I’ve completely forgotten how to review things. No, it’s true. Luckily, gentle reader,¹ you don’t get to see the amount of crap that I’ve written and deleted before coming to this paragraph. Frankly, even this paragraph is on borrowed time.

I’m here today trying to review Doctor Who‘s latest Christmas special — ‘Voyage of the Damned’. Every time they do one of these things, they get a little more context, which is nice, because it makes it a whole lot easier to talk about. At first I was unclear whether they were supposed to hit the same tone as normal episodes. ‘The Runaway Bride’ pretty much had me believing that they were significantly sillier; however despite several hilariously weird moments, ‘Voyage’ is a generally grim affair, with many, many nice people dying horribly.

Why? Because not only is this an episode of Who, but it’s also a disaster movie. Supporting characters are dropping like flies, and everyone’s got to make their way from point A to point B. You know the drill.² I’m all in favour of genre-crossing in this show, but I started to remember while watching that I really don’t particularly like disaster movies. The fun of Doctor Who is not knowing what’s going to happen; the formula of a disaster movie hinges on a certain irritating inevitability. Every now and then the story does pull itself up and do something interesting, but for a lot of it, it’s busy being all disastery. However I feel silly criticising it for something it obviously was trying to be, so I’ll say no more about it.

So; aliens have gone and named a ship The Titanic, just to tempt fate. A particularly tragic bit of sabotage sends three meteors crashing into the ship, and it starts to descend towards the Earth below. Into this mess strides the Doctor. He’s a Time Lord. He’s 903 years old. He’s from Gallifrey, in the constellation of Kasterborous. He likes to walk in slow motion, and tell his entire life story to anyone who shows even the slightest interest. I get that the people making this show love him; I do too. But if they keep overplaying their hand like this, then the Doctor will start to become less awesome and more lame. No one wants that. Give the boy back his subtlety.

Kylie Minogue is in it, too. She does quite well, but suffers from having all the usual ‘becoming a companion’ plot moments being squashed into one episode. And there’s an unfortunate scene where the Doctor guesses at her life story, and she’s forced to just look off into space to give us the impression that he’s got it right.³ This felt like her only weak point; but then I don’t know how people are supposed to respond to that sort of thing.

The non-superstar contingent of the cast are also excellent, with memorable performances from Geoffrey Palmer and Clive Swift. Russell Tovey as Midshipman Frame is the unexpected highlight though, as the character who you’re convinced will die every time he appears. Though the inserted “My Name Is Max” ads are a little irritating, once George Costigan’s Max appears, he’s a superb villain. Foon and Morvin are quite fun, too, but their fates must surely serve to continue Russell T Davies’ anti-fat agenda.⁴

I’ve talked of my dislike of disaster movies; let me close by talking of my love for psychopathic robots with silly voices. The classic story The Robots of Death has always been a favourite, so it was nice to see some cute nods to it with the similarly toned Hosts.⁵ One day I’ll get tired of hearing level-voiced robots tell me we’re all going to die. But it’s not today, and so Voyage of the Damned remains an enjoyable Doctor Who episode wrapped inside a not-so-good disaster movie. Next time we mix genres, let’s have a whodunnit.⁶

1. I say gentle, but obviously I’m taking a lot on faith here. If you’re a complete fucking psycho don’t feel like I’m trying to exclude you. ↩
2. Though, as always in new Who episodes, the threat to the characters we know isn’t enough; also, the entire planet Earth might be wiped out. It’s not a criticism — I’d just like something to happen on a smaller scale, once in a while. ↩
3. This reminded me of the old Australian sketch comedy show, Fast Forward, and their piss-takes of Craig McLaughin in Home and Away. They’d play through a spoof soapie scene, all the characters would leave, and the camera would pan over to the corner, where Craig was staring into the middle distance. If you’d like a less obscure example though, try Brad Pitt in Troy. ↩
4. Or, if you like, his racial subtext. This has been the subject of some debate online since the Doctor’s recent love-life showed he was a white supremacist; ex-New Adventures writer Kate Orman went and injected facts into the discussion, which seems a curious thing to do. Perhaps it’ll catch on. ↩
5. I was looking out for a reference to Capel Industries, or something like that, but no dice. ↩
6. Given certain famous authors appearing in season four, I’m cautiously optimistic. ↩

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This entry was posted by the illustrious Tom Charman on Friday, January 11th, 2008. It concerns such pressing issues as Doctor Who, tv. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.