Doctor Who:
The Curse of the Black Spot
By Steve Thompson
"You couldn't give up the gold, could you. That's why you turned pirate. Your commission, your wife, your son.
Just how much is that treasure worth to you, man?"
The Curse of the Black Spot has
the dubious honor of following the really good season opener. If you are expecting crazy things to happen
and more developments of what happened in the previous stories then you will be
disappointed. The Curse of the Black
Spot is one of those Doctor Who stories where you don't have to do too much
thinking to enjoy. It was one of those
type of stories where there is something happening and it's up to the Doctor to
figure out and save the day. This time
it is a siren that comes out of the sea and apparently disintegrates anyone she
touches. In order for you to get a black
spot which marks you for the siren to get you is that you need to be bleeding
or sick. Or in Rory's case near death
from drowning.
In case you wondering The Curse
of the Black Spot is the story that features pirates and Karen Gillan in pirate
garb. I like pirates and pirate movies
like the Pirates of the Caribbean series so I was pretty excited to see that
Doctor Who was going to feature pirates this season. Although I liked the pirate action at the
beginning of the story I felt there could have been more pirate action. The Doctor walking plank was a pretty fun
scene as it was pretty funny to see Amy taking up a sword to rescue Rory and
the Doctor. How much of a Sally is Rory
as he couldn't get himself free to help out and when he does he gets cut by the
sword. Well cue the Siren because he is now marked.
The Curse of the Black Spot was
pretty much a predictable story. You
knew the Doctor was going to save the day and that he would deduce that the
siren was an alien or in this case alien technology. You knew that the crew and Rory who got
disintegrated were not really dead. From
the moment that Rory got the spot on his hand you knew they weren't going to
kill him off right away. This brings me
to one of the problems I have with this story.
How many times is Rory going to be killed or almost killed and have to
be brought back alive. Talk about
predictable. You just knew that Amy
would be able to perform CPR the way Rory instructed her to save him. I mean pretty lame but it was a descent
emotional scene if really predictable.
The other problem I had was how
quickly a pirate who believes in curses and such seemed pretty at ease with
alien and future technology. After the
bigger on the inside moment it appears that Captain Avery was pretty relaxed
and at home with the TARDIS. To make it
even more unreal is that in the alien space ship he seemed to take everything
in stride and even at home. In fact in
what seems pretty farfetched even for Doctor Who is that Captain Avery and his
crew were able to fly the spaceship through space. Wow that's amazing for pirate who's
technology is limited to candles and gun powder, and sailing. The funniest part is when the Doctor asks
Avery if he thinks he can sail the spaceship he tells the Doctor to point him
to atom accelerator. What? How on earth would he know what that is?
Despite the ending which I
thought was a letdown I did enjoy the story up to that point. After being blown away with all the going
on's in the series opener it was good to watch a simple story. The Curse of the Black Spot has its moments
and is a lot lighter hearted than the darker episodes before it. I also liked the fact that this story did
have some humorous moments but they were not overdone. In other words it wasn't too silly. In all an enjoyable story for the most part
until you get to the cheesy and disappointing ending.
Grade C+
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