Review: Doctor Who Season 4 Episode 1 - Voyage of the Damned
Category: Doctor Who, Reviews, Science Fiction, Television
published April 28th, 2008
Doctor Who returned for its fourth season with a visit to the Titanic. Not that Titanic, a space faring luxury liner named the Titanic. The Doctor, temporarily without companion is paired up with guest star Kylie Minogue.
Did I mention the new title music? I preferred the previous version, but it's no big deal.
Image by stovak via Flickr
This was the extra long Christmas special with the spaceship Titanic visiting the planet Earth. But several of the robots are acting up. Is it coincidence that the stylized robots reminded me of the ones from the Tom Baker story Robots of Death. Actually there are a number of deliberate references in this story, including to the Poseidon adventure.
Being a Christmas special the episode is packed with a host of familiar faces (for viewers of British television) which is an added treat for someone like me.
Visually this episode is gorgeous with a wonderful set and some excellent special effects. More importantly thought its pure Doctor Who. There's action, excitement and comedy all rolled together. By this stage David Tennant has mastered his portrayal of the Doctor, to the point that he can deliver even the most ham fisted of lines with total conviction (and there are a couple of those in this episode).
Kylie Minogue was very appealing in the stand in companion role as Astrid. It's a difficult part to play since you are second fiddle to the Doctor and frequently stuck asking the dumb questions. It's hard to connect with the audience in a one off position like that.
Russell T Davies has been widely criticsed for his Doctor Who scripts and his stories are not amongst my favorites. However this episode worked well for me. It's not particularly original, but it is fun. Is having the Queen waving happy Christmas to a flying ship silly? Yes. But people take their Sci-Fi too seriously.
Some people may have problems with the ending. The death toll was high after all and it couldn't exactly be called a happy ending. But Doctor Who has always had that element of sacrifice to it. There is no victory without loss.
| 2.9 |
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2 Comments ... Have Your Say!
May 4th, 2008 -
Well she’s not going to win any awards certainly, but I think given the limited amount of time the “stand in companion” was going to have, using someone with a recognizable persona gets the most amount of sympathy from the audience. If they’d used an unknown I think the ending would have had most people just shrugging their shoulders.
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3.2 |
May 4th, 2008 -
This episode would definitely not go on my favourite list, there were parts of it that were very good but I have to say Kylie spoiled it for me. I can see the appeal of having someone so internationally famous in the show, it was just unfortunate that her acting was terrible, particularly when we have such good performances from Billie Piper and Freema Agyeman to compare her to.