Doctor Who: Ranking The Christmas Specials From Worst To Best

6. Voyage Of The Damned (2007)

Though it€™s a bit of a point of contention, €œVoyage of the Damned€ excels primarily for its incredibly novel premise, something hard to come by in the RTD-era specials and even the later ones penned by Steven Moffat. Despite its occasional campy ludicrousness, the episode has all the elements, including equal parts of silliness and drama, which highlight the Tenth Doctor€™s era and make it for an overall highly entertaining - if not even to close to perfect - special. Admittedly, the action more closely resembles a disaster movie than Doctor Who, with expendable extraterrestrial characters who, though moderately enjoyable, don€™t do much. Kylie Minogue€™s Astrid is a bit of an exception, with some good chemistry opposite a refreshingly cheery (for the most part) Tennant. The action-movie atmosphere is heightened by the campy villains, including the oh-so-obviously sleazy Max Capricorn (a gold tooth? Really?) and the rather dull Heavenly Host. Overall, the premise of the space-Titanic is realized with refreshingly entertaining gusto, with seemingly not a single care as to how campy it comes across as €“ which is, as it turns out, quite a lot. The best moments of the episode come, unsurprisingly, when it remembers that it is, after all, Doctor Who. The charming moment, for example, when Astrid steps out onto the empty streets of London on Christmas and exclaims at how beautiful the concrete and shops are. While certainly nowhere near the best Christmas special to date, with its classic Tenth Doctor mix of feel-good holiday cheer and emotional devastating conclusion, €œVoyage of the Damned€ is a hallmark of Tennant€™s time as the Doctor (a Time Lord, from the planet Gallifrey, in the constellation Kasterborous, etc etc.)