Christmas has now come to mean the Doctor Who Christmas Special - amongst other things.

This year saw the Doctor - somewhat inexplicably - have the TARDIS crash into the Titanic... Not THE Titanic, A Titanic... which is in SPACE. So despite managing to plough into the interior of the TARDIS (which seems rather silly), it seems to be OK. Naturally the Doctor starts to schmooze and nose around on this space bound Titanic... as it turns out, said Titanic is in orbit around the Earth and filled with aliens... most of whom are indistinguishable from normal humans... but then, so is the Doctor...

After the mandatory foreshadowing of the - let's face it, inevitable - disaster to come, the Doctor meets Kylie Minogue (who is a serving wench). She doesn't burst into song... which - given RTD - one might have expected at some point but no, she does a solid job of acting the part, nothing to wow... but hey, this is Doctor Who... you can't ever expect any really stellar performances because the format practically necessitates hamming up.

Anyway, tis Christmas eve and people want to go visit Earth. The Doctor takes Kylie along for the ride. Meanwhile, Captain Birdseye has gone a bit bonkers - which is what we were all waiting for. The ol' cliche of someone condemning a whole load of people to death - just so their family is looked after. We should probably be glad that a giant space iceberg wasn't what struck the ship, I suppose... not that a comet would have been so out of place...

Naturally, big rocks vs. space ship = bang! Of course, while most of the people are killed the Doctor and Kylie are fine. Along with them are two space Scousers (also, space working class - they won a contest) man and wife... Then there's space jerk... the kind of arrogant high flyer that everyone hates. The space tour guide - who knows the square root of bugger all about Earth and got his diploma from the same place as "Dr" Gillan McKeith... and of course, what voyage in space would be complete without a space alien. In this case, a red midget cyborg space alien... who is some kin of bastardisation of Darth Maul, Mini-me and a gay Satan.

As if being stuck on a damaged ship - sans TARDIS - wasn't enough... the creepy looking angels - fittingly called "The Host" - that populate the ship have gone from mildly unhelpful to straight forward murderin'... with their halos, no less... Oddjob would be pleased. It's not too long before Darth Midget has used his cybernetic bits to generate an EMP to take down some of the Host... quite how a piece of equipment designed to keep him alive can generate an EMP pulse isn't explained... or how it only takes down the Host... Best not to get hung up on these details - especially given the fact the Sonic Screwdriver can do anything from open doors to make a cup of tea.

So, obese space Scouse heroically sacrifices himself by falling into the engine... then Darth Mini-me... then the other space Scouse can't bear to go on living without the other space Scouse and tosses herself into the giant reactor too... what is it with health and safety in the future? Is there such a massive backlash that you're just allowed to have a giant open reactor? With regulations like that, it seems unlikely you'd need meteors to crash into you for a serious accident to happen.

By this point the Doctor has - naturally - twigged that there is more going on here than just a nasty accident... because it's not just the ship that's going to go down... for some reason, the ship crashing into the planet will kill EVERYONE on the planet (that's probably also down to a lack of health and safety regulations... who'd have thought they were ever useful?).

The Doctor being the Doctor - and everyone else being relatively safe for the time being - goes off to get to the bottom of the matter. He does this by just asking the Host some questions. It seems pretty silly, really. You've got your robots set to kill... but if someone says a magic phrase, they stop killing and answer your questions... even aliens are sloppy coders, it seems.

Nevertheless, he manages to get there and finds out Max Capricorn - the same Max Capricorn who owns the company - is hiding out on the ship, in an "impact chamber" that will allow him to destroy the ship and Earth and hence ruin the board that spurned him and land them in jail and then let him quietly sneak off to retire... I suppose we should be glad... at least it wasn't the old insurance scam.

Anyway, Kylie tagged along after the Doctor and appears just after his spiel has run its course. Quite why the Host ignored their order to kill the Doctor and gawked at Kylie driving a forklift at their boss is a mystery... as is why he doesn't ask for help - he's stuff in a life support unit the size of a big fridge/freezer combo. In any respect, enter heroic sacrifice the third.

For some reason, having just killed their boss - the Host decide to help the Doctor who then sets about stopping the ship plummet into Buckingham Palace... with a real cameo from the Queen... didn't the BBC get in trouble for that earlier? Naturally, the Doctor averts crisis for the third year running... Not that a giant ship crashing into London could really make it any more of an urban death maze than it already is... Also, best not to think too much about how the Doctor was able to violate the second law of thermodynamics.

The Doctor then realises he can save Kylie! For obvious reasons of real life practicality - the attempt to revive her fails. Which is a crying shame. Kylie "dies" and Catherine Tate didn't even get horribly mutilated. Well, no one can say the show doesn't make life unfair. So, the day is saved... the Doctor cringes when he realises that the self-serving douchebag survived but a girl he could have had sex with - died. Well, who wouldn't be crushed... Kylie may need to stand on a box to kiss... but she's a fine filly. Much of the nation would have paid for Catherine Tate to fall in an actual nuclear furnace... where was your quality destroying populism then, eh RTD?

The Doctor and the doddering space tour guide abscond via teleportation - whatever happened to TRANSMAT? - to the TARDIS's landing place on Earth where it's snowing. In keeping with previous years, the snow is actually from the spaceship rather than being real. Space tour guide has a credit card with a million pounds on it... how does that work? Regardless, the Doctor says "I travel alone" - a bigger lie than his Scottish accent - and waves goodbye to the senile coot, who is babbling about a house. The blithering space idiot doesn't know a million pounds wouldn't buy you a potting shed in central London.

It worked quite well as a bit of Christmas fun... it felt like it was aiming for a send up of the Poseidon Adventure... but in truth, probably ended up being more of a parody of itself... the overly dramatic music (even the intro and outro). Repeated heroic sacrifices (clearly more is more), the cheesy villain, all the clumsy editing/directing, the stereotype characters, the cliches... OH, the cliches. Still, passes the time... and as Doctor Who goes, it's pretty passable.