Pop Vultures

Pop Vultures is happy to welcome Anna Carey to the fold. Among other things, she will be handling Doctor Who throughout its upcoming 4th season run on this side of the Atlantic. She kicks things off with a look at this year’s Christmas special, a heart-warming tale of a woman who can’t move her face and the man who pretends not to notice.

Look, over there! Who is that tiny curly-headed blonde sprite? Can it be….no, surely not….yes! It’s Kylie! Kylie, Kylie, Kylie! Oh, like you didn’t know. Ever since Russell T Davies and the rest of the Doctor Who team announced that the Doctor’s temporary companion for Christmas special ‘The Voyage of the Damned’ was going to be Ms Minogue, every publication from broadsheet colour supplements to Heat magazine have run features on the diminutive (and, of course, heroic) pop princess’s return to acting for the first time since those glorious films Street Fighter and The Delinquents (a film to which my best friend at school optimistically organized an outing for her 14th birthday. That was a mistake).

Sadly, Kylie seems to have become even more wooden since then. Was she always such a bad actress? I mean, I’m 32, old enough to have watched Neighbours back in the days when it was only on in the middle of the afternoon and hence could only be watched in the school holidays. I remember Kylie’s entire career as spunky mechanic Charlene Mitchell. I can still remember the song that was played at her wedding to Scott Robinson (‘Suddenly’, by Angry Anderson). And I don’t remember her being quite so crap. Then again, I was only about 13 when she left for “Brisbane” (aka the black hole for all residents of Ramsay Street), so perhaps she was always a charisma-free clunker. Surely, however, a programme as fun and smart as Doctor Who will bring out the best in her? Well, not really. I hate to say this, but, enjoyable as it was, this special was not up to the programme’s usual standard.

I thought the third series of the all-new Doctor Who was the best yet. Sure, there were a few less than stellar episodes, like the much-maligned ‘Daleks in Manhattan’, which, I have to say, I didn’t totally hate — it was stupid, but kind of fun. Still, the good episodes, particularly ‘Human Nature’, ‘Family of Blood’, ‘Blink’ and ‘Utopia’ were so fantastically, wonderfully brilliant that they would have made up for anything else.

But although I really liked Martha, and was sorry to see her go, I’m getting a little tired of the companions having to fall in love with the Doctor. I mean, I don’t blame them – he’s David Tennant wearing a pinstripe suit and Converse, after all – but it’s a bit much. In fact, perhaps the only good thing about the impending arrival of the dreadful, shouty Catherine Tate as the Doctor’s next companion, Donna, is the fact that when Donna made her debut in last year’s Christmas special she showed absolutely no signs of falling for the Doctor (and they’d better not turn that into some sort of love/hate Moonlighting thing, that’s all I’m saying). Anyway! Even if Kylie had not been more wooden than, well, a block of oak, I would have been annoyed by the inevitable hint of romance between her and the Doctor. Unfortunately, Kylie, who has been rendered unable to express any emotion thanks to all the Botox she’s been pumping into her face for the last decade (seriously, I reviewed the Dublin leg of her Showgirl tour a few years ago, before she got sick, and the upper half of her face DOES NOT MOVE, EVER. It’s really creepy), was indeed more wooden than the average forest. It’s almost impressive how little her face moves. But kind of unhelpful when she’s meant to be the emotional heart of the episode.

Keep reading for a spoilerific recap of the Doctor Who Christmas special.

Ah, yes, the episode. As regular viewers may recall, when we last left the Doctor he had said goodbye to Martha (or rather, she’d said goodbye to him) only to see the hull of the Titanic plough straight into the Tardis. Quickly repairing the Tardis and donning a tux (rowr!), the Doctor heads aboard, to discover that this Titanic is a sort of luxury space liner, cruising around the universe for the amusement of its wealthy passengers. Well, nearly all of them are wealthy – there’s a portly, likeable working class couple of robotics engineers who won their tickets in a competition but have become the butt of their snooty fellow passengers’ jokes, which is why they’re wearing ridiculous cowboy outfits – they were wrongly told this evening’s entertainment was fancy dress. Passengers are served by “the Host”, a crew of literally angel-faced golden robots, complete with halos. And overseeing it all is billionaire Max Capricorn, owner of the ship, whose twinkling grin can be seen on TV screens around the ship.

More excitingly, Geoffrey Palmer is the captain. I have loved Geoffrey Palmer ever since he cried “I’m a doctor and I want my sausages!” in Fawlty Towers, and I still love him even though he’s in that awful “gentle comedy” with Judi Dench, both of them equally wasted on such bland rubbish. Sadly Geoffrey — or rather his character - is a dying man, which is why he has allowed himself to be bribed into putting down the ship’s shields during a meteor storm and even shoots the plucky young midshipman called Frame who attempts to stop him.

Meanwhile, the Doctor has met Kylie, who is playing a plucky waitress called Astrid (what could that be an anagram of, could it be….TARDIS?! Yes, it could, but that turns out to be utterly irrelevant to the plot, so let’s just ignore it). Astrid dreams of seeing the universe, including Earth, the next spot on the ship’s intergalactic cruise, so the Doctor manages to wangle her a place on the next excursion down, presided over by an “earthologist” whose knowledge of earth is slightly dodgy, to say the least. Apparently, at Christmas, the denizens of Britain go to war with Turkey.

The tour group consists of the couple we met earlier, Foon and Morvin, a horrible snobbish businessman called Rickston, and a strange little spiky-headed person called Bannakaffalatta. The Doctor joins them and in one of the episode’s best scenes they arrive in a deserted London street – deserted but for an old bloke in a newspaper stand. After the last two years of Doctor Who Christmas specials, the denizens of London have come to fear Christmas and are convinced that every year there’s going to be some scary alien attack. I love how they’ve acknowledged that the public must have been aware of some of the weirdness that the Doctor has been battling. It’s like the Prom episode of Buffy, when Jonathan gives Buffy her “class protector” award.

Anyway, that’s all cool enough, but to make things even better the newspaper seller turns out to be none other than Bernard Cribbins, much beloved by people of a certain age who grew up with British television (particularly The Wombles and Jackanory, a children’s programme which essentially consisted of an amiable and distinguished actor reading a story – no animation, just a few still illustrations - which probably wouldn’t impress the sophisticated child of today, but back in my day we were happy with whatever we were given etc etc etc). In fact, when he made his appearance in the newsstand my entire family were all “wow, he’s very familiar, he looks – and sounds – very like Bernard Cribbins wearing a disreputable beard and a wooly hat, but surely poor old Bernard must have, um, shuffled off this mortal coil by now?” Happily he hasn’t – in fact, he’s only 79, so I suppose we just thought he was older because he’s been around forever and was indeed in the crazy mid-60s Doctor Who film with Peter Cushing.

The Doctor and the rest of the excursion return to ship as meteors crash into it and suddenly we’re basically in The Poseidon Adventure. Yes, our plucky band of survivors have to make their way to the bridge and to plucky Midshipman Frame, who has miraculously survived being shot in the stomach with little more than a tummy ache to show for it. Alas, despite the Doctor’s self-aggrandising speeches about how he’s the Doctor and a total badass, their attempts to get there are scuppered by the Host, who have turned evil and are killing all the survivors. Kylie discovers that Bannakaffalatta is a cyborg – only his head is not robotic – but he asks her to keep his secret because of anti-cyborg discrimination. It would be quite a sweet scene if Kylie could act.

The gang narrowly escape a Host attack before getting into another part of the ship – where there is, naturally, a vast chasm over a whirling engine. But of course. Our heroes have to make their way across a narrow bridge, but while they’re doing so the Host attack from above – being angels, they have wings, and they start hurling their halos at the survivors like deadly Frisbees. This is all pretty entertaining, in a cheesy way, and then poor old Morvin falls to his doom. His poor old wife Foon is too scared and traumatised to make her way across. It looks like everyone else is going to follow him, but then, in the episode’s one truly “yay!” moment, Bannakaffalatta says “Bannkaffalatta help. Bannakaffalatta – CYBORG!” And he uses his maligned half-robot-ness to fire off a blast that immobilizes the evil Host. Alas, it kills him too. Sniff. Kylie attempts to show sorrow, but fails.

And oh noes, one Host is left, and attacks the Doctor, before being stopped by the brave Foon, who also plunges to her death. And so the conker-headed little bloke, the fat black male character and the fat female character are killed off. Hmmm.

Still, there’s no time for any post-traumatic stress disorder, as our heroes have to keep going, battling off the Host with the late Bannakaffalatta’s power pack and the frankly overused sonic screwdriver. This goes on for some time and includes a really annoying scene in which Kylie asks the Doctor to take her with her when all this is over and he basically goes “cool!” Martha who? Rose who? Rebound companions are not a good idea, Doctor! Oh, and Kylie snogs him. Not that I blame her, but this is getting very tired. Anyway, eventually the Doctor manages to outwit the Host’s programming and gets to say “take me to your leader!” Who is, of course, Max Capricorn, who is (a) also a Cyborg, except on wheels rather than on a humanoid body or, as my boyfriend put it, “a tractor with a head” and (b) planning to crash the ship into earth and destroy it, in order to destroy the company that bears his name and which he was booted out of. But of course. He gives a whole “I’m so happy with my evil plan” speech before being booted into another convenient chasm by Kylie, who goes in with him. Cue “NOOOOOOOOO!” from the Doctor. For fuck’s sake, Doctor, you’ve known her for five minutes and she wasn’t half as charming and interesting as poor old Bannakaffalatta and Co.

Anyway, the ship is still plunging towards Earth so in a truly illogical scene the Doctor uses the “heat of re-entry” (ie the ship pretty much bursting into flame as it enters Earth’s atmosphere) to repower the ship and narrowly avoids hitting Buckingham Palace. The Earth is saved (and, apparently most importantly, so is the royal family. Great. Maybe Russell is compensating for having a genuinely very funny anti-royal joke in the Christmas special a few years ago). Huzzah!

So all’s well that ends well, apart from half the cast being dead. Amusingly, the horrible businessman not only survives but has made a fortune after investing in Max Capricorn’s rivals, whose shares will now skyrocket. But Kylie is gone, and although the Doctor tries to bring her back – the transporter should have a memory of her cellular structure or something – most of it is gone so when he brings her back she’s translucent and still falling into the chasm. So he turns her into stardust and sets her free into space. This bit is all pretty good. There’s another cool moment when the “earthologist” tour guide says what a shame it is that the good people had to die while the horrible one lived, but adds “but then, if you could decide who lives or dies, you’d be a monster”. Yes, you would, Doctor, and I wish you’d stop being all “I’m the Doctor, I’m going to save the world”. It was awesome the first time you did it, and possibly the second, but now you’re doing it every episode and it’s getting annoying.

But you redeem yourself in a rather sweet little scene when you bring the tour guide to earth and the latter – who has confessed that he’s a bit of a sham, really - realises that the small change he was given for his excursion to earth is worth a lot more than he thought - £1million, to be exact, and he’s going to stay there and have the happy, independent life he’s always wanted. The Doctor, meanwhile, is looking forward to a future that contains Catherine Tate, if the “coming soon” trailer is any indication. And despite my hatred for her shouting, charmless self, I’ve got to admit that I can’t wait. Roll on Spring!