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... ... ... so why were there life-rings then?? confused

LOL! haha I knew all the answers (Its what happens when you have alota who marathons) but I needed Wiki for spelling help

My review follows.

It is not a positive one.

So bear in mind that I've been a Russell fan since 1991 and a fan of Russell's version of Doctor Who since 1996. So I'm coming from that place rather than from a JNT-era "Rah, rah, rah. I don't like this newfangled popular Who. I prefered it back in the 80s when it was made for the American CultTV convention crowd rather than for a general British audience" place.

But my god, it started right. Firstly by getting everything we knew into the pre-credits sequence. Online fans used to play a game with the Eighth Doctor Novels that involved noting at what point any given book had reached the stage at which it had divulged all the information revealed on the back cover. In other words, how long it took the book to catch up with what the reader already knew before opening it. Generally the Eighth Doctor Novels did very badly on this.

Voyage of the Damned does amazingly well. Almost everything you could glean from the pre-publicity is there on-screen before the credits roll. Kylie's a waitress. The Titanic's a spaceship. There's angelic golden robots about. I bet you were all waiting for the "Yes it's the Titanic...but it's in SPACE!" moment to which we could all respond with "Yes, Russ. We read the papers. We know." But it doesn't ******** about. All the "Yes, we know" is out of the way before the theme music starts.

Oh yes, the theme music. Damn. That's better. That crazy, pioneering Delia Derbyshire version with which the series began is just so ahead of its time that it's a disgrace to offer up anything comfortable in its place. The aggressive, abrasive version with which this episode knee'd us in the groin is a vast improvement on anything we've heard at the front of the show since Season 18.

The one problem with it is that the cut into the opening scene was very clumsy. You can't go straight from crazy beat pogo-ing to serene Floating Through The Inky Blacknes of Space without it really jarring. The match between the mood of the music and the mood of where it deposits the viewer is so abrubt that it rankles.

But the immediate post-credit scene's got problems of its own. Namely that it directly evokes the spirit of OldWho's 'Enlightenment'. Which the episode could just about get away with if it didn't also start evoking the spirit of 'Robots of Death' as soon as the Host started talking and hadn't filled up nearly all of Astrid's early dialogue with lines that're either direct quotes from, or paraphrases of, Ace's lines in 'Dragonfire'. For the first time NewWho felt like a tribute album. It felt like a series of forced associations designed to tickle fandom's prostate.

And that's really sad. Because that's what the Paul McGann telemovie did so very wrong back in 1996. They expected us to cheer rather than yawn as the camera lingered over the scarf, the screwdriver and the jellybabies. They expecteded referencing Who's past rather than developing it to be enough. NewWho has avoided that sort of wank like the plague until now, but tragically the first segment of Voyage of the Damned has the same uncomfortable feeling.

Things have the chance to improve after the Disaster Movie starts. Even though we get NewWho's second attempt at Davros-lite , we're still mostly on Russell's own turf here and subject to what he wants to do with the story.

And it's pretty obvious what he wants to do with the story. He loves James Cameron's Titanic (otherwise why would season one of NewWho have companions called Jack and Rose?) but more than that he loves magic realism and emotional honesty (otherwise why would he have written Love and Monsters?). What Russell was aiming for here was to negotigate a path between the raw emotional punch of Titanic and the truth of his own worldview: Sometimes, at the end of the story, it's the Billy Zane character that's left standing.

That's explicitly what this story is saying. And that's brilliant. Sadly, it doesn't say it brilliantly. The whole later two thirds of the episode is made up of scenes that would be awesome conclusions to character arcs...had they been earned.

The death of Foon and Morvin is a perfect end to a story about how people seemingly entrapped in a trash culture have a power and a nobility all their own.

The death of Bannakaffalatta is a perfect end to a story about how those excluded by a culture may contain its salvation.

The survival of Mister Copper and whatshisname (you know, the Billy Zane guy) are genius stories that invert the whole business of sentimental faux-tragedy.

Trouble is, Voyage of the Damned doesn't tell those stories. It just gives us the 'pay off' scenes without giving us the development scenes that would have given them meaning. The same is true for the Doctor...he gets his, "Who's with me?" hero-shot right at the start of the heroic procedings with nothing to build up to it. The whole show is just a series of sexless ejaculations.

Why should I care if Foon is falling down a Return of the Jedi tube? Why should I care if Kylie is falling down a Return of the Jedi tube? Postmodern reference to earlier works isn't enough. This story didn't build to those events within itself so those events don't feel meaningful.

It's really sad because I think the story Russell was trying to tell here was a heartbreakingly beautiful one. A story about how virtue doesn't preserve virtue but is virtue unto itself. A version of Titanic in which Leonardo still dies, but does so saving Billy Zane. Billy Zane will never get it, but it was still the right thing to do. In the wider/narrower sense of Doctor Who continuity then the human race will never get it, but it was the right thing to do. The world isn't about neat, romantic and acceptable tragedies like James Cameron's Titanic. It's so much stranger than that. It's so much darker. And so much madder. And so much better.

That's something worth saying. And if you can find a way to pack it with the same sheer punch as the romantic lies then that's something worth screaming from the rooftops. That's what Doctor Who attempted here. Voyage of the Damned is an attempt to offer us emotional honesty with the same visceral force as Hollywood tragi-porn. It fails. It fails horribly.

But it fails through the way the script is constructed and the way the episode is edited. Russell's got Season 4 ahead of him. If he finds a way to say what he was trying to in Voyage of the Damned in a way that works onscreen then he'll have managed one of the most unique fusions of the populist and the honest since The Royle Family and Peppa Pig.

Voyage of the Damned is rubbish. It's an uncertain seventy minutes worth of endings which have forgotten their beginnings and middles. But if it's an indication of where Russell wants to take the show then I'm ready and willing to swin into those dangerous waters. Michael Moorcock and Angela Carter have sailed me there in print and I'm more than ready for someone to set that course on television.

Emotion without manipulation. Myth without lies.

That's what Doctor Who wants to give you. It didn't pull it off this time, but it stated its intent as loud as ever. This show isn't going to give you a comfortable world to hide in. This show is going to force you to look at the world you live in by turning up the volume on every aspect of it until it deafens you.

Never has a bad hour of television left me so excited to see what comes next.

I LOVE the new theme!