New Who Review: The Curse of the Black Spot

[puppetmaker]

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.

Comments

[auroraceleste.livejournal.com]

I saw your niggling point, too. Lou argued that the hologram wasn't a doctor, but a stasis program designed to keep people alive until the "real" doctor could cure them. Dunno if that was the point, and, if it was, whether it was adequately communicated (it wasn't for me).

[scarlettina.livejournal.com]

See, I disagree that this was an elegant episode. The Doctor has encountered automated medical interfaces before. See The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances and New Earth, among others. Like the nanogenes of EC/DD, this was another emergency medical program that had never seen humans before, otherwise why would it put its patients onto critical life support for nothing more than a paper cut? Having seen the nanogenes and encountered other medical maguffins like this, why wouldn't the Doctor recognize what was going on? The friends I watched the episode with and I did very shortly after the episode began. Our very clever Doctor doesn't seem to have been so very clever this episode.

As for Rory, I disagree again. The scripts keep coming back to his 2,000 year sojourn as a Roman soldier. That's a gun that's been placed on the mantelpiece; I'm just waiting for it to be shot. Like Xander in Buffy the Vampire Slayer who, after his Halloween transformation into a soldier, occasionally popped up with vestigial knowledge useful to his work, I suspect that Rory is going to find himself with knowledge that will be useful and ultimately pivotal somewhere down the line.

The other thing about Rory is that he presents a contrast to the Doctor that is vital in Amy's life--and to the series. He's real and defeatable; the Doctor is a kind of ideal--but Rory is emotionally accessible and loving, and a reminder to Amy that she has an anchor to home, someone to have children with, someone to build a life with once her time with the Doctor is up. That was Rose's fatal flaw, and what made Martha so much smarter than her. I think we're going to see all sorts of things from Rory in the episodes yet to come.

[budgie-uk.livejournal.com]

This episode defined the word "meh" for me.

Plot holes you could drive a truck through (breaking glass doesn't get rid of reflections for a start; just creates lots more of them...), a Doctor who acted out of character, a Doctor who doesn't know CPR, Amy "who'll never give up" yet does so within 30 seconds...

I do like the idea of Blake's Seven at the end... in theory, but in the meantime, The Doctor has let loose a load of criminals (who have killed and killed and killed innocent people) on the universe in a ship that will cure any injuries they have.

Riggggght.

[theafaye.livejournal.com]

Don't forget the husband who we must protect at all costs, but have son faced by apparently kill happy siren and we'll just watch helplessly and wail a little as he gets taken away.

I'm with you on the mehness. I didn't enjoy it much at all.