Yay, I’m finally back with a favorite show to write about. In case you didn’t know, I’ve been in the process of moving to Idaho with my six feral cats and eight pit bulls (actually, if you want to get technical, seven pit bulls–two are conjoined and share a soul–I’m not sure how they’ll work that out in doggy heaven). Our neighbors finally got enough money together in a community pot to purchase the whole crew bus tickets out of town. We’ve moved into a one bedroom shack in the forest, but luckily I can get 28k dial-up if I walk six miles to the general store. They have a sweet Tandy TRS-80 hooked up to the interwebs. Our shack has a dirt floor, but I don’t mind since my feet are dirty anyway. In any event, on with the review:

The Doctor Who Christmas Special! Voyage of the Damned

For those of you like me who refuse to wait for the SciFi Channel or BBC America to get around to bringing you the latest Doctor Who episodes, bittorrent is like manna from heaven. If you have not experienced the goodness of torrents, google uTorrent and download and install it. Then head over to mininova.org, and search for “Doctor Who Voyage of the Damned”. In several hours, you will be enjoying the latest episodes of Doctor Who and most any other show you can think of. If (like me) you have Tivo, you can upload the episodes through Tivo Desktop and watch them on the big screen. In any event, on to the episode!

As you might recall, we left off with one of the most idiotic Doctor Who episodes ever. Russell T Davies transformed David Tennant into a messiah-like figure, and transformed Martha into a modern-day Luke spreading the epistle of Who-dom. For the sake of my love of Doctor Who, I will just pretend that episode never existed and will move on.

This episode starts with the Doctor, alone again following Martha’s departure, traveling in the TARDIS. Suddenly the nose of what appears to be the Titanic bursts through the side of the TARDIS. The ship quickly repairs itself, and the Doctor dematerializes inside the ship. We get a glimpse of several angel robots (ala Blink—one of the best Doctor Who episodes ever—and a non Russell T Davies episode I must add) and some aliens. Clearly, this is not your great-grandmother’s Titanic. The Doctor looks out of a porthole, and it is revealed that he is actually on a spaceship recreation of the Titanic (ala the cruise ship in The Fifth Element) in orbit around the Earth.

A revamped theme cuts in, which is slightly different than the one used the past few years. I can’t quite put my finger on the exact changes, except that it seems more synthesizer-heavy than previously. Change is good, especially since I have 4 different versions of the theme song on my ipod already, and can listen to any one that I choose on a moments notice. I hasten to add, however, that I am in no way, shape or form a Doctor Who geek.

We go back to the bridge of the Titanic, where that annoying guy from As Time Goes By and about a 100 other BBC series (Geoffrey Palmer) is the Captain. The underlying music is reminiscent of a bad Roger Moore-era Bond film. Composer Murray Gold has been criticized in the past for his heavy-handed music, and it looks like he’s off to a bad start again this series.

The Captain (henceforth Captain Jowls) is lecturing the crew about Christmas being a time of celebration. He offers them some rum, which seems a tad clichéd to me.

I have to say, that the bridge set is pretty shabby looking. There is a light board in the background that looks like it was made by a junior high industrial arts class. The cut away shots of the radar screen are impressive, but don’t match the physical set at all.

Captain Jowls tries to get the young midshipman (henceforth “the Rookie”) to leave him on the bridge alone, but the young man declines due to it being a breach of regulation. Captain Jowls makes other menacing statements under his breath, which I like to refer to as “foreshadowing by sledgehammer.”

Cut to the “Fiesta Deck” where the guests are dressed in period costume and dancing to “Walking in a Winter Wonderland.” The Doctor talks to one of the angel robots–who happen to have the same voice as the Ood. They actually are robots who are there to provide information to guests. The robot angel conveniently gives the back story, explaining that the cruise is meant to expose guests to “primitive culture.” The robot breaks down and is carried off to a storage room where other malfunctioning robots are being examined. [After watching the entire episode, it is unclear how these breakdowns are related to the story itself.]

Cut back to the party, where a jerk businessman (ala Billy Zane in Titantic) knocks over Kylie Minogue’s drink platter. Apparently she is a server and her name is Astrid—a great companion name. [UPDATE: the name is ASTRID not ASTRA, which is not nearly so good.] The last few months fanboys have been going ga-ga over how good she looks in publicity stills, but I think she looks rather old and tired on video. She could easily be Rose’s mother—maybe even grandmother. I would hate to think what she looks like in HD. Surviving cancer will do that for you.

The Doctor mingles with the common-folk, and gives some comeuppance to a table of snooty rich passengers—not particularly inspired writing. The Doctor then falls in with a fat couple who won free tickets on the liner and confused “fancy dress” (i.e. formal wear) with “fancy dress” (i.e. Halloween costume). They look like very fat versions of Roy Rogers and Dale Evans, after they ate the horse.

Cut to the deck where the Rookie notes some meteor trouble on the radar, and Captain Jowls tries to explain it away. Meanwhile, the Doctor is going on shore-leave with his new found friends. The tortured husband from Keeping Up Appearances (Clive Swift) is the group leader. The Doctor whips out his psychic paper, and obtains passage for himself and Astrid. The tour guide gives a tortured explanation of Earth history which is about as accurate as your average Wikipedia posting. They teleport to the planet, and the street is strangely deserted. It looks like a soundstage, which I hope plays into the story—it does not. A crotchety newspaper salesman with a heart of gold explains that the city is deserted since the last two Christmases were near-disasters for London. However, the group is suddenly transported back to the ship due to “odd power fluctuations.”

Cut back to the bridge, where the Rookie notes that the three meteors he had seen before are changing course. A sizzling sound effect plays in the background, which makes no sense since there is no sound in space, and even if there were, he would not be able to hear it from inside the ship. The captain magnetizes the ship to draw the three comets in—trouble is looming.

Cut back to the party where everyone is celebrating and the Doctor is flirting with Astrid. The Doctor sneaks off to muddle about with the ship computer. He discovers that the shields are down, then looks out a porthole and sees the meteors coming toward the ship. This is so stupid I can hardly believe it. The Doctor warns the Captain, who ignores him. The Rookie tries to re-energize the shields, but Captain Jowls pulls a gun on him. Meanwhile the Doctor is taken into custody by some crewmembers.

We cut to a shot of the ship and the three screaming and swooshing meteors heading straight for the ship. It is unclear to me why the meteors have tails or why they are positioned as they are—it is clear that the Sun is off to the left side ,thus any tail of the meteor should be moving across the screen from left to right. Instead, the tails are extending perpendicular to the location of the Sun. A minor quibble, but the director seems to be very sloppy with his space staging.

The Doctor tries to warn the passengers and is carted off. The rookie tries to raise the shields, but is shot by Captain Jowls. He indicates that he is dying anyway and was offered a great deal of money to wreck the ship. The meteors collide, and passengers are thrown to and fro. The survivors gradually get up, and the angel robots are standing around ominously . My goodness, is this going to turn into an unholy merger of Titanic, the Poseidon Adventure, and Blink! I certainly hope not.

The Doctor notes that the engines have stopped, implying that the ship will plummet to the Earth. A steward stupidly opens a hatch, which now is a gateway to the vacuum of space (such as it is). The passengers cling to whatever is handy (ala Rose’s departure in the Torchwood building scene), but amazingly no one is else is sucked out because the Doctor quickly establishes some type of shield across the door, a plot development which borders on dues ex machine. The Doctor looks out the gaping hole to see various dead bodies floating (ala Titanic) and the TARDIS floating away (reminiscent of the Satan Pit). Will there be a single original idea in this tired mess of a story?!

Down in the engine room, where the angel robots decapitate the foreman who had previously been mean to them with a metal halo. The Doctor gets in touch with the Rookie, who is bleeding from the abdomen due to the earlier gunshot. Luckily he is a good clotter.

Apparently there are only a handful of survivors despite the fact the ship is largely in tact, and looks from the outside like it easily could hold several thousand passengers. The Doctor decides to lead the rag-tag group to the bridge—why they all have to go is not explained. At least in the Poseidon Adventure they were trying to find an escape route. I would think he would leave most of them in a safe compartment, but I suppose that would not make for a very interesting story. As the group makes their way through the rubble, I am amazed at how well and improbably the ship is lit–just one of hundreds of things wrong with this episode.

Interestingly, the Doctor indicates he is 903 years old, which no doubt will go directly into the Doctor Who Wikipedia page.

The fat couple share a moment while they try to repair a robot to help clear rubble—luckily they are robotics technicians in real life. Astrid shares a moment with a little lobster looking dude, who is actually a cyborg. They engage in a short discussion about cyborg racism that is completely stupid and irrelevant to the story. Apparently the little lobster’s batteries went dead, and she somehow recharges them for him.

Cut back to the bridge where the Rookie gets a call from some kitchen staff. Apparently there are 60 people still alive on the ship. Some angels burst into the kitchen and kill the staff. When the fat couple gets their robot working again, he immediately tries to kill them. The cowardly rich businessman (whose hammy portrayal makes Billy Zane look like Laurence Olivier), cowers and runs. The angel robots go around saying “Kill. Kill. Kill.” in their Ood voice. Cut back to the Doctor’s crew, where the fat couple—apparently oblivious to the fact that they likely will die any moment—focus in on some food lying about. Really, the jokes in this episode are so tired and obvious, I have to believe it was written by a committee of community college introductory fiction students. This stuff makes Home Improvement look like genius by comparison.

Cut back to the bridge, where the Rookie is in remarkably good shape for a man who should have gone into shock and bled to death 20 minutes ago. It turns out that the midshipman had to put a “dead lock” on the door to keep the angel out—along with anyone else, thereby creating another false crisis for the Doctor to solve.

The Doctor figures out something strange is located down on Deck 31 related to the angel robots, but rather than rush down there to investigate, he takes a few moments to have a snack and bond with the group. The angel robots in my head are saying “STUPID. STUPID. STUPID.” Where is a metal halo when you need one?

The group comes to a narrow bridge that crosses a vast, empty engine space, and, of course, the fat guy falls through the floor because . . . he is so heavy. The survivors run across the narrow bridge to escape the angels, and several of them nearly fall off as the bridge slowly begins to collapse under their weight. The angels suddenly fly down from the ceiling and start throwing deadly halos around. The group hits at them with pipes that are conveniently laying about, and each gets nicked. When all seems lost, the cyborg uses his electronics to create an electrical impulse that kills the angels. Of course, he used all his power to save the group, so there is a touching, obvious and vomit-inducing death scene. The angels slowly get back up, and are held at bay when the Doctor asks a series of questions about their mission. Apparently they intend to destroy the Earth. They do not tell him why they want to do it, as the Doctor has used up the “three questions” he was allowed—for reasons not explained. As the angel is about to kill the group, the fat lady sneaks up behind him, ties a rope to him (where she got it who knows), and uses her fat body to pull him down to the engine core where they both presumably die. You see, she is really fat, so her fatness pulls the angel downward. Don’t ask me where all this gravity is coming from. My gosh—we are only at minute 44, and I have to sit through 28 more minutes of this. Hopefully the credits are 27 minutes long. . .

The Doctor swears vengeance (ala too many Doctor Who episodes to mention), and leads the group to the next room. The Doctor gives Astrid the pulse weapon, and gives the businessman jerk his sonic screwdriver—what a brilliant idea. He intends to go down to Deck 31 by himself, without his sonic screwdriver, which makes no sense at all. The Doctor and Astrid share a llllllooooonnnnngggg moment by the power port. Suddenly the ship is rocked as it descends toward the earth, and the Rookie tells the Doctor they only have 8 minutes left (ala numerous previous episodes, where an arbitrary deadline comes out of nowhere to propel the final act). The Doctor tries to leave quickly (the first sensible thing he has done), but Astrid stops him to kiss him. Apparently time is not of the essence when facing near-certain death in space. The Doctor trots off with music that sounds like the theme from Charlie’s Angels blaring in the background. The rest of the group heads off towards the engine room, while the Doctor is surrounded by 6 angels. He apparently is given 3 more questions to save his life—one of which he wastes asking if he has 3 questions. He then asks whether he can start again—question number 2—to which they reply no. Finally he asks, through a very argumentative question/statement, whether they can actually kill him since he is not a crew member or a passenger (technically he is a stowaway). The angels stop, and agree to take the Doctor “to their leader”—why they must do this is not explained. It is also not explained why they cannot simply use some type of radio signal to the leader.

Meanwhile, the rest of the group heads to the party room, and Astrid decides to use a teleport bracelet to beam herself to Deck 31 to help the Doctor. The Rookie stupidly agrees to divert precious engine power to fuel the bracelets. For a ship on the brink of disaster, this one, inexperienced kid on the bridge sure has a lot of precise control over the various mechanisms of the ship.

The angels take the Doctor to Deck 31, which is in shambles. The “leader” reveals himself—Max, the annoying guy who apparently built the ship. Max is nothing more than a head on a machine. He is a cross between Dr. Evil and Harvey Korman’s famous rendition of Max the butler/director. Max is also a cyborg and whines about how he has had to hide away for years from a society that discriminates against cyborgs. Max admits that he has been pushed out by the board of directors and wants revenge on them and the company. He doesn’t actually offer any of this himself—the Doctor simply pulls Max’s backstory (appropriately) out of his backside. Ay yi yi. Max suddenly decides to shut the engines down remotely (why he didn’t do it earlier I cannot tell you), and instructs the angels to kill the Doctor. Of course by now Astrid has teleported to the engine room and is behind the wheel of a conveniently placed forklift. She rams Max, and goes over the edge with him when the angels cut her brake lines. The Doctor and Astrid share a quick parting glance as they play the same music that they played when Rose was trapped in a parallel universe. It seems a bit much for someone the Doctor spent, at most, several hours with. Even then, they were mostly running for their lives or interacting with other passengers.

Cut back to the bridge, where the Rookie is flailing about. The Doctor, in full messianic pose, with flames and sparks erupting behind him (what, they couldn’t find any white doves to fly through the scene?), casually struts through the mayhem with a determined look on his face. He hold his arms out—not quite in a Jesus on the Cross pose—and the angels take his arms and fly him upward where they crash through the WOODEN! floor of the bridge. The Rookie tells the Doctor there is nothing he can do to save the ship, but, of course, the Doctor proceeds to do exactly that–mainly by simply turning the old wooden steering wheel. He also tapped a few buttons with his foot and made a quick call to Buckingham Palace—he must have a good roaming plan.

The ship is plummeting towards Buckingham Palace, where they show the Queen fleeing for her life in her nightgown, slippers and curlers. A Queen and national treasure are not lost, however, as the Doctor miraculously gains control of the ship at the last moment and veers off into the sky. The Queen is shown waving and saying “thank you Doctor, Happy Christmas”, which ironically is not the stupidest moment in this trainwreck of an episode. Cue the “Mad, Mad, Mad World” whimsical music and all is well (except for the thousand or so dead passengers floating in space).

The Doctor explains that he used the heat of re-entry to restart one of the nuclear storm drives, and chats with the Rookie—who should be long dead by now. The Rookie’s shirt isn’t even stained blood red. Their moment is cut short, however, when the Doctor suddenly realizes that Astrid was wearing a teleport bracelet. He is able to retrieve a “ghost” of her former being (apparently the teleporter saves an image of a passenger when they get into mortal danger). However, the system is too damaged to fully retrieve her, and her “ghost” breaks down into sparkly light that travels out to the stars.

Cut to the wrap-up scene, where the Rookie apparently has fully recovered from his injuries after an hour or two of recuperation (and no apparent medical facilities). The jerk businessman says “thank you” and hugs the Doctor—apparently a better man for the experience. Yikes. Then the Doctor and the old guy teleport down to the TARDIS while the Rookie gives them a silly little salute (ala JFK Jr.). The Doctor essentially refuses to take the old man with him, but comforts him with the fact that he has stolen millions of dollars accessible through a credit card. The Doctor leaves him on Earth with the simple promise that he will not interfere with the timeline. A little energy beam zooms by (signaling that Astrid may be better off as a beam of light).

Oof—what a disaster of a Doctor Who episode. I give it a D+. Any Doctor Who is better than no Doctor Who, right? There is a quick preview of the upcoming season, but if this episode is any measure by which to judge it, I anticipate a very, very rocky Spring. We can only hope that Russell T Davies (who must be thanked for resurrecting the Doctor Who franchise) will make this his last season. Although I appreciate the X-mas specials are supposed to be sillier and lighter (I loved last year’s episode), this one was just too stupid to tolerate. I can only suspend belief so far, and Davies took me miles and miles past that point with this lousy addition to the modern series.