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The Wreck of the Titan opens with the Sixth Doctor and Jamie McCrimmon materialising on the Titanic, which is already a bold choice, and then immediately goes feral. The Titanic becomes a steam trawler called the Titan. The Titan hits an iceberg. The Doctor nearly becomes polar bear tapas. Jamie gets scooped up by the Nautilus under the command of Captain Nimo. Yes, Nimo. And then a giant squid attacks and Colin Baker ends up hacking at tentacles with a fire axe like the most theatrical lumberjack in history.
If that sounds completely unhinged, good. That is the correct response.
This story does not so much unfold as gleefully lurch from one nautical disaster to another. Icebergs. Submarines. Arctic wastelands. Squids the size of municipal regret. All of it stitched together by the increasingly frazzled indignation of the Sixth Doctor, who spends much of the runtime trying to impose logic onto a narrative that absolutely refuses to cooperate. Colin Baker is having the time of his life. His Doctor is pompous, verbose, deeply offended by nonsense, and yet somehow still the calmest person in the room while reality implodes.
Jamie, meanwhile, is the perfect counterweight. Frazer Hines plays him as grounded, wry, and just sharp enough to gently puncture the Doctor’s grandstanding without ever undermining him. Their chemistry is phenomenal. It crackles. The banter alone could carry this story, and honestly sometimes it does. There is something deeply satisfying about hearing Jamie calmly react to increasingly absurd events while the Doctor spirals into eloquent outrage.
The secondary cast deserve their flowers too. Miranda Raison is clearly having enormous fun as Tess Pilkington who abruptly becomes Myra Selfridge halfway through the story, complete with a completely different accent. The switch is so blatant it borders on parody, and Raison absolutely commits. Matt Addis matches her beat for beat, and the sense that characters are slipping sideways into new identities becomes part of the charm rather than a distraction.
And then, finally, the penny drops. By the end of part four, the Doctor realises they are in the Land of Fiction. Yes. That Land of Fiction. First seen in The Mind Robber back in the Second Doctor era. Which means everything we have just witnessed is narrative chaos by design. They have been crashing through ship based stories, pulp adventures, literary archetypes, and maritime clichés like a TARDIS stuck in a library blender.
Thematically, it is a love letter to storytelling. Not just to Doctor Who lore, but to fiction itself. Ships as symbols of hubris. Exploration as narrative shorthand. The idea that stories repeat, remix, mutate. The Doctor’s frustration becomes the audience’s delight. He wants coherence. The Land of Fiction wants spectacle. It is ridiculous, cinematic, knowingly indulgent, and very, very fun.
And yet beneath the absurdity there is craftsmanship. The sound design is lush. Ice cracking, engines churning, tentacles slapping against hulls. It feels enormous. Big Finish at full confidence.
This is clearly positioning pieces for the trilogy’s finale, but it stands confidently on its own as a madcap adventure that trusts its leads to sell the madness.
Final Thoughts
The Wreck of the Titan is bonkers in the best possible way. Smart, self aware, and powered by two actors who understand exactly how to dance through chaos.
Rating: 4.5 out of 5 giant squid tentacles flailing dramatically in the Arctic night