Doctor Who-Voyage Of The Damned

                                        After narrowly escaping a merging with his fifth incarnations TARDIS as well as the departure of Martha Jones,the doctor suddenly finds himself an unintended stowaway on board the space liner Titanic,built for tourists from the planet Sto based on the famous Earth vessel to experience the Christmas holiday on Earth. With the help Mr.Cooper,with his skewed understanding of Earth history transports the Doctor,the waitress Astrid Peth and passengers Rickston Slade,Foon and Morvin Van Hoff as well as the diminutive red alien Bannakaffalatta to an abandoned London,which is so empty due to fears of the previous two years alien incursions. This does little to encourage the doctor as he's noticed some odd occurances on the space liner already. A group of golden angel shaped robots called Hosts are starting to malfunction en masse. And every time the doctor tries to search for information on this all he can see is an advertisement for the company that constructed the starliner and it's CEO Max Capricorn.  Disaster strikes when the liners captain,dispondant for unknown reasons over retirement,deliberately crashes the liner into a group of asteroids. And it's up to the doctor and his new companions onboard to help him. 

              The vessels nuclear engines will crash it into Earth if unattended. And the TARDIS was blown back to Earth by the impact. While it's soon revealed that the Hosts have been sabotaged and are now intent on killing the passengers and crew of the Titanic,the doctor soon finds out that his companions are challenged in helping him. While all trying to be helpful to his cause,all of them are in fact victims of Sto's nearly impossible economic woes. In the end,Foon and Morvin both sacrifice themselves to save the others from the Hosts where Bannakaffalatta reveals himself to be a cyborg,who are considered second class citizens on Sto.  After discovering that Max Capricorn,himself a cyborg whose entire sales campaign for the liner was fraudulent. So he had sealed himself off in an uncharted area of the ship and used the Hosts to protect the crew and passengers from his presence. In order to stop him,Astrid and Bannalaffalataa both sacrifice themselves. In the end the doctor,finding Astrid's remains while whering the transport band are partially complete,allows the remainder of her energy to float aloft in space as she'd wished. And as for Mr.Copper,one of the two survivors of the events with the doctor and facing prison on Sto for his own fraud,is left by the doctor to live on Earth as a wealthy man to pursue his own dreams before the doctor himself departs.

              There's a lot of humor in this story-from Mr.Copper's misinformation based warnings to the passengers about an evil Santa god and the "the war with the Turkey's from Turkey". However for the most part,this story reflects through the filter of science fiction much of discord that was actually occurring in the world at the time it was being made. While enjoying their vacation to Earth,the passengers on board the Starliner Titanic are mostly rather desperate people such as Asrid Peth,portrayed wonderfully by Kylie Minogue,Mr.Copper as portrayed by 'Keeping Up Appearances' Clive Swift as well as Rickston Slate,Max Capricorn himself. All of them were generally motivated by ambition to trick each other and themselves into getting ahead in life,even if it meant breaking the law. Foon and Morvin,while a happy couple both are forced to sacrifice themselves to help their crew. Whereas the Alonzo Fame,the midshipmen shop by the ships captain who caused the entire disaster,ends up having to be the voice of reason despite his confusion and injury. The tenth doctors constantly lonliness is once again reinforced when Astrid,whose fallen in love with him,is sacrificed along with the cyborg
Bannalaffalataa. A very touching and often chilling reminder of how difficult joy has to come when faced with financial destitution.