The newspaper websites have just started updating with reviews of Xmas TV - here's what the Telegraph reviewer, James Walton, had to say:
"This year’s Christmas Doctor Who (BBC1) didn’t waste much time getting going. In the first minute, the Tardis crashed into a strange spaceship orbiting the Earth. By the end of the second, the Doctor had gone on board, spotted Kylie Minogue dressed as a waitress and realised that the ship was a theme-park version of the Titanic for people on an interplanetary cruise.
Then again, even at 70 minutes long, the programme didn’t have a moment to spare. After all, it had to combine a proper adventure story with (among other things) a “homage” to 1970s disaster movies, a tale of doomed love, lots of jokes, a few more reminders of the Doctor’s fundamental loneliness and a whole new set of baddies.
At first, mind you, life on board seemed fine – but only for as long as it took us to meet the other characters who, in best disaster-movie style, would soon be joining the Doctor and Astrid (Kylie) to form a little band of survivors. They were, naturally, a mixed bunch: ranging from an intergalactic yuppie to Bannakaffalatta (Jimmy Vee), who was ashamed of being a cyborg, even though cyborgs were now allowed to get married. (Later, as you might expect in a Russell T Davies drama, he came out proudly.)
With these people – and cyborg – in place, catastrophe duly struck. A rock storm hit the Titanic, leaving it with little time before it would plunge to Earth and wipe out everybody on the planet. Meanwhile, any passengers left alive after the initial impact were being systematically slaughtered by a group of robot angels using their haloes as killer Frisbees.
From there, the thrills kept on coming. Yet, Davies’s script also found room to give each of the characters a pretty serviceable and often rather touching back-story. The jokes and references didn’t let up either – but never remotely threatened to overwhelm the serious business of supplying cliffhangers on an impressively regular basis. The result was a winning mixture of wild imagination and careful writerly calculation.
As I’ve had to confess before, I’ve never quite understood why so many people think that Doctor Who is the best thing to have happened to British telly in the 21st century. (In my defence, I’m not really a sci-fi fan – or under 12.) Here, though, I think I could begin to see what all the fuss is about. Certainly I can’t imagine how this episode could have done its job any better. "
Regards,
Cypher
"This year’s Christmas Doctor Who (BBC1) didn’t waste much time getting going. In the first minute, the Tardis crashed into a strange spaceship orbiting the Earth. By the end of the second, the Doctor had gone on board, spotted Kylie Minogue dressed as a waitress and realised that the ship was a theme-park version of the Titanic for people on an interplanetary cruise.
Then again, even at 70 minutes long, the programme didn’t have a moment to spare. After all, it had to combine a proper adventure story with (among other things) a “homage” to 1970s disaster movies, a tale of doomed love, lots of jokes, a few more reminders of the Doctor’s fundamental loneliness and a whole new set of baddies.
At first, mind you, life on board seemed fine – but only for as long as it took us to meet the other characters who, in best disaster-movie style, would soon be joining the Doctor and Astrid (Kylie) to form a little band of survivors. They were, naturally, a mixed bunch: ranging from an intergalactic yuppie to Bannakaffalatta (Jimmy Vee), who was ashamed of being a cyborg, even though cyborgs were now allowed to get married. (Later, as you might expect in a Russell T Davies drama, he came out proudly.)
With these people – and cyborg – in place, catastrophe duly struck. A rock storm hit the Titanic, leaving it with little time before it would plunge to Earth and wipe out everybody on the planet. Meanwhile, any passengers left alive after the initial impact were being systematically slaughtered by a group of robot angels using their haloes as killer Frisbees.
From there, the thrills kept on coming. Yet, Davies’s script also found room to give each of the characters a pretty serviceable and often rather touching back-story. The jokes and references didn’t let up either – but never remotely threatened to overwhelm the serious business of supplying cliffhangers on an impressively regular basis. The result was a winning mixture of wild imagination and careful writerly calculation.
As I’ve had to confess before, I’ve never quite understood why so many people think that Doctor Who is the best thing to have happened to British telly in the 21st century. (In my defence, I’m not really a sci-fi fan – or under 12.) Here, though, I think I could begin to see what all the fuss is about. Certainly I can’t imagine how this episode could have done its job any better. "
Regards,
Cypher
