Voyage of the Damned (2007)

[Missster.Freeman]

Not too bad. It's been a while since I last watched the Poseidon Adventure. There were some scenes I did not remember seeing the last time around.

So, Astrid wasn't the TARDIS after all. I kept waiting and waiting for Astrid to finally reveal her true self. Kylie was good though and so were Ernest Borgnine and Shelley Winters. The old boy was likeable - it was nice to see him have a happy ending.

DT was awesome, yet again, in his Tux and Gutties. He's never really had an off-day as the Doctor and while I don't mind if and when he moves on to other roles, he will most definitely be missed.

What else? Oh yeah, I too thought Davros was about to appear out of the mist.

I have to say, the fast pacing and the noise was there again and I still find it to be distracting. We had to hit reverse on the video remote a few times to catch pieces of dialogue that we missed. Doctor Who definitely calls for a rewatch or three to catch bits that have been missed. Which is no bad thing, imo.

Still, it's good to have the Doctor on the telly at Christmas and long may it continue. It beats watching reruns of foosty old films and shows.

[ShadowMaat]

Loved it. But then, I usually do. Not sure what to make of the new theme. It seems a little weird, but then I suppose that could be said of all the other theme changes over the years- they sound weird until you get used to them (or they change again).

I was a bit saddened by the high death toll, especially since I liked all the characters who died (at least in the Doctor's group), but I suppose that's one of the things that makes the death more meaningful... or at least more felt, folks tend to have wildly diverse interpretations of "meaningful deaths."

I caught the Poseidon Adventure vibes, too, but having only ever seen snips of that movie, I couldn't draw any real parallels. I also liked the nod to Doug Adams- both with the Starship Titanic and the Doctor's attempt to find the right security protocol by guessing 42. lol

Who did the voice of the Heavenly Host? Sounded very familiar. Ahh, the Ood Voice (among other things). Knew I knew it from somewhere.

Like the S4 teaser, too, although there were a few times when I felt like I was missing something obvious.

I'm also glad I didn't read any of the spoilers/speculation for this ep because the whole Astrid/TARDIS thing never crossed my mind so I never expected her to be anything other than what she said she was. Although that'd be a very interesting idea to explore in a future ep.

[Willow'sCat]

Not sure what to make of this one. I think the body count was way too high for a Christmas Special... Although the deaths meant nothing to me as I felt zero connection to the passengers. That was probably the worst part of the episode/story, I felt like we didn't know these people so who cares if they all die, even The Doctor's woobie face couldn't get me to shed a tear.

And yes, if you have seen the Poseidon Adventure you pretty much have seen the outline of this episode, not the least bit original which is a pity for a Special. I assume the kids would have liked it though, there was plenty of explosions and mindless violence (all be it cartoonish) *meh* I think I just expected more from Doctor Who.

Kylie was alright, I am glad they kept her lines to a minimum. Not sure on the accent but then I am wondering what happened to her Australian accent in RL. Also... and this is probably just an Australian thing, or a me thing but when he said to Kylie's character "look at me" I had a weird flashback to Kylie in Kath and Kim

Hmm, and does he have to have a snog with everyone now? Well everyone who isn't Jack apparently.

Anyone spot the can of Brasso at the start? Just made me giggle for some reason.

Ooh and my copy *cough* had a preview of Doctor Who & Torchwood at the end. Yay!

[Alipeeps]

I loved the ep as well, I think that in order to keep people watching they have to try new things, and in this case it was having the Xmas special set in space rather than on Earth like the two previous specials - and I loved every second of it.

Yeah. I rather liked that it wasn't set on Earth for once and that the Dr was in the situation of trying to explain Earth and Earth customs to other people. Is this the first time though that we've seen what are essentially humans (or certainly look exactly like em) from another planet.. in Earth's current time? Not humans from the future... but that there are humans or human-like species on other planets right now, before the humans from Earth have spread out from Earth?

Like last year's, I watched it through enough wine and chocolate to have loved it no matter what. I expect I'll watch it again some time and produce a more analytical response.

Indeed. I was gonna say earlier that I am so in love with this programme that I pretty much love it no matter what but that's not entirely true as I certainly wasn't keen on the rather awful Dalek 2-parter in this season... so I am capable of some critical appreciation, despite my love!

Anyway. Have watched VotD twice now and enjoyed it just as much the 2nd time around.

DT was awesome, yet again, in his Tux and Gutties. He's never really had an off-day as the Doctor and while I don't mind if and when he moves on to other roles, he will most definitely be missed.

Gotta agree with you there. Once again, he was incredible in this. His portrayal of the Dr is a large part of why I love this show so much right now.

I have to say, the fast pacing and the noise was there again and I still find it to be distracting. We had to hit reverse on the video remote a few times to catch pieces of dialogue that we missed. Doctor Who definitely calls for a rewatch or three to catch bits that have been missed. Which is no bad thing, imo.

Still, it's good to have the Doctor on the telly at Christmas and long may it continue. It beats watching reruns of foosty old films and shows.

Hmm, yeah.. I too found a couple of bits of dialogue hard to catch. Even on second viewing there's one of two I still haven't worked out. But I agree, Dr Who on Christmas day has become a wonderful tradition and one I look forward to greatly. Long may it continue!

[ShadowMaat]

I liked the "mixed-up" history of Christmas, too, but then I'm easily amused. I got a giggle out of the jukebox ipod, too, way back when.

[Reefgirl]

Another Douglas Adams reference was the ship itself. DNA wrote about the Starship Titanic - shich suffered a Spontaneous Massive Existence Failure in Life The Universe and Everything. And also wrote a very annoying PC game called Starship Titanic. Terry Jones later wrote a novel called Starship Titanic, based on DNA's idea. He notably insisted on writing it completely in the nude. Such is the Monty Python mind...!

I've read the book and very good it is too but then I love everything by Douglas Adams and there is a pic of Terry Jones, in the nude (Bits covered by a typewriter) on the back cover. I noticed the '42' reference too

Voyage Of The Damned doesn't play off any of those ideas, but is nice and festive, in a Poseidon Adventure - everybody crying at all the sacrifices - sort of way. A good weepy slaughter movie is what Christmas is all about.
J.

Oh yeah, gotta have mindless slaughter on Christmas Day

Not too bad. It's been a while since I last watched the Poseidon Adventure. There were some scenes I did not remember seeing the last time around.

So, Astrid wasn't the TARDIS after all. I kept waiting and waiting for Astrid to finally reveal her true self. Kylie was good though and so were Ernest Borgnine and Shelley Winters. The old boy was likeable - it was nice to see him have a happy ending.

I thought Shelley Winters and Ernest Borgnine did it better, Clive Swift (Almost called him Richard then) even looked like Manny Rosen from the film, the way he looked after Astrid/Susan Shelby and DT looks better in a Tux than Gene Hackman

DT was awesome, yet again, in his Tux and Gutties. He's never really had an off-day as the Doctor and while I don't mind if and when he moves on to other roles, he will most definitely be missed.

What else? Oh yeah, I too thought Davros was about to appear out of the mist.

I have to say, the fast pacing and the noise was there again and I still find it to be distracting. We had to hit reverse on the video remote a few times to catch pieces of dialogue that we missed. Doctor Who definitely calls for a rewatch or three to catch bits that have been missed. Which is no bad thing, imo.

Still, it's good to have the Doctor on the telly at Christmas and long may it continue. It beats watching reruns of foosty old films and shows.

Hear hear

I've got to get it onto disc at some point so another watch is on the cards. I have to admit the 'Lift' up from the Heavenly hosts was very cheesey even more cheesey than the end of the last series when he did his coming-back-from-the-Gollum bit in LotTL

[Mattathias2.0]

I have to say after finally watching the entire episode. It was pretty good.

After some time, I found Astrid to be sort of annoying. Mr Copper was the best character I think in the episode. He had personality that Astrid did not have esp the things he said about Earth customs.

The Heavenly Hosts were creepy esp when one said "You are all going to die."

For once, London was evacuated on Christmas. After all this, finally people noticed.

I noticed the mentions of Cyborgs that haven't appeared before. Interesting.

[ShadowMaat]

Another bonus in this ep: no mechanical Santas. Let's just hope the Heavenly Hosts don't return next year, though. They're a nice one-off, but enough is enough. Although I still want some of those Halos of Doom.

[Mattathias2.0]

Another bonus in this ep: no mechanical Santas. Let's just hope the Heavenly Hosts don't return next year, though. They're a nice one-off, but enough is enough. Although I still want some of those Halos of Doom.

No Robot Santas or Killer Christmas Trees, very true.

[Alipeeps]

I have to admit the 'Lift' up from the Heavenly hosts was very cheesey even more cheesey than the end of the last series when he did his coming-back-from-the-Gollum bit in LotTL

I admit that bugged me a little because it was kinda badly done... it was very obvious that the hosts were not remotely bearing his weight - they were simply standing on an FX stage with their arms linked. If they'd just made a teeeeeny bit of an effort to make it lookeven slightly realistic I would have been a lot happier. The FX in general were very good but that bit was just cheesy and badly done.

[cheese]

Very disappointing.

For starters the part in the middle where everyone gets killed completely destroyed the suspense, it didn't help that I didnt particularly care about any of them as they hadn't been around long enough. When the woman killed herself was horrible. Much more could have been made of her fighting on despite her loss. Its horrifically bleak to have her kill herself like that.

Killing off so many characters in exactly the same way was incredibly lazy. Max, Astrid, the married couple all died in the same way, using the same FX shot with different people pasted it. Lazy, and yawnsome.

There were a couple of good moments. The mixed-up earth history was mildly amusing, as was the three questions scene. Kylie was for the most part a good guest star, fairly well acted. The slowmotion Doctor shot with all the explosions was cool, or would have been if it wasn't for me being on the verge of giving up entirely by that point.

Astrid was boring, I really was hoping for some proper awesome development. Part of the Tardis would have been great. The character was likeable enough, but it all went no where. After everyone elses death hers felt empty. Scenes that should have been charged with emotion instead left me apathetic. Oh Great, she's dead.
And how come there wasn't enough power to reconstitute her but teleport the Doctor and old man away? Okay that could be explained by some technoguff about the reconstruction process being a massive consumer of power, but that doesn't really work. If that was the case, reconstructing anyone who teleports would take the same power.
And! If she was being reconstructed from the memory banks how come she was "falling"? I have a vague rememberence that there might have been a line that said the wristband was where the memory was stored, but surely it would have been destroyed and I'm not convinced that made sense anyway.
At the rate he's losing companions maybe he really wold be best off on his own! If I were him I'd definately take a few years off anyway!

The bad guys and plan was terrible. The "Hosts" were just Autons in contumes, and had the voices of the Ood! Surely it wouldn't have been too much trouble to get someone else to to the voice, or at least have the guy change it a bit. Max was a moron, a boring useless villian that was basically a terrible version of Davros. I would have LOVED Davros to roll out. The forklit truck conclusion was weak. Why didn't he just order the hosts to help? Telling them to execute Astrid and the Doctor, or rescue him with their flying? A disappointing climax to say the least.

There was also a bad taste left since all the good characters encountered by the Doctor were killed (except the guy who faffed about on the bridge the whole time) and the criminal (all be it a likeable chap, but he did commit fraud) and smarmy business prat survive.

The Queen gag made me laugh, but not with it, at it. A true shark-jumping moment if ever I saw it.

Where did this secondary engine come from, how come no one, not even the guy on the bridge thought of it? Surely the ship's emergacy second engine isn't just able to be started with heat from reentry? That's cutting it a little fine! Any even vaguely intelligent design would have it able to be started very simply in event of primary failure. Come to think of it why didn't Max sabotage that engine too?

For a christmas special it was pretty dark and depressing. Runaway Bride was dark certainly in places, but this was so bleak. The overal message seemed to be "good people suffer, and in the end bad people (more businessman) always prosper." What kind of cheery christmas message is that?

The cheesy elements ranged from aweful to passable. The Angels flight might have been cool if the SFX hadn't looked so poor. £1,000,000 wouldn't go far at all in London, he'll be lucky to get a 12 x 12 cupboard to live in. If he doesn't appear later having done something exceptionally evil with his money I'll be disappointed, I had the feeling that all his niceness was a front. If kind of imagine him as a retired conman having escaped prison to lie low on the ship while executing his last big score....

This episode was everything I don't like about Russell T Davis, it wasn't nearly as funny as he thought it was. The writing was lazy, rolling out all the old cliches and not doing adding any fresh twist on them. Full of nonsense leaps of logic. The solutions, once again pure deus ex machina. I can't wait for him to hand over the reigns to someone else.

New theme, on first listen was a bit blah, why change it? It was great already. I suspect the answer might be so that for the S4 soundtrack they have some shiny new music to put on it rather than a repeat of the theme that people already have from previous soundtracks. Cynical I know, but that's the mood this ep put me in.

I think that this ties with the New York part one last season for my most hated episode ever.

The S4 trailer though was good, my fav part of the episode, that and the Torchwood trailer afterwards.

[IMForeman]

Who did the voice of the Heavenly Host? Sounded very familiar. Ahh, the Ood Voice (among other things). Knew I knew it from somewhere.

Nope... sorry to say that you're mistaken here. The Ood were voiced by Silas Carson (Ki Andi Mundi from the Star Wars Prequels). The Host were voiced by either Colin McFarlane or Ewan Bailey, who were the only "alien voices" listed in the credits.

[ShadowMaat]

Ahhh... I see where I went wrong. I saw that The Host was played by Paul Kasey and it never even crossed my mind that they meant the physical Host (and physical Ood) and that the Voices were separate. *hangs head* Ah well. Still sounded familiar. Kept wanting it to be a computer's voice from somewhere, but even that's wrong. Sigh. That happens to me more often than it should...

[AvatarIII]

is it just me or were the hosts total rip offs of the "robots of death" from the old tom baker story?

[freetoken]

Not very favorably impressed with this episode, and that is in keeping with many of the recent episodes.

As someone noted above, too many characters in such a short time, and as such we don't get to know them and therefore cannot relate to them when they get into trouble (and die.)

The references to previous works (P. Adventure, Doug Adams, etc.) are cute, but not enough upon which to build a good show.

Dr. Who in recent times is overly formulaic - the Doctor as Savior in 38 minutes or less. Doctor runs through his three tools - sonic screwdriver, psychic paper, and his uttering some magic protocol (in this case "one".)

Etc.....