New Who Review: The Curse of the Black Spot
Posted By Kathleen David on May 9, 2011
As usual no spoilers before the cut but after the cut and in the comments everything is fair game. Also we are only talking up to this episode. Speculation about the future is allowed but please keep it Internet Spoiler free.
It is nice when you get an episode that is not specifically geared to a Doctor’s incarnation. The way that they would get to the solution might have been a bit different but this would have worked for any and all. It did feel like a bit of a mash-up but I thought more Treasure Island than Pirates of the Caribbean.
The plot did hold together. It was a mystery that ran its course and had a very good Whovian twist. We did have a few hints of things to come but not hitting us over the head with it. It was sort of a bottle episode in that there were not a lot of sets for it but they are still probably catching up from their jaunt to the US.
I am grateful for an episode that felt like Old Who.
And again Amy gets it done. Chips down she jumps in and does what needs to be done. And she did look smashing as a pirate. We still have the possible pregnancy which is probably going to hinge on something happening later in the series.
Rory is turning into weak companion of the group and I can’t say that I like it. He seems to be relegated to the companion most likely to get into peril. I am not expecting to see a Rory-centric episode this season but I don’t want him to suffer Giles syndrome. (Where you take the character out until the peril is over because they could solve it so much sooner)
The solution as to who the Siren is and what she is doing there is most elegant. Once we get to the spaceship which is in the same space as the pirate ship, the pieces fall into place. We have seen this happen before in Doctor Who where two objects try to occupy the same space but not quite the same time. Holographic Doctors are not new to most of us who watched Voyager.
One niggling point, the fate of Toby that he can’t leave the ship bothers me just a bit. If the ship is so intelligent, can’t it take a tissue sample of a well person and use it to cure Toby? I know the idea is that the ship now has a crew that can fly through space and all it happy since no one had anything really to hold them to Earth. So I’ll give the story point to the writer.
The Doctor is more an instigator than the main character on this one. He is there and he is doing things but he seems more in the background moving the story forward. He does sort out what is going on but it takes him a bit to do so.
Overall I was pretty happy with it. Would watch again.
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