January 05, 2008

Voyage of the Damned (2007)

This Christmas special received more hype since the show returned in March 2005. Most of the hype was because Pop star Kylie Minogue was going to star in it. I was really looking forward to it to though there was one slight irritation and that is I wish Martha would have stayed until the end of this story instead of Last of the Timelords. It would have been nice to see the Doctor and Martha on the Titanic together. But anyway that’s not going to detract from the story.

It was a strange idea to set it aboard the Titanic but then you learn that it was in fact a spaceship called Titanic and that to me was a curious decision by RTD. The idea that asteroids hit the Titanic and it starts floating towards Earth which mirrored the tragic events of the real Titanic seemed quite insensitive because of the huge losses of life that the event produced. But getting to the actual story itself one of the things that I noticed was how much like the Poseidon Adventure it seemed but that only really appeals to the story, it’s a Christmas special so it should be a bit different from the normal stories. The Hosts were well thought of, they seemed truly menacing from the beginning they came onto the screen. The removing of their ‘halo’ from above their heads was a truly scary moment. The individual characters in this story were all well written and well acted. The Van Hoofs stood out the most for me, they seemed really genuine and when they were introduced to the Doctor as being mocked for dressing up differently to the other passengers then you knew that they were they for sympathy and when Morvin Van Hoff died it was truly a surprising moment and then moments later she gives up her own life was another sad moments.

Kylie Minogue was the most surprising thing for me, I wasn’t expecting that much from her and when in this story she wasn’t brilliant but she was a lot better than I thought she was going to be. The main reason behind this is because the story wasn’t centred on her which is what I thought it would be. She was more of a companion to the Doctor than I thought would be the case. The other thing about this story that I thought was the best thing about this story were the special effects. The effects in Doctor Who since 2005 have been of the highest order but in this story they excelled in what are some of the best effects I have ever seen in this show. The sequence when they were trying to get across the walkway sort of thing and looking both up and down was truly spectacular.

The main problem that I do have with this story is that the plot was a bit weak. When the show finished I thought that there didn’t really seem much of a point to the plot. The fact that Max Capricorn set the whole asteroids hitting the Titanic so that it would crash into the Earth just to throw the board members who got rid of him thrown into jail seemed a tad bit ridiculous. I know that this isn’t a traditional main-series story but they could have worked harder on finding a plot that actually worked, as such it let down what was otherwise a rather good story. It wasn’t as good as The Runaway Bride as it also lacked pace but despite those negative aspects I still thought it was a enjoyable Christmas Day story and one that will deserve another viewing to really get a proper perspective of this festive episode.

No comments:

Post a Comment