10 Times Doctor Who Shamelessly Ripped Off Hollywood

The disaster film format is one that we're all familiar with, and it's a genre that's produced some genuine all-time classics over the last several decades. From The Towering Inferno to Dante's Peak and Deep Impact to Twister, we all have our favourites, and former Doctor Who showrunner Russell T Davies is no different.

As a huge fan of 1972's disaster spectacular The Poseidon Adventure, Davies' plan for the 2007 Christmas special (which ended up being Voyage Of The Damned) was basically to take that movie and give it the Doctor Who treatment, setting the story in space and swapping the ship from the Poseidon to the Titanic.

As well as sharing the same basic plot - a luxury liner is badly damaged and a small group of passengers attempt to climb their way to safety - Davies also pinched specific elements from The Poseidon Adventure too. The character Foon Van Hoff is almost identical to Belle Rosen from the original movie, with both women ultimately sacrificing themselves to allow the rest of the group to continue on.

Davies even considered flipping the Titanic upside down in the exact same manner as the Poseidon, but this idea was nixed due to financial constraints.

Voyage Of The Damned is another episode that Davies talks about in The Writer's Tale, where it's mentioned that the pitch for the episode was "the Titanic in space crossed with The Poseidon Adventure". He wasn't kidding around, was he?