10 Best Spaceships In The Doctor Who Universe

The SS Madame de Pompadour is so intricately embedded within Series 2's The Girl In The Fireplace that it doesn't just feel like an ordinary ship: it feels like a fully-fledged character within the story.

After being damaged in an ion storm, the Pompadour's human crew was murdered by its clockwork repair droids, whose sole mission was to fix the ship by any means necessary. To that end, they harvested the dead crew for "spare parts", fusing the ship's metals and wires with human flesh and organs.

It says a lot about the complexity of this vessel that some of this machine/organ-melding actually works (at one point, Rose and Mickey stumble across a surveillance camera with a human eye in place of a lens), but this isn't even the biggest modification that the clockwork droids made. As noted by the Tenth Doctor, the ship's warp engines have been unlocked to their full capacity - giving the Pompadour enough power to punch a hole in the universe.

It's a fascinating ship used in a fascinating way, particularly when it comes to the time windows that link the Pompadour with the real-life lady of the same name. Naturally, the Doctor then travels through one of these windows and gives her a big ol' snog - because what else would Tennant's Doctor do in this situation?