Doctor Who; The Curse of The Black Spot

Basic Review

The Curse of the Black Spot was a nice bit of silly fluff after the heart pounding intensity of The Impossible Astronaut and The Day of The Moon. There were a couple of plot holes and inconsistencies but over all a fun romp.

It felt a lot more like Classic Who than previous episodes, which is not a bad thing… though not necessarily a good thing. An awful lot happened in 50 minutes, which unfortunately meant that a lot questions were glossed over and some demi-McGuffins (things that move the plot a long) were thrown in out of nowhere with no explanation of how they happened.

However, the important questions were answered and the answers were clever enough to be pleasing, to make me go “Oooh!”

There was a little more of the series arc, though nothing new really. I think these little bits were thrown in just to remind us that while this was a one-off, the weird things in the background are still going on.

Plus; pirates! Come on, PIRATES!

Overall I’d say a good episode. Not fantastic, but well worth a watch or two.

In Depth Look (Here Be Spoilers, obviously)

We begin with pirates, deathly afraid of a curse that has dwindled their numbers down to only five, a curse that takes any man who is injured. It’s a nice set up. Ships are always good for drama because there’s no escape. It makes for tension, though admittedly I don’t think there was very much tension in that episode, at least not until the penultimate scene in the TARDIS.

This felt a lot more like traditional, Classic Who. It was a little bit silly and a little bit camp. It took human superstitions and explained them with aliens, but had quite a few holes. Classic Who always feels to me like they’ve not had enough time to explain everything, so have taken short cuts which lead to inconsistencies and glaring “but why/what/how…” moments.

For example; why didn’t the Siren-Medic put the Doctor, Amy and Captain Avery in sick bay? Why did they have to leave RIGHT NOW, when they could have just sat around and taught the Siren-Medic how to save Rory? Where the Hell did those leeches come from in the middle of the ocean? What kind of medic cures a cold with fire? Who programmes an enrageable holographic doctor (Voyager’s Doctor doesn’t count; he’s… free roaming)? And how did the boy not know his father was a pirate? I mean, the kid had to have found him on his own. It obviously wasn’t a ship of the British fleet.

Stupid child.

None of these issues really bothered me though. I don’t care when an episode isn’t the epitome of perfection, isn’t the archetype Doctor Who episode that all other episodes aspire to be. As long as it has some merit, I’m reasonably happy… and The Curse of the Black Spot had plenty of merit.

Let’s just get my spaz over Murray Gold’s score out of the way, shall we?

How beautiful was that score? How perfectly did Gold combine the deep drums and thrums that we all associate with pirates with the Doctor’s theme, amongst others? A piece of genius. Utterly fitting. Then the siren song? Haunting, gentle, lonely… that man is a miracle worker.

Okay, I got that over with quicker than I thought.

I had to have a snigger when the black guy was the first to get taken after the Doctor showed up. Ethnic minority in a Doctor Who episode? Here, please put on this red shirt and stand in the way of danger for us, thanks.

Poor bloke.

Obviously he couldn’t be the only one put in peril. Oh look, Rory is in danger; it must be Saturday! I actually thought Rory’s ‘death scene,’ though utterly contrived and unnecessary (they could have just stayed there) was very well played. Obviously when they dragged him into the TARDIS we all thought “oh here we go, a touching scene of Amy bringing Rory back from the brink,” how thrilling >_>

Then it began to drag on a bit. I started getting bored but then realised they might not actually be reviving Rory. That they were in fact going to get rid of him in a very mundane episode, again. But they wouldn’t do that, would they? Too samey, surely.

Then Amy gives up… wait, Amy gives up?! Rory’s actually dead? Rory’s dead! Again! No! They can’t kill him. I LIKE Rory!

Then he breathed! Hurrah!

For that brief moment I did think he had been killed off. I’m sure Doctor Who is shortening my life span.

Yes, I thought that scene was very well done. It played on our assumptions of the way TV shows work and especially how Doctor Who works. Nicely done there, writer Steve Thompson (of Sherlock: The Blind Banker infamy) and director Jeremy Webb (of Merlin… er… fame >_> )… and of course Mr Moffat.

As I said; I thought the explanations for what was happening were clever enough. An interdimensional space craft trapped in the same space as a sailing ship on Earth, an angry and insane nurse that acts like an Earth siren, alien snot, mirrors as doors to other planes of existence.

Come on, that was all reasonably good, wasn’t it? We don’t need every episode to be mind tinglingly brilliant, and if it’s not that doesn’t mean it’s a bad episode, it’s just not an amazing episode. This was clearly just a bit of silly fluff to give us all a rest. Evidence of the silly; the Doctor kissing the TARDIS. Very silly, and yet somehow completely in character. Evidence of the fluff; Captain Avery and his son, reunited and happily sailing the stars together.

See; silly fluff!

Speculation

Metal Eye Patch Lady returneth. With her pulled back hair, kindly tone and the little slide-y door she very much gives the impression of a doctor in a psych ward. She gently encourages Amy; “You’re fine, you’re doing fine. Just stay calm”, as a doctor might.

That is, if it’s Amy she’s talking to and not just Amy seeing through someone else’s eyes. A psychic link, perhaps through whatever she’s carrying? Someone else is seeing through her eyes in their dreams (this is all getting a bit like a series of fanfics I’m writing now) and she occasionally gets a glimpse through theirs?

Is it just me that thinks the Doctor allowing a bunch of pirates to take over an alien space ship is a bad thing? Remember; pirates are bad guys. They pillage, murder and rape. They are NOT nice people like Jack Sparrow and Elizabeth Swan. I hope this mistake comes back to bite him in the ass at some point.

The trailer for next week’s episode looks like it might have blown some of my previous ideas out of the water. Was that the Rani? Was that the freaking Rani?! FINALLY!

It’s probably not the Rani. They wouldn’t let that slip in a trailer, surely? I hope it’s not the Rani because I’m looking forward to her creating the Silence with the aid of Amy. That’s what the Rani does; create new forms of life… and irritate the Doctor.

I really don’t think that everything that has happened is going to be a dream. That would invalidate everything that 11th has done, or at least everything in this season. IF it’s all in Amy’s head and she’s gone crazy then it was most likely caused by false-but-actually-real memories of the Raggedy Doctor conflicting with her real-though-actually-false life.

OR something happens later and she’s reliving what happened to her. That’s almost plausible. And it is very wibbley-wobbley, timey-wimey, that she’s noticng Metal Eye Patch Lady in her hallucinations of reliving the past.

I feel like we’re missing something. There are going to be clues that we won’t know are clues until we’re shown them. Instances like when the Doctor goes back to Amy on the Byzantium (The Time of Angels and Flesh and Stone).

I also have a feeling that the Doctor already knows he’s going to “die”. I don’t know why. Perhaps it’s simply because his lack of knowledge around Amy, River and Rory seems so strange, but he always looks like he knows why they’re being secretive, almost as if he’s willing them to admit the truth. Some kind of test? It’s like someone who has found out their friends are planning a surprise party and winds them up by asking too many questions while acting completely ignorant of the truth.

I certainly think he was lying about his age. He can’t run around for two hundred years on his own. He can barely go a whole week without digging up a new companion… I’m not even sure that WAS the Doctor that got killed. Canton Delaware saying “that’s definitely him” is just a little too much for me.

And now I’m REALLY clutching at straws.

[EDIT]

If that IS the Rani in the trailer, did she create the Ood? Because really, that’s not a viable life form, evolutionarily speaking.

Rating

A nice three out of five TARDISes I think. It was by no means wonderful, but it had enough action, comedy, intrigue and space ships to keep me entertained for the whole fifty minutes. I didn’t get bored and want to play on my laptop once and that’s good enough for me.

I’ll leave the sexy legs rating for Tompl :P