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sushigal007 · 2 years

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Next up in my Doctor Who Christmas Specials rewatch is Voyage Of The Damned, woop woop!

So when all the promo pictures for this came out, people were absolutely raging about Kylie's outfit not being historically accurate for the Titanic. Skirt too short. Boots too high. Proper fuming, they were.

And then twenty seconds after the episode starts, we find out that's because it's not the real Titanic. It's a literal space ship full of alien tourists visiting for Christmas, lol.

So already the Chritmas vibes are going HARD. The ship is beautiful. We've got crimbo music and the Heavenly Hosts to provide atmosphere. The Captain sends his crew off to get blotto, as is tradition. But Midshipman Frame is new and not quite comfy breaking rules just yet, so he sticks around while the Captain goes on about silent nights in a deeply ominous way.

The Doctor shows off his genre savvyness by immediately questioning the name of the ship, presumably because he's sailed on the Titanic about half a dozen times by now and also probably watched that episode of Futurama. Alas, the Host goes bananas before he can get answers, and we find out that this is an ongoing problem.

Kylie! Yes, I will be calling her Kylie throughout. She has dreams of travelling but is stuck waiting tables and isn't allowed off the ship. Even aliens have to put up with low-paying menial jobs with asshole customers, I guess. But the Doctor is nice to her, so she gets him a drink instead of reporting him.

Class clashes continue when we meet Morvin and Foon Van Hoff, who won their tickets in a competiton and are looked down on by the other first class guests, so it's fun to watch the Doctor spray them with champagne, tee hee.

Time for an excursion! The Doctor snags Kylie and Mr Copper gives a short talk about Christmas on Earth and it is deeply hilarious to hear Christmas from the POV of aliens.

And then they get beamed down to March 2020 by accident. Not really, but it might as well be with how empty is all is. The Doctor is weirded out, but Kylie is totally thrilled to be on an alien planet looking at the alien stars and it's very sweet to watch. Alas, she's Kylie, so we already know there's no way she's sticking around for long.

WILF!!! He's here to explain why they don't have to pay extras for this scene.

Midshipman Frame is noticing things. Alas, he knows even less Earth history than Mr Copper, so he has no clue what's coming. But the Doctor is busy hacking into shit and figures it out almost at once. Well, except for the bit where the Captain's in on it, oops. He's a bit sad they sent a newbie, but not sad enough to hesitate pulling the trigger.

Asshole guest doesn't pay much attention to the Doctor ranting about the shields as he's dragged away for hacking, until a piece of debris flies through a window and lands at his feet and the Hosts tell him they're going to die, so he goes running after the little group, which means he's out of the way when the meteors hit. Shame.

And NOW it's Titanic: In Space! Absolute carnage. And the Heavenly Hosts start getting into formation, so we know shenanigans are afoot.

"We're very much alive" oh he's definitely gonna die.

Like, immediately.

We get a name for asshole guest, but I'm just going to keep calling him asshole guest, because the first thing he does is roast the dead steward.

Oops, there goes the TARDIS. I like to think this sort of thing is why the Doctor started messing with the HADS again.

More carnage now as the Hosts start their murder spree. But in a festive way, of course. It's Christmas.

Doctor gets in touch with Midshipman Frame on the bridge, who lets him know this was all deliberate.

The Doctor starts getting shit done and asshole guest asks who died and put him in charge, which gives the Doctor a chance to pose and show off his credentials.

Now a little change from the Titanic as we start veering into The Poseidon Adventure, but less upside down. Mr Copper mentions how this is all in the spirit of Christmas, a it's a festival of violence, and you know what, he's right and he should say it. I mean, have you ever SEEN an Eastenders Christmas episode? Bloodbath.

And they find a Host. Of course, they have no idea about the new orders, so they start trying to fix it, while we all quietly wish asshole guest would die already.

Mrs Van Hoff fesses up to entering the competition 5000 times to win and they're now hugely in debt. Happily her husband sees the funny side and all is well, so they're doomed.

Bannakaffalatta is a cyborg! Kylie tells him it's nothing to be ashamed of, cyborgs are getting equal rights, so he's doomed.

Up on the bridge, the kitchen staff call in, just in time for Midshipman Frame to hear them all get murdered by the Hosts. He can't do anything for them, but he does manage to warn the Doctor a moment too late, oops. He does at least manage to shut them out of the bridge.

Asshole guest refuses to lift a finger to help. I'm so looking forward to him dyi- ahh nuts, I just remembered he lives AND gets rich from this, like an opposite Scrooge.

There's something hidden on Deck 31. Midshipman Frame tries to investigate it while the Doctor accidentally asks Kylie to become his new companion, just to make it totally clear that she's doomed. She then asks about Christmas and the Doctor does a little bit of bragging as he mentions that he was there and took the last room. I know it was probably a Rosa sort of situation where he had to do it to make sure history stayed fixed, but aso, what a dick move when you know there's a pregnant woman about to give birth in a stable. Mr Copper asks why they can't ask Earth for help, he knows they have shuffles (not a typo), and the Doctor questions his degree, which is when he admits it's a fake. It's cute to see him and the Doctor bonding over their shared love of exciting, exotic Earth. Living here, it’s easy to forget that our panet’s pretty neat actually.

And then Morvin dies. Total mood whiplash.

Asshole guest cannot read the room and I hate him.

Foon is inconcolable and it's very sad to watch. The Doctor says he'll come back for her, so she's doomed.

Then the Hosts vanish. Mr Copper's fake Earth degree comes in handy when he remembers that angels have wings. They start throwing their halos around and for a while, the group fend them off with a festive game of rounders, but then they start getting hit. Happily plot armour just means it hurts, they don't die. And then Bannakaffalatta's plot armour wears off and he dies letting out an EMP, knocking out the Hosts just long enough for the Doctor to get a few questions in.

And then Foon lassos the Host and chucks herself off the bridge, Jesus, this is dark. Our group is now down to four survivors.

Kylie twigs that the Doctor isn't coming with them to safety, he's off to find out wtf is going on on Deck 31. They have a little chat about how this is his life and he bigs it up for her, she mentions she's unemployed and has no family, can she come with, so she's super, super doomed.

No mistletoe, but Kylie gets in a festive snog! She has to stand on a box to reach his lips, tee hee.

The Doctor runs into more Hosts and wastes two of his three questions asking if he has three questions. He loopholes them into not killing him and taking him to Deck 31, even getting in a cheeky 'take me to your leader'.'

Kylie spots the teleport bracelets and has a horrible idea.

Deck 31 is a mess. Out comes the ultimate authorty and surprise, surprise, it's Max Capricorn in an impact chamber, planning to hide out the crash! It's a fun little twist, because we've seen his face on all the screens already, and some of the guests mentioned that the company was going downhill.

The Doctor kinda gets his reasons for faking his death, but doesn't understand why he's going to destroy the Earth. Then he figures it out. Aloud, for our benefit. The reason? He wants to fuck over his board of directors. But Max bores of the Doctor quite quickly. He shuts off the engines, orders the Hosts to grab him and villainously gloats.

And then Kylie epically quits. And dies. It's not quite as moving as the music tries to make us feel, because it's Kylie and she was always far too famous to stick around on this show and also because Max Capricorn's face is hilarious.

A firce fire walk of emotion from the Doctor. He holds out his hands and the Hosts literally fly him to the bridge while the soundrack sings and it's so deeply ridiculously over the top, I can't stop laughing.

Then we get a huge logic hole when the Doctor says the Host considers him the next highest authority when he's a stowaway and there's two other members of staff still alive who would outrank him.

The ship is about to hit Earth. Of course, as is the case with all alien threats in Doctor Who, the epicentre is going to be England. Of course, because we already established that everyone has fled London because of the previous weird Christmas shit and the only person left is the Queen, it's specifically going to hit Buckingham Palace, so the Doctor calls her and tells her to evacuate. We get a very silly shot of her pink slippers and corgis fleeing. It's bonkers. I love it. She emerges just in time for the Doctor to haul the Titanic out of freefall and she wishes him a Merry Christmas. Everybody cheers. A picture of Max Capricorn falls off the wall and lands in a fire. It's pure cheese.

And then the Doctor remembers Kylie was wearing a teleport bracelet! She might be alive! She's not, of course, the computers are too damaged to bring her back, and we get a moment of the Timelord Victorious as he kicks things in rage and screams that he can do anything. But Mr Copper very poetically says she's just stardust now and to let her go. Aww. Bye Kylie.

A little while later, things have stabilised. Mr Copper laments that his fake degree's probably going to come out. Asshole guest has a little gloat about how rich all this has made him. Mr Copper says that if he could choose who lived, that guy probably isn't who you'd choose, hinting some more at things to come, but also possibly a little dig at how unrealistic it would be if the writers only let the good people survive. Which yes, OK, but also it's Christmas dammit, I want nice things to happen to nice people and for asshole guest to be visited tonight by the ghosts of all the people whose deaths he mocked.

The Doctor and Mr Copper teleport down to Earth. The Doctor gives him a little crash course in Earth history as he heads off to find the TARDIS. Mr Copper complains that once again, this snow is fake. The Doctor says he's heading off, he travels alone, Mr Copper just isn't hot enough, but luckily he thinks to question the limit on Mr Copper's credit card and lets him know he basically just won the lottery and can live out the rest of his life quite happily on Earth. He's thrilled! He can have a house! With a garden! And a door! The millenial dream! Aww. At least somebody nice got a happy ending.

And then we get a super cheesy star sparkle as Kylie's spirit twinkles by. And then the final screen is in memory of Verityy Lambert. RIP.

FINAL THOUGHTS

My favourite one so far. It's a great one to watch with a casual viewer because the Doctor isn't moping any more and he's between companions, so you don't need to have watched any of the actual series. Moving the setting off of Earth gives us far more chance to talk about Christmas with hilariously clueless aliens. Everything is festive from the get-go, the Titanic guests know this is a time of celebration and they are here to party. Meanwhile, we all know the significance of the ship's name, so we know perfectly well what's coming.

Still, it's quite a shock to see just how much of the cast get killed. There's only four people left on the ship at the end, and one of those is asshole guest. Looking back, I can see that it sets up that conversation between the Doctor and Mr Copper which leads into the Timelord Victorious arc, but it still annoys me, because it's Christmas. I want to see bad things happen to horrible rich people, why do you think there's so any adaptations of A Christmas Carol!?

But other than that small flaw - well, that and the hosts deciding the Doctor is the highest authority on the ship, just say he reprogrammed them with Max Capricorn’s secret Deck 31 computers ffs - it's a fun story, very silly and over the top in places, just the thing to sit in front of with your brain switched off as you go into a turkey coma.

#nonsims #doctor who #Tenth Doctor #voyage of the damned #sushi's christmas doctor who rewatch

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esonetwork · 4 years

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Timestamp #194: Time Crash & Voyage of the Damned

New Post has been published on https://esonetwork.com/timestamp-194-time-crash-voyage-of-the-damned/

Timestamp #194: Time Crash & Voyage of the Damned

Doctor Who: Time Crash Doctor Who: Voyage of the Damned (Children in Need and Christmas Specials, 2007)

When you look deep into the pockets of the universe, you never know what you find.

Time Crash

Immediately after Martha left the TARDIS and the Doctor once again took flight, the blue box goes haywire. The Doctor stabilizes the time capsule, but he finds himself face-to-face with the Fifth Doctor. The Fifth Doctor is confused but the Tenth Doctor is amused, getting nostalgic about the frowny face, the hat, the coat, the crickety-cricket outfit, the brainy specs, and even the decorative vegetable on his lapel.

The Fifth Doctor is beside himself, but his frustration is interrupted by a warning that two TARDISes have merged and have the potential to blow a hole in the space-time continuum the size of Belgium. The Fifth Doctor thinks that the Tenth Doctor is a fan, possibly from LINDA. The Tenth offers the Fifth a sonic screwdriver but remembers that he went hands-free at this point in his lives.

At the moment of Belgium, the Doctors initiate a supernova and a black hole at the same time and separate their capsules. The Tenth works to send his predecessor home, curious if Nyssa and Tegan were with him, or whether he has encountered the Cybermen, the Mara, or the Master yet. The Tenth Doctor admits that he just faced the Master, prompting the Fifth to ask about “that rubbish beard.” The Tenth replies that the beard is gone, replaced by a wife.

Oh, Steven Moffat and his jokes about homosexuality.

As the Fifth Doctor returns his time, the Tenth takes a moment to say goodbye. After all, the Fifth Doctor was his Doctor.

The moment is broken when a ship crashes through the TARDIS walls.

Her name is Titanic.

Voyage of the Damned

The Doctor uses the TARDIS console to regenerate the capsule’s walls and materialize aboard the cruise liner. He finds a Christmas party in full swing, complete with aliens and seemingly robotic angels, as the starliner Titanic settles into orbit with the planet Earth spinning around below.

The ship’s captain offers his stalwart crew a tot of rum to celebrate the holiday. The bridge crew leaves except for a midshipman who quotes regulation to the captain, and he’s allowed to stay behind.

The Titanic is a Max Capricorn cruiseliner, which the tuxedo-clad Doctor discovers as he views a promotional ad before rejoining the party. He finds that the robotic angels, the Host, are the shipboard information system. The ship was named after the most famous vessel of the planet Earth and is en route from Sto to observe the human holiday. The angel short circuits and is taken below to the engineering section with all of the other malfunctioning robots.

Among all the lovers in the room, the Doctor meets Astrid Peth, a member of the ship’s staff who accidentally drops a drink tray. She wants to travel like the Doctor, and realizing that it’s never too late, he reveals himself as a stowaway. She’s impressed – almost like love at first sight – and offers a drink instead of reporting him. The Doctor joins a table with Morvin and Foon Van Hoff, a couple in sparkly Western-style dress who are being mocked by the black-tie guests. The Doctor uses the sonic screwdriver to pop a champagne bottle and douse the bullies before joining the Van Hoffs for a trip to the planet below. En route, he spins Astrid around and brings her along. After a poorly researched historical brief, the party is joined by a small spiky red-skinned alien before they all transmat down to a deserted city.

The Doctor is perplexed: London should be bustling with people, but there’s not a soul in sight.

He asks Wilfred Mott, a newsstand operator, where everyone is on a night like this. He points to the last two Christmas invasions as examples that drove people to flee the city just in case. Better the devil you know, right? The Doctor and Astrid are beamed back up, mid-sentence, due to irregular power fluctuations on the ship. The Doctor is intrigued.

Meanwhile, the captain has magnetized the hull to draw in nearby passing meteors. The midshipman is perplexed. The Doctor discovers that the shields are down and tries to warn the bridge, but he’s ignored and apprehended. He tries to warn the passengers but is taken away. The captain also shoots the midshipman to prevent him from stopping events. He has been extorted in some way.

The passengers start to come around but everyone is too late to stop the collision. The ship is struck on the starboard side and mayhem erupts. As the Host come back to life in engineering, the Doctor notes that the chaos has stopped for the time being. He also remarks that Titanic is a bad name for a ship and that his tuxedo is awfully unlucky.

One of the crew inadvertently causes a hull breach but the Doctor re-enables the oxygen shield. He also watches as the TARDIS drifts by. Luckily, it locks on to the nearest planet and flies into the blue. Unfortunately, they can’t reach it.

Another bit of bad luck? The Host are now programmed to kill.

The Doctor makes contact with the bridge and Midshipman Frame. They discover that the storm drive engines are spooling down. If ship loses locomotion and plummets into the planet, it will cause a nuclear explosion and a planetwide extinction event. The ship is a timebomb.

The Doctor – “I’m the Doctor. I’m a Time Lord. I’m from the planet Gallifrey in the constellation of Kasterborous. I’m nine hundred and three years old and I’m the man who’s going to save your lives and all six billion people on the planet below. You got a problem with that?” – believes that it’s never too late and asks the survivors to confide in him. He takes charge and rallies them to both escape and save the planet. Astrid really believes in him.

As they move through the ship, Mr. Copper, the historian, keeps getting information about the planet below all wrong. They discover a disabled Host and the Van Hoffs (who are robotics experts) start trying to fix it. Meanwhile, Bannakaffalatta (the small red alien who is really a cyborg) scouts ahead through the wreckage as Astrid and the impossible Rickston Slade try to move enough wreckage to get everyone through. Astrid and Bannakaffalatta develop a special relationship as they go.

Midshipman Frame discovers that the Host are corrupted after they kill survivors in the galley. He warns the Doctor just as the Van Hoffs fix their disabled robot. The group of survivors rush to safety, learning on the way that the Host are being controlled from Deck 31. The Host assault the bridge, forcing Frame to deadlock the hatches and seal himself in without escape.

The survivors take a meal break while they have a chance. The Doctor and Astrid continue building their relationship while Copper reveals that he lied to get his job. The Host banging on a nearby bulkhead force the survivors to press forward, but that leads them to the space above the nuclear engines. The space between bulkheads is spanned by a narrow bridge, and as Morvin declares that he and Foon will go last, the deck gives way and he plummets to his doom. Astrid comforts Foon as Slade crawls across the bridge.

Bannakaffalatta goes next, followed by Astrid and Copper. Foon refuses to cross and the Doctor promises to come back for her. The Host stops banging on the bulkheads, but only because they take flight and start using their halos as deadly discuses. Bannakaffalatta reveals his nature to the survivors with an electromagnetic pulse, disabling the Host but giving his life in the process.

Copper salvages the electromagnetic transmitter as a remaining Host rises. The Doctor stumbles onto a security override that allows him three questions, so he learns that the Host have been instructed by their leader to kill the survivors. The Host raises its halo to strike but Foon wraps it in a rope and jumps over the side, sacrificing herself for the group.

Vowing that no more shall die tonight, the Doctor sets everyone to work. Astrid makes her case to join him on the TARDIS and he agrees that it would be wonderful to have her step back in time with him. He sends the survivors with the EMP unit and his sonic screwdriver, and with a kiss from Astrid, he rushes down to Deck 31.

Astrid, Copper, and Slade successfully defeat a group of the Host while the Doctor reveals himself as a stowaway and negotiates his arrest. The survivors make it back to the ballroom and while Copper and Slade work on the distress signal, Astrid convinces Frame to give her enough power to transmat to Deck 31 and help the Doctor.

The Doctor arrives on Deck 31 and meets the ultimate authority behind the night’s events: Max Capricorn. Or rather, the disembodied head on a rolling robotic life-support system, running the company by hologram in a culture that distrusts cyborgs. Capricorn is angry that the ship hasn’t crashed yet, and the Doctor takes the time to unravel the plan. Capricorn’s company has failed and he has been pushed out by the board, so if the Titanic destroys the Earth, he gets revenge as the board gets jailed for murdered. Capricorn will survive in a special chamber and live out his life far away.

Capricorn reveals that he can remotely shut down the engines, forcing the Titanic to crash. As Capricorn orders the Doctor’s execution, Astrid rushes in with a forklift and drives Capricorn’s robotic body over the side into the engine below. The Doctor, begging inside for just a little more time, watches as she falls to her death.

The resolute Time Lord declares himself as the next highest authority on the ship and orders the Host take him straight to the bridge. They burst through the deck and the Doctor takes the helm from Midshipman Alonso Frame, steering the ship straight into the atmosphere. He calls up Buckingham Palace, ordering the Queen and her corgis to evacuate just in case his calculations are off. On the street below, Wilfred screams at the sky.

The Titanic barely misses the palace (but gets a Christmas greeting from the Queen) and sails into the sky, using the heat of re-entry to restart the auxiliary engines. The Doctor did it again.

He has an epiphany and tries to use the teleport bracelets to restore Astrid using their safety protocol. He’s only partially successful due to the damage in the system, bringing her back as only a fragment of her former self. The Doctor apologizes and kisses her in a bittersweet goodbye before opening a porthole and sending her atoms to fly among the stars forever.

Frame, Copper, and Slade, the only survivors of the starliner Titanic say their farewells to the Doctor. Copper offhandedly remarks that, if someone could decide who lives and who dies, it would make them a monster. The Doctor hands him a bracelet and they teleport to the surface. The Doctor refuses Copper’s request to travel with him, but he does explain that the credit card that Copper carries for Earth incidentals makes him a millionaire.

Copper dances away with the promise he will make the Doctor proud… and that he will always remember Astrid.

The episode closes on a dedication to Verity Lambert, OBE. She was the first producer of Doctor Who, and she died a month before this story was originally aired.

Both of these episodes were pure fun. Starting with Time Crash, we get the first multi-Doctor story of the revival era as well as the first time a classic-era Doctor’s actor was in the opening credits. It was directed by Graeme Harper, whose first credited directorial work in Doctor Who was Peter Davison��s last story.

It’s a better two-Doctor story than The Two Doctors, but that’s not hard to do.

It also marks the return of Steven Moffat to Doctor Who, a name we will see one more time in the Tennant era. The Curse of Fatal Death, The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances, The Girl in the Fireplace, Blink, and this small story are leading to bigger adventures for him in the coming years.

Moving to Voyage of the Damned, we get a rollicking adventure with a celebrity guest star as a one-shot companion. Kylie Minogue is magnetic in this story and it’s a shame that we didn’t get the chance to see her as a regular. She did a magnificent job in driving the contrast between the lonely Time Lord and one who travels with companions. She also indirectly proved the points that the Doctor is not a god and that he is not infallible.

The Host look very similar to the Axons and the Capricorn cyborg is reminiscent of Davros. We also get a couple of cameos with singer Yamit Mamo (including original song “The Stowaway“) and BBC journalist Nicholas Witchell. If you look closely at the Titanic‘s band, you’ll also note Murray Gold and Ben Foster.

The big drawback to this episode was the overuse of the Hans Gruber moment. The slow-motion shot of someone falling while looking up towards the camera happened four times – the steward, Foon, Morvin, and Astrid’s respective deaths – and that count is bordering on comical.

Regardless, this pair of stories was an entertaining adventure and a fantastic lead-in to Series Four.

Rating: 5/5 – “Fantastic!”

UP NEXT – Torchwood: Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang

The Timestamps Project is an adventure through the televised universe of Doctor Who, story by story, from the beginning of the franchise. For more reviews like this one, please visit the project’s page at Creative Criticality.

#Doctor Who #Tenth Doctor #Timestamps Project

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