin Allen lives.
Steve Punt and Hugh Dennis are
Pointing and laughing.

Voyage Of The Damned

Honest? I don't know what the hell to make of that one. Imagine if Irwin Allen had written Earthshock and The Robots Of Death. How silly yet needlessly grim was that? If like me you were playing 'spot the victim' ten minutes in, then you probably didn't expect (a) so many people to end up killing themselves, and (b) the moral to be 'remember kids, fate is a complete c**t'. And has the Doctor ever been so helpless? That's about as Saward as it gets.

The gay subtext 'cyborgs have marriage rights too' was subtle this year wasn't it? And nobody seems to have noticed the junior officer still has a bullet in his gut either.

Tat Wood's 'Things That Don't Make Sense' starts here...

Buckingham Palace is still standing.

I was certain from the trailers, right up to where the physics went straight out the window, that those were missiles instead of meteors and the ship was being shot at. Obviously nobody's going to watch sn episode like this for its scientific integrity, but I feel nerdily compelled to point out: meteors are big chunks of rocks and ice. So how can they (a) burn, (b) leave stupid vapour trails in space, and (c) be 'magnetised' towards the hull of a ship and away from the whacking great planet in close proximity, without dragging the ship itself straight out of orbit (big planet, remember)? No, they don't say 'tractor beam'. And aren't meteorites comparatively rare, so where did these handy ones come from at exactly the right time? Did the Cybermen happen to ionise a nearby star, 'cos it's as daft as anything in The Wheel In Space. You're not going to convince me that a bankrupt travel agency can accurately pinpoint a cruise liner's time-jump to be in the right place and time for a meteor strike either, when just blowing the fucker up or sabotaging the engines and letting it drop would have been so much damn easier, since there's not going to be any 'witnesses' anyway after life on Earth gets wiped out by the impact, thus making the whole subplot with the Heavenly Hosts magnificently irrelevant. As if the mad rampaging robots announcing their intentions by going 'INFORMATION: KILL' the whole time wouldn't be suspicious enough, particularly to the important bloke on board with a mobile phone talking to his investor, who never thinks of phoning back home and letting them know what the FUCK'S GOING ON. Does NOBODY remember 9/11 anymore? And talking of which, how lax is basic security on board this vessel, that Bannakaffalatta can sneak his metal body capable of generating a massive EMP pulse on board without setting off any sensors or security alarms?

(Dr Science is also frothing at the mouth comparing the structural integrity of the ship after the meteor impact with, say, the structural integrity of the formerly flat piece of desert that's now the Grand Canyon, but we'll let that pass.)

By the way, even if you had some kind of magic magnet that attracts rock instead of metal, (NO, they DON'T call it a 'tractor beam'), and couldn't sell the patent for untold billions and save the company that way, then what's the point of installing the device into a crappy old ship that, like the Enterprise and the Liberator, is never intended to take off and land on a planet and would have been built in space, if not for the needlessly overcomplicated Columbo-style murder plot? And since it has all the aerodynamic properties of a giant brick, then how in the name of God can the Titanic possibly pull out of an atmospheric crash dive, the shockwave from which would utterly obliterate everything underneath? Because Buckingham Palace is still standing, and the Royals go 'hurrah' at an unexpected near-miss from an alien spacecraft instead of telling the Doctor to nyaff orrrrff.

Is Max Capricorn's presence on the ship supposed to be a secret or not? The script doesn't seem to be able to make its mind up. Max's whole plan depends on being pronounced dead at the scene of the disaster, but since the dramatic yet blatantly obvious plot twist is that he's responsible for all of this, none of the crew ever acknowledges that he's on board (surely, as loyal corporate staff, somebody's first thought after the impact should have been for the safety of the chief executive?), and he's purposely killing off survivors to remain undetected. And as a cyborg he's kept himself hidden away for years, so nobody would have seen him enter or leave the ship. He must be VERY clever too to have squirrelled all his assets away without the rest of the board ever noticing, particularly if he wanted to surreptitiously spend them later after faking his own death without arousing suspicion. Not even Trau Morgus managed that one. But then the board also apparently doesn't know or find it odd that the CEO who built the company from scratch is also 170 years old, so maybe they're just inept. Just how long has Max been running the place?

Incidentally, who else guessed the real twist that didn't happen was that Max's true identity was going to be Taren Capell and not Delegate Arcturus?

Exactly HOW much money was the Captain promised to commit planetary genocide for the sake of his family's financial future, and wouldn't it also occur to him that a boss that ruthless in securing his own wealth could welch on the deal and the Captain would be too dead to stop it? As has been pointed out already, the pound/credit excange rate means it takes about twenty years to pay off a hundred pound phone bill, so it couldn't have been that much anyway.

But perhaps the biggest logical whopper of all is this: Max intends to ride out the disaster in a survival chamber that can withstand a supernova. Not a nuclear holocaust, an exploding sun. The Doctor knows all about it and how it works, suggesting that such things are in common usage, especially if a bankrupt cruise company in a fucked-up economy has got one. So, er.... WHY IS GALLIFREY DESTROYED?? Why couldn't the oldest, most technically supreme civilization in the universe with an Eye Of Harmony at their disposal knock up a larger-scale model to protect their own planet, or at the very least use for a backup to ensure the survival of the race once the Time War started? Come to that, why didn't the Daleks explore the military potential of this technology in the scope of galactic conquest? If you can make a survival chamber out of this principle, couldn't you also make an utterly indestructable battle cruiser or two? Build an armed survival ship, blow up a few stars, and ride out the ensuing holocaust while everything around you burns. Madness.

PS: Buckingham Palace is still standing. Did I mention this already?

And since the TARDIS was in orbit and the shields were down when the Titanic pranged it, why wasn't the Doctor sucked out into space as well?

(end of pedantry)

'A bit superficial' seems to be the most appropriate phrase I can muster, I think. I'm not sure if I'll ever watch it again (at least not with a straight face); there was a lot to enjoy on the day and it's visually exciting and expensive, but it's overpadded, and the tone was just off, even leaving out the monumental silliness of the last fifteen minutes which is just gagging for a podcast (I'd also say "it never decents to Last Of The Time Lords' level" if it wasn't damning with such faint praise which this special doesn't deserve to be tarred with). Surely at any other time of year, we'd all cheer like idiots at its "I CAN DO ANYTHING" gut-punch about the futility of existence, when it looked like it was going to bring Kylie back from the dead as a typically Christmas cop-out, only to snatch her away again in the cruelest fashion possible (I wonder what the Fear Factor kids made of that). But so many people died pointllessly without adding to the plot; Dalek_Sex is likening it with the space bus from Delta & The Bannermen, which sounds like as apt a comparison as one could ever get. He also doesn't like the new theme remix. I told hm he should be glad it's not Keff's.

Dedicating a disaster movie to the memory of Verity Lambert is just one more example of how intrinsically wrong it all feels, though it's not actually inappropraiate in the way that immediately springs to the fan-mind. After all, Verity did give us the equally grim, chaotic and cruel Dalek Invasion Of Earth. But that one was about conflict and hope; the Daleks were a palpable on-screen force for the Doctor to proactively oppose and overcome, almost as his duty, while no matter how bleak things got after episode one, the serial continued to exude a self-belief that human endeavour could eventually carry the day. Neither of those are true for Voyage Of The Damned, which for the most part views more like the untransmitted invasion and razing of the planet before the Doctor and party arrived.

Yet at the end of the day all comparisons with the old series are irrelevant. Despite its source influences, this is a thoroughly modern piece of television for a thoroughly modern Doctor. The Poseidon Adventure was made in 1973. Can you really see Jon Pertwee doing his own stunts for this and bellowing NOW LISTEN TO ME at the whimpering ragtags? He'd be rubbing a damn sight more than the back of his neck, I can tell you.

The Bumper Book Of Made-Up Doctor Who Facts has this to say about Voyage Of The Damned: the original plan was for wee Jimmy Vee to be overdubbed by Mel Blanc. From beyond the gwaaaaaaaave. Bedebedebedebede.

"Lots of fun, not the most cerebral slice of Who ever..."

OTT's Graham was at the screening.  Potential spoilers (from a certain point of view) but worth reading for the stuff about the Q&A:  "Lots of fun, not the most cerebral slice of Who ever, but terribly exciting, and with one real groaner they could only get away with on Christmas Day. That's what I reckoned, anyway."  New theme music too.

I Don't Believe in an Interventionist God...

Here are some heartwarming photos from last night's premiere.  I never thought I'd see Nick Cave and Andrew Marr photographed together - only Who has the power to bring together such strange bedfellows.

And I love Cribbins.

I'm the Doctor. I'm a Time Lord. I am 903 years old.

SpookiTalk

[Major spoiler] BBC One's ten-second trailer for Voyage of the Damned rather explains something about how The Titanic is involved.  Looks amazing.

Christmas wouldn't be Christmas without...

...our annual Radio Time Doctor Who Christmas cover.

It seems to happen earlier and earlier each year too. The 08 Dec to 14 Dec Radio Times will be on sale from Tuesday 4 December, although some might have it on sale sooner (in the run up to Christmas TV guides usually come in much earlier than normal).

Kyliein' the Tardis

Take a slice of Goldfrapp, channel the spirit of the KLF, turn Murray Gold into a set of human sleigh bells, ram in some Grainer and a house key being dragged up and down a piano wire and you might have something that could wipe the grimace off of Simon Cowell's chops this Christmas.

Or Song 4 Kylie by the Fast Ood Rockers as it's otherwise known.

You can even hear a clip right here...

Petition your local phonagraphic stockists now to sell the 7' vinyl and between us we'll beat which ever reality television wailing mentalists are unleased to seize the covertated Christmas number one spot.