A Life in Time and Space - The Biography of David Tennant. Nigel Goodall
survivors through the devastated vessel.
It probably helped the development of the storyline that Doctor Who writer Russell T. Davies loves disaster movies. He had, in fact, been a huge fan of the genre ever since he was snowed in during the winter of 1981, with only a copy of The Poseidon Adventure on VHS: ‘This was in the days when a VHS was rare and exotic. I’ve always associated those films with Christmas because of that, but they’re great templates. Battling against the odds, with epic scenes of death and mayhem all around … what could be more Doctor Who? Meshing that format with the Doctor’s world was fascinating.’
Equally fascinating is the story of how Kylie came to be cast in the first place. Much of it appears to have been down to her creative director, stylist and one of her closest friends, William Baker. William (or ‘Will’, as she calls him) is, ‘… an absolute huge fan of Doctor Who. We’re talking a convention-goer here! Even before its recent revival, I was always hearing about it.’ Baker attended the press launch of Series Three in London on 21 March 2007, and on this occasion, according to Davies, he said how marvellous it would be to get Kylie in Doctor Who. The writer admits he just nodded over his glass of wine and thought, ‘Yeah, yeah, not in a million years, but then he phoned up the next day and he meant it.’ And to all intents and purposes, that is how Kylie ended up being cast.
Her new role was first reported in the News of the World in April 2007. Davies initially dismissed the story, but Baker and Kylie contemporaneously confirmed she would star in the show. Her part was officially announced on 3 July 2007. Both Kylie and Doctor Who had acknowledged each other before: ‘The Idiot’s Lantern’ episode mentions the star as being a real person and William Baker included aspects of the classic series in Kylie’s concert tours: the Raston Warriors from ‘The Five Doctors’ episode during the Fever tour and The Cybermen from ‘The Tenth Planet’ episode in her Showgirl tour.
If there was any disappointment for Kylie, it would have to be that she wasn’t meeting the Daleks in the Christmas episode, so instead a Dalek was brought down from the Doctor Who set in Wales to the Worx Studio in Parsons Green, London, where she was exclusively photographed for the cover of the January 2008 issue of the official Doctor Who Magazine draped over the Doctor’s most popular adversary.
The idea behind the photo was to recreate Katy Manning’s legendary 1978 shot for Girl Illustrated, in which the third Doctor’s companion from 1971 to 1973, Jo Grant, played by Manning, posed naked with a Dalek. Although Kylie was not about to go anywhere near close to being nude, or even semi-nude, she did pose, pout and show some leg in a revealing gold mini-dress. ‘There was a lot of excitement when the Dalek arrived,’ Kylie remembers. ‘I was in the presence of a legend. I’ve had to gracefully accept second billing,’ she joked. ‘The Dalek was much bigger than I’d expected. At least I’ve met one now.’ And perhaps, another mini-blow for Kylie might have been that she never got to hold the famous sonic screwdriver: ‘I had many opportunities, but kept prolonging the moment and never got round to it.’
All the same, she was simply thrilled to have been cast, even though she wouldn’t be playing a baddie, as some journalists had suggested: ‘I grew up with Doctor Who in Australia so it’s part of my childhood. I was very flattered to be invited to be part of the show, especially the Christmas episode. When I was asked to do it by Russell and Julie [Gardner, executive producer], we had a meeting over coffee to discuss what the role might be, and I just fell in love with the two of them.’ It was the pair’s humour, undoubted talent and passion for the show, three showbiz characteristics that Kylie clearly adores, that persuaded her and at that stage, as she explains, ‘Russell hadn’t written the script, so to know that he’d write it after our meeting made it all the more personal.’
Certainly Astrid came first in the writing process, confirms Davies: ‘When you watch “Voyage of the Damned”, you realise that there would have to be someone in Astrid’s place, no matter what, but this was unusual in that we were talking to Kylie before a word had been written. But Kylie … I never, hand on heart, expected our discussions to succeed – so I wrote the Astrid that I would have written anyway.’
The decision to cast Kylie in the first place was instinctive – as instinctive, in fact, as her acceptance. But it wasn’t only the chance to work on a show as popular as Doctor Who that was the initial attraction, but also the opportunity to return to the medium that made her a star in the first place. ‘My first day on set was like stepping back in time,’ Kylie recalls. ‘I felt really at home being back in the world of TV and acting. Although I had nerves, I loved the challenge of playing Astrid. It felt very liberating to be a character and not Kylie. I’ve definitely got the acting bug again.’
Davies admits he had no concerns about casting her: ‘I knew she could act; I had no doubt whatsoever about that. We wouldn’t have considered her otherwise. She threw herself into it, mucked in with everyone and attacked every single scene with energy and imagination. I can’t imagine anyone playing that part better.’ Nor did he worry that Kylie’s iconic status would overshadow either the character or the episode as a whole: ‘The show itself is iconic, and David himself such a massive and popular presence that I had no doubt that Doctor Who would hold its own. Once you throw in the Titanic, the robot host and a meteoroid storm, I swear you forget that it’s Kylie.’
David was always relaxed about the casting. Admitting to humming Kylie’s hits while she was on set, he also joked about filming a widely reported kiss with the Aussie star for the episode that apparently took several takes to complete. Addressing suggestions that he cheekily forgot his lines during the scene in a bid to have more retakes of the moment, he told the Daily Record: ‘I am very professional in all things – I just go and the director tells me to stop. There were a lot of things wrong that day, it was nothing to do with me. ‘Besides,’ he continued, ‘If you had Kylie on the show, wouldn’t you have her kiss the Doctor?’
Adding fuel to the tabloids’ fire was producer Phil Collinson, who also shed more light on David and Kylie’s on-screen relationship: ‘There’s great chemistry. Kylie’s character and the Doctor bond quickly in a slightly flirty way.’
Speaking at the première of the Doctor Who Christmas Special, ‘Voyage of the Damned’, when it was shown on the gigantic IMAX screen at the Science Museum in London’s South Kensington, just one week before Christmas (in front of an audience that included, curiously, Peter Hain MP and celebrity chef Tom Aikens, along with Doctor Who alumni Camille Coduri, Noel Clarke, Shaun Dingwall, Michelle Collins and Anne Reid – though not Kylie, Catherine Tate, Freema Agyeman or Billie Piper), David was still enthusiastic about starring in the hit BBC show. ‘I think it’s the most exciting thing you could possibly hope to see – I’m just glad that people seem to agree. It’s a very odd and slightly bewildering sort of thing to be in the middle of, but it’s something that’s very easy to be genuinely excited about. I really love it and even if I had nothing to do with it, I’d be looking forward to the Christmas Special, so it’s a privilege to be in the middle of it all.’
High praise indeed, but there was a sting in the tail. It seemed not everyone liked the storyline. To start with, the episode was heavily criticised by Millvina Dean, the last-living survivor of the 1912 Titanic sinking, who thought it was ‘disrespectful to make entertainment of such a tragedy.’ The Christian Voice organisation was in agreement. They expressed offence at the religious imagery of a scene in which the Doctor is lifted through the ship by robot angels. But at an April 2008 conference, the unexpected happened when vicars were encouraged to use the clip, among other Doctor Who episodes, to ‘illustrate themes of resurrection, redemption and evil’ to young people.
Gareth McLean, a reviewer, who attended the screening at the Science Museum, for the Guardian’s TV and radio weblog, appreciated the use of ‘the disaster movie template’ and overall came to a favourable conclusion: ‘For the most part, “The Voyage of the Damned” is absolutely smashing.’ Its main flaw, in his view, was the ‘blank and insipid’ acting of Kylie. In echoes of the criticism that she was subjected to at the start of her career, Mclean wrote: ‘She’s just not that good. Truth