Doctor Who: Season 4 Premiere

A new season of Doctor Who begins for us Americans Friday night on Sci Fi with "Voyage of the Damned," the 2007 Christmas special leading into the program's fourth season. The first proper episode of season 4, "Partners in Crime," airs next Friday.

"Voyage," a 90-minute special, begins a half-hour early, at 8:30 p.m. Eastern; next week the show settles into its regular 9 p.m. Friday slot.

Continuing an accidental tradition begun last year with "The Runaway Bride," "Voyage" finds the Doctor between companions and finds a temporary assistant in Astrid (Kylie Minogue). (In case you're wondering whether Astrid "counts" as a companion, Kylie is billed up front in the opening credits, and she certainly performs all the functions of a companion. Look for the credits to get a bit thick later in this new season, by the way, with Billie Piper, Freema Agyeman, Elisabeth Sladen, and John Barrowman all slated to join full-time companion Catherine Tate toward the end of season 4.)

Christmas doesn't mean quiet afternoons watching the snow on Who – in fact the holidays specials have been loud, high-energy romps and the snowfall is usually ash from exploding spaceships, or worse. "Voyage" is a solid standalone adventure with lots of adrenaline and a surprisingly high body count, but its real joys are in its quickly but tightly drawn supporting characters including Bannakaffalatta (Jimmy Vee, finally getting a meaty role after playing Moxx of Balhoun and the Space Pig in season 1), the scared but stalwart Midshipman Alonzo Frame (Russell Tovey), and purported Earth expert Mr Copper (Clive Swift from Keeping Up Appearances).

Minogue herself is a pretty lightweight performer – apart from her status as a pop star she's still best known for her role on the Australian soap Neighbours – and while there are moments when she has trouble holding the screen next to Tennant, a castfull of manic character actors, and a Die Hard sequel's-worth of explosions and special effects, you can tell she's expending tremendous effort at trying not to be quite so flyaway insubstantial, and mostly succeeds.

But for Who fans this is a must-see just because of a great speech in which the Tenth Doctor declaims, in response to someone asking who put him in charge, "I'm the Doctor. I'm a Time Lord. I'm from the planet Gallifrey in the constellation of Kasterborous. I'm 903 years old, and I'm the man who's gonna save your lives and all six billion people on the planet below. You got a problem with that? [His interrogator responds No.] In that case: Allons-y!"

On its original airdate in the UK, "Voyage of the Damned" garnered 13.31 million viewers, the highest viewing figures for Doctor Who since "City of Death" (1979), and ended up being Britain's second-highest viewed program of 2007.