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Original Transmission
Cast
Plot Outline from Wikipedia As the Doctor leaves Earth, the bow of a ship crashes through the TARDIS's wall. The Doctor is momentarily stunned, especially after learning the ship is the Titanic and, pressing some buttons, repairs the TARDIS walls, pushing the ship out. The TARDIS then materialises aboard the ship and, after some looking around, the Doctor learns the Titanic is a large luxury spaceship cruiser from the planet Sto, orbiting present-day Earth. The Doctor decides to stow away to enjoy the party, only revealing his identity to lively waitress Astrid Peth, who reveals her own desire to travel the stars. Astrid has found her new job disappointing, as she is confined to the ship, and cannot enjoy travelling to new worlds. The Doctor cheers her up by sneaking her onto an excursion to London via teleport, along with couple Morvin and Foon Van Hoff and a small alien with a red head, called Bannakaffalatta. Following alien attacks on London on the previous two Christmases, however, London is deserted apart from the Queen, Nicholas Witchell, and newspaper seller Wilfred Mott. The rest of the population has decided to spend Christmas elsewhere. The party have to listen to ship's guide Mr Copper give a bizarre and inaccurate interpretation of human society, especially Christmas, despite the fact that he claims to be an expert on the planet.
The party returns to the ship just as its Captain commits an act of sabotage, causing high-speed meteors to collide with the ship. Junior crewman Midshipman Alonzo Frame, the only other man on the bridge, attempts to stop the captain, but is shot by him. The captain is killed in the resulting collision, as are the bulk of the crew and passengers. With the Titanic's hulk holed in several places, the TARDIS is lost into space (and automatically homes in for a landing on Earth). With the teleport system now offline, and with the engines losing power, the Titanic is heading for an extinction-level collision with the Earth. The Doctor is able to make contact with the injured Midshipman Frame, alone on the Bridge, and leads a small group of survivors in a climb through the shattered vessel to reach him. Complicating matters are the Host- androids who resemble angels that were used to provide onboard information, which had been seen malfunctioning earlier. Now they turn murderous, and pick off the last scattered survivors on the ship. The Doctor's party is harassed by Host all the way, and the Doctor finds that his sonic screwdriver is useless against them. One of the party, the diminutive alien Bannakaffalatta reveals to Astrid that he is actually a cyborg, something considered shameful in the society on Sto. Bravely, he is able to save the party from a Host attack by transmitting an EMP pulse from his cybernetic implants, killing himself in the process. The Van Hoffs also die during this attack: Morvin falls from the ledge into the nuclear engines, while Foon commits suicide while pulling a surviving Host down with her. At this, the Doctor makes a grim promise that "no more" 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, including Astrid, on ahead (with the EMP unit and the sonic screwdriver), while he turns back to face the Host. He manages to convince them to take them to their leader. This turns out to be the cruise line's owner, Max Capricorn, who is hiding in a secure pod on a lower deck. Capricorn is also revealed to be a cyborg, resembling a small wheeled vehicle. Having been forced out by the Company's board, he is seeking revenge. The collision of the Titanic into a heavily-populated world will not only break the company, but see the board charged with murder, giving Capricorn his ultimate revenge. Outnumbered by Host and faced with death, the Doctor is saved by Astrid, who managed a short length teleport to his position. She rams Capricorn with a fork-lift truck, and in the resulting struggle, both are forced off a precipice and fall into the fiery engine of the ship.
With the Host no longer under Capricorn's control, the Doctor grimly makes his way to the bridge just as the ship plunges into Earth's atmosphere. Working with Frame, he uses the heat from the re-entry to try to re-start the ship's engines, but realises that they are headed straight for one of the few places in London currently inhabited: Buckingham Palace. Calling through with a security code, he manages to get the Queen out of the building, which the Titanic narrowly misses as the ship pulls up, now back under control. The Queen, in her dressing gown, is heard thanking the Doctor as he pilots the ship back into space. With the danger over, the Doctor suddenly realises that there might be hope for Astrid after all. A safety feature of the ships teleport system automatically recalls any passenger who is in imminent danger. As she was wearing a teleport bracelet at the time of her death, her pattern might still be stored in its buffers. Despite desperate efforts, only a shadow of Astrid can be generate due to extensive damage to the teleport system. Despite the attraction that had grown between the two of them, the Doctor must watch her dissipate into atoms and float free into space. This way, she can at least fulfill her dream of exploring the universe, forever.
Sadly, 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. Impressed by his heroism on the Titanic, the Doctor leaves him on the planet to build a new life, with the ship's expenses card, which contains £1,000,000. The Doctor then heads off in the TARDIS, alone.
Analysis from Cuisle. Even before the Christmas episode aired, there were people having a go at it in the press. First there was Stephen Green, a right-wing religious mouthpiece, complaining about the religious imagery! This man wasn’t invited to the official press preview, so he knew nothing about the religious imagery. There was NOTHING offensive to Christians. The robots dressed up as life size Christmas angels turned into devils when they took off their halos and killed people with them – leaving a pair of spiky horns instead – and turned back to angels once their controller was destroyed and The Doctor was left as the highest authority. They gave him a lift to the bridge, but there was no religious significance about it. The next complaint was from the last survivor of the real Titanic, who appeared to have been prepped by the Sun to complain about the disrespect to the memory of those who died. Again, she had not been invited to the press party, and had no idea what the plot was really about. Nothing that was shown in this episode was any more disrespectful than any of the films made about the Titanic disaster in the past.
And a writer who WAS at the press preview was pleased with the episode but criticised Kylie Minogue’s performance. Now, I don’t think much of the way her manager pushed her into the part, and how Doctor Who has been used as a springboard for her career reboot. But there was nothing wrong with her performance. Astrid was a believable, sympathetic character. As a one off, she worked just fine. Other actors of note – well, all of them. The main supporting characters were excellent. Geoffrey Palmer’s suicidal captain was phlegmatic. Russell Tovey played Midshipman Frame, the man who had to keep the ship going until The Doctor arrived, perfectly, although his wound seemed to get better rather than worse, which is ODD. Jimmy Vee as Bannakaffalatta was a very unlikely hero – a short cyborg with a red spiky face. Clive Swift as Mr Copper was a terrific character who started off seeming to be irritating and unsympathetic but turning out to be another unlikely hero.
The kiss, was perfectly in context and reasonable. Those fans and
critics complaining that The Doctor locks lips with too many women
can stop moaning. David Tennant is a romantic Doctor. Get used to
it. The sets, sumptuous. We KNEW the ballroom was a hotel in Swansea, but it was so easy to suspend disbelief. The CGI effects, from the ship in space to the view of the atomic storm engines, to Astrid as stardust, all excellent.
David Tennant was magnificent. That somebody would QUESTION his authority was the most unrealistic idea. He EXUDES power and authority. Who wouldn’t follow him when he promises to get them out? Sadly, this was an old fashioned disaster movie and he couldn’t keep his promise. And his grief as he loses so many good people who didn’t deserve to die is clear. When he cries ‘I can do anything’ in defiance of the facts, it is tragic. My one complaint, a minor one, the cartoony sequence with the Queen in her curlers and slippers and her corgis running for it. But if the Queen wants to wish The Doctor a Merry Christmas after he stopped the ship crashing into Buckingham Palace, then why not? And isn’t it nice to know he has a code to get through to the Palace when he needs too?
Bernard Cribbons as the old newspaper seller who stayed put in defiance of the alien threats was a perfect archetype of British working class pride. It was a cameo role perfectly executed. There are hints that he WILL be back with the same character. In which case, all well and good. Meanwhile, the lonely Doctor travels on, having done the best he could, which was all we ever asked him to do.
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