N.B. there might (or might not) be spoilers in this article!

Voyage of the Damned quickly settles down into being an undemanding slice of Christmas Day disaster movie pudding.

Of course, first you have to get past the crass stunt-naming of the ship as the Titanic, which is then out-crassed by cribbing the episode title from a non-fiction book and film about Jewish refugees sailing the world looking for sanctuary while fleeing Nazi persecution in Europe at the beginning of the Second World War.

So it’s possible your goodwill has been used up in the first five minutes or so — before you even get to play the game of spot-the-disaster-movie-trope as the survivors of the meteors crashing into the ship die off one-by-one (thus traumatising my daughter, who saw all her favourites meet their doom until we were left with only the nasty, selfish one).

“Allons-y, Alonso!”

Doctor, Voyage of the Damned

True, Voyage of the Damned has Kylie, it has Geoffrey Palmer, Clive Swift and George Costigan, it even has Bernard bloody Cribbins — and it hurtles along at a fair old rate. And the Heavenly Hosts, shamelessly ripping off the Voc and Super-Voc Robots of old, do look great.

And there’s no denying it was successful. To this day, Voyage of the Damned remains nu-Who’s highest rated episode in terms of UK viewing figures.

But, while it’s an improvement on the Series Three finale (which, frankly, was hardly difficult), with which it shares clunky religious ascension imagery, and despite the strength in depth of its supporting cast — in addition to the aforementioned, Debbie Chazen and Clive Rowe as the Van Hoffs are both excellent as is a young Russell Tovey as Midshipmen Alonso Frame — Voyage of the Damned is all a bit underwhelming.

In truth, we’ve been spoiled by just how good The Christmas Invasion was. The Christmas specials since have had a hard time living up to its precedent.