Voyage of the Damned (Doctor Who)

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192 - "Voyage of the Damned"
Doctor Who episode
Bannakaffalatta, Astrid, Mr Copper, and the Doctor are under attack from the Host while trying to save the ship.
Doctor	David Tennant (Tenth Doctor)
Companion	Kylie Minogue (Astrid Peth)
Writer	Russell T. Davies
Director	James Strong
Script editor	Brian Minchin
Executive producer(s)	Russell T. Davies Julie Gardner
Production code	4.X
Series	Christmas Special (2007)
Length	72 mins
Originally broadcast	25 December, 2007
Chronology
← Preceded by	Followed by →
"Last of the Time Lords" (episode) "Time Crash" (special)	"Partners in Crime"[1]
IMDb profile

"Voyage of the Damned" is an episode of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who. It is 72 minutes long and was broadcast on 25 December, 2007, being the third Christmas special since the show's 2005 revival. The episode introduces a new variation on the opening and closing Doctor Who theme tune and companion Astrid Peth and is dedicated to the memory of the founding producer of Doctor Who, Verity Lambert. This story continues from the final scene of "Last of the Time Lords" and "Time Crash", in which a luxury space cruiser called the Titanic breaches the walls of the TARDIS console room. The Doctor teams up with Titanic waitress Astrid Peth in order to fend off a new enemy called the Host. On its original airdate, "Voyage of the Damned" attracted 13.8 million viewers at its peak, with an overnight rating of 12.2 million viewers earning the episode 50% of the total television audience. It was the second most-watched program of Christmas Day, beaten only by the immediately following episode of EastEnders. These were the highest viewing figures for Doctor Who since 1979's City of Death.^[2]

Plot

As the Doctor leaves Earth, the bow of the Titanic crashes through the TARDIS' wall. Amazed, he quickly uses a hand crank to repair the TARDIS walls and push the ship out. The TARDIS then materialises aboard the ship. The Doctor soon learns the Titanic he has collided with is not the famous earth ocean liner, but a luxury spaceship from the planet Sto, orbiting present-day Earth to celebrate the "primitive celebration" of Christmas. He decides to stow away to enjoy the party, only confessing his status as such to waitress Astrid Peth, who has a desire to travel the stars. Astrid has found her new job disappointing, as she is not allowed off the ship to visit destination planets. The Doctor cheers her up by sneaking her onto an excursion to London via teleport, along with couple Morvin and Foon Van Hoff, an alien with a spiked red head called Bannakaffalatta, and ship's historian Mr Copper. Copper gives a skewed description of British culture while the rest of the party shops in a deserted London. Except for a few people including the Royal Family and a newspaper seller called Wilfred Mott, most of the public has fled for fear of a third consecutive Christmas attack. Meanwhile, on the Titanic's bridge, Captain Hardaker dismisses all the officers, ostensibly for a break. Only one, Midshipman Frame, refuses to go, due to regulations that two officers must remain on the bridge. The excursion party returns just as Hardaker commits an act of sabotage by causing meteors to collide with the ship, and shoots Frame when he attempts to prevent the disaster. Hardaker is killed in the resulting collision, as are the bulk of the crew and passengers. With the engines losing power, the Titanic is heading for an extinction-level collision with the Earth. The Doctor makes contact with the injured Frame, and then leads a small group of survivors in a climb through the shattered vessel to reach him. Complicating matters are the Host, information androids resembling angels that have been reprogrammed to kill everyone on board. The Doctor's party is repeatedly attacked by Host, and the Doctor's sonic screwdriver proves to be useless against them. As they flee, Bannakaffalatta reveals to Astrid that he is actually a cyborg, which he kept a secret on Sto for fear of being an outcast. While crossing a bridge over the engine, he saves the party from a Host attack by transmitting an electromagnetic pulse from his cybernetic implants, killing himself in the process. The Van Hoffs also die en route: Morvin falls from the ledge into the nuclear engines, and Foon subsequently commits suicide while pulling a surviving Host down with her, causing the Doctor to make a grim promise that no-one else will die. The survivors take Bannakaffalatta's EMP unit with them as their only effective weapon against the Host. The Doctor sends the remaining survivors on ahead with the EMP unit and the sonic screwdriver, while he attempts to reach the place from which the Host are controlled. He convinces the Host to take him to their leader, Max Capricorn, the cruise line's owner. He is revealed to be cybernetic as well, and is bitter over being forced out of power by his company's board of directors. The collision of the Titanic into a heavily-populated world will not only break the company, but see the board charged with murder, securing his revenge. Outnumbered by Host and faced with death, the Doctor is saved by Astrid, who teleports to his position and rams Capricorn with a fork-lift truck, pushing both him and herself off a precipice to their deaths. Assuming control of the Host upon Capricorn's death, the Doctor makes his way to the bridge. Working with Frame, he uses the heat from entry into the Earth's atmosphere to re-start the ship's engines. In mid-descent, he discovers that they are headed straight for one of the few places in London currently inhabited, Buckingham Palace, which the Doctor calls to evacuate before managing to get control of the ship just in time to avoid hitting the building. With the danger over, the Doctor suddenly realises that there might be hope for Astrid after all. As she was wearing a teleport bracelet at the time of her death, her molecular pattern might still be stored in the teleport's system's buffers. However, despite desperate efforts, only a shadow of Astrid can be generated due to extensive damage to the system. The Doctor reluctantly accepts this and opens a window behind her, allowing Astrid to dissipate into atoms that will float free into space, so she can at least fulfil her dream of exploring the universe, forever. The Doctor teleports back to earth with Mr Copper, who is no expert on Earth, but a former salesman who lied his way onto the ship to explore the stars. The Doctor leaves him on the planet to build a new life, funded by the ship's expenses card, which contains £1,000,000. The Doctor then heads off in the TARDIS, alone.

Cast

• The Doctor — David Tennant
• Astrid Peth — Kylie Minogue
• Max Capricorn — George Costigan
• Mr Copper — Clive Swift
• Rickston Slade — Gray O'Brien
• Midshipman Alonzo Frame — Russell Tovey
• Foon Van Hoff — Debbie Chazen
• Morvin Van Hoff — Clive Rowe
• Bannakaffalatta — Jimmy Vee
• Captain Hardaker — Geoffrey Palmer
• Wilfred Mott — Bernard Cribbins
• Chief Steward — Andrew Havill
• Engineer — Bruce Lawrence
• Nicholas Witchell — Himself
• The Host — Paul Kasey
• Kitchen Hand — Stefan Davis
• Newsreader — Jason Mohammad
• Alien Voices — Colin McFarlane, Ewan Bailey
• Voice of the Queen — Jessica Martin

Cast notes

• Clive Swift previously appeared as Jobel in Revelation of the Daleks.
• Geoffrey Palmer previously appeared in Doctor Who and the Silurians and The Mutants. His son, Charles Palmer, directed four episodes of Series 3.
• Bernard Cribbins previously appeared in the 1966 film Daleks - Invasion Earth 2150 AD, based on the 6-part TV story The Dalek Invasion of Earth shown 2 years previously. He also appeared in the Big Finish Productions story Horror of Glam Rock.
• Jimmy Vee previously appeared as the Moxx of Balhoon in "The End of the World", the Space Pig in "Aliens of London" and the Graske in the interactive special "Attack of the Graske". In The Sarah Jane Adventures, he appeared as the Child Slitheen in Revenge of the Slitheen and The Lost Boy, and reappeared as the Graske in Whatever Happened to Sarah Jane?.
• Jessica Martin played Mags in The Greatest Show in the Galaxy.
• Yamit Mamo performed the songs "My Angel Put the Devil in me" and "The Stowaway" on the Series 3 soundtrack, the latter being specially composed for this episode.
• Kylie Minogue has previously been referenced as a real person in the Doctor Who universe, in "The Idiot's Lantern" (2006) - with the Doctor exclaiming that '"It's never too late, as a wise person once said... Kylie, I think!"', in reference to her 1989 hit single "Never Too Late".
• Composer Murray Gold makes a cameo appearance in this episode^[3] along with arranger Ben Foster and singer Yamit Mamo.^[4]
• Queen Elizabeth II was previously played by uncredited extra Mary Reynolds in Silver Nemesis and appears in person (in archive footage) in "The Idiot's Lantern".

Continuity

Although the special takes place aboard an otherworldly namesake of the famed ocean liner, the RMS Titanic and its sinking was mentioned previously within the series in Robot,^[5] The Robots of Death,^[6] The Invasion of Time,^[7] "Rose"^[8] and "The End of the World"^[9]. The Titanic also appeared in the Virgin New Adventures book The Left-Handed Hummingbird, written by Kate Orman, and the 1989 Doctor Who Magazine comic strip Follow That TARDIS!. The special also references the previous Christmas specials - London's evacuation is a direct effect of the Sycorax invasion in "The Christmas Invasion" and the Webstar attack in "The Runaway Bride". It is also the third consecutive white Christmas, though in "The Christmas Invasion" and "Voyage of the Damned", the snow is debris falling to Earth,^[10] and in "The Runaway Bride",^[11] it is an effect of the TARDIS' atmospheric excitation, leading the Doctor to wonder if it will ever really snow. Earth was also referred to as "Sol 3" and a "Level 5 civilisation", the former term a designation for Earth often used in science fiction derived from the Sun's Latin name of Sol (also used in The Deadly Assassin and Last of the Time Lords)^[12][13] and the latter term being used in the Fourth Doctor serial City of Death and The Sarah Jane Adventures story Revenge of the Slitheen.^[14][15] This episode also marks the first time in the revived series of Doctor Who that the Doctor has referred to Gallifrey as being in the constellation of Kasterborous.^[4] The Doctor also uses the catchphrase allons-y in the episode, a running gag originating in "Army of Ghosts", where he muses that he should use the phrase more often, particularly if he met someone called Alonso, so that he could say "Allons-y Alonso",^[16] which he is able to do in this episode, commenting that he had always wanted to say it. He says the same of the phrase "take me to your leader", which had been said once before in the new series by the Ninth Doctor (in Aliens of London on being met by UNIT), but never by the Tenth.

Outside references

In addition to the new track "The Stowaway", diegetic music on the ship includes the songs "Winter Wonderland" and "I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday". Captain Hardraker refers to "Silent Night" when talking about Christmas Eve on Earth. Additionally, the malfunctioning Host stuttering over the name "Max" is a reference to 1980s virtual presenter Max Headroom.^[4] When trying to figure out command overrides for the Host, the Doctor uses 666 ("The Number of the Beast") and 42 ("The Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything"). Douglas Adams, who prescribed the purpose for the latter, was a writer for the series during the Fourth Doctor's tenure, also creator of the computer game Starship Titanic

Production

Kylie Minogue was initially reported by The News of the World in April 2007, indicating that she would be playing a "sexy Cyberwoman".^[17] While Davies initially dismissed the story, Minogue indicated that she would be in the episode,^[18][19] and her role was officially confirmed in early July.^[20] Filming was delayed for one week in July due to the death of Helen McDonald, David Tennant's mother, from cancer.^[21][22] The scene set in London was filmed on The Hayes in Cardiff city centre. Locations on The Hayes have previously been used in "Rose" and in the previous year's Christmas special, "The Runaway Bride". The shots are arranged as to avoid the welsh tourism shop on this road.

Broadcast, reception, and release

A scene where the Doctor is lifted through the ship by the angelic Host caused offence to the group Christian Voice.

The episode's Christmas Day UK broadcast received 13.8 million viewers, an audience narrowly exceeded by the 13.9 million who watched the BBC soap EastEnders.^[23] The average across all 70 minutes was 12.2 million viewers. This was the highest total of viewers for the new series, exceeding the previous record set by "Rose", and the highest for Doctor Who overall since 1979 (specifically, the final episode of "City of Death" which aired while rival network ITV suffered programming disruptions due to a strike).^[24] Before its broadcast, the episode drew criticism from Millvina Dean, the last living survivor of the 1912 Titanic sinking, who stated that it was "disrespectful to make entertainment of such a tragedy".^[25] The organisation Christian Voice expressed offence at the religious imagery of a scene in which the Doctor is lifted through the ship by robot angels.^[26] Gareth McLean, reviewing a preview screening for The Guardian's TV and radio weblog, appreciated the episode's use of "the disaster movie template" and came to a favourable overall conclusion: "For the most part, The Voyage of the Damned is absolutely smashing." Its main flaw, in his view, was the "blank and insipid" acting of Kylie Minogue.^[27] James Walton of The Daily Telegraph called the episode "a winning mixture of wild imagination and careful writerly calculation".^[28] Tim Teeman of The Times however, found that the episode "sucks", stating that "It was boring, despite the endless dashing about and CGI flimflam". ^[29] The episode also received coverage in Minogue's native Australia, with The Daily Telegraph called the episode the "best ever" Doctor Who episode^[30], although the episode is yet to air nationwide.

References

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:

Tenth Doctor

External links

The Tardis Index File has information related to: Voyage of the Damned

• "Voyage of the Damned" at bbc.co.uk