Following the impact of a ship colliding with the TARDIS, the Doctor resets the shields and defence systems. As the walls of the TARDIS are restored and the breach sealed, the Doctor examines the life belt from the other ship - apparently the RMS Titanic. Materialising the TARDIS aboard the Titanic, the Doctor becomes increasingly intrigued. A look out of a window finally explains the nature of the ship that he is now aboard.
Opting for some fun, the Doctor joins the passengers and befriends a helpful waitress by the name of Astrid. Her dreams of exploring other worlds remind the Doctor of the qualities he admires in others and so he entices her into joining a landing party.
The fun soon stops when tragedy strikes and the Titanic begins its descent. The Doctor gathers together a small group of survivors in the hope of finding a way of the Titanic, but they must battle against the Host, service androids that have ceased to serve the crew and passengers and instead have become killers...
While this story is an improvement upon The Runaway Bride, there is very little to the story. It takes its time to build up to the disaster and then when the survivors make their way through the ship their numbers are diminished too quickly for anyone to care about them. As a homage to disaster films, this is frankly a disaster. I'm a great fan of The Poseidon Adventure (the Gene Hackman film) but this story has none of the power, drama or writing of that film. Once again, it whizzes along throwing ideas at us and, all too often, Davies' contrived approach to writing shows. By this I mean that he looks at the possible cliches and then he twists in a different direction. The fact that he tackles the cliche head on and then comes up with a poor twist on that cliche does not make him a good writer. The trick and the knack is taking a twist that is both interesting and plausible. All too often, Davies relies upon routines that might come from an old Bernie Clifton comedy routine where logic is not required.
Saying that though, at least I have to admit that I admired his treatment of Astrid - her ultimate journey was surprising and a good twist. Unfortunately, my opinion of Kylie Minogue did not change one bit. I have always ranked her as a medicore talent - I don't rank her as an actress (if anything she is one of the reasons why I think journalists fell over themselves to praise Billie Piper) - if anything she has made me realise why everyone was praising Billie Piper. Nor do I rate her as a singer - from her truly awful Stock Aitken and Waterman days to her psuedo 80s sub-standard b-side style material of today. I watched Voyage of the Damned expecting a so-so performance and that's what I got. Had this been Minogue's debut and had I never heard of her before my opinion would have been simple - I would not have marked her as someone to watch, simply as another forgettable performance.
Overall, it was quite a good story but I do wish Davies would let someone else write the Christmas special. At least he is writing fewer episodes of the series itself. I wonder which film title he will scavenge for the next Christmas special?