The Curse of the Black Spot
by Steve Thompson
The Curse of the Black Spot has the undubious honor of following the mind blowing 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 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 what is happening and save the day. This time it is a girl or 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 have to be bleeding or sick. Or in Rory's case near death from drowning. Oh plus some how that wasn't really explained the siren or her ship takes the TARDIS away from the Doctor.
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 but I felt it could have been a tad longer. 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.
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 he spot on his hand you knew they weren't going to kill him off right away. Which brings me to one of the problems I have with this story. How many times is Rory is 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 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 far fetched 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 let down 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 it's moments and is a lot more light hearted than the darker episodes before it. I also liked the fact that this story did have some humorous moments but they were not over done. In other words it wasn't to silly. In all an enjoyable story for the most part until you get to the cheesy and disappointing ending.Grade C+
Thanks to Fanpop Doctor Who for the screen caps http://www.fanpop.com/spots/doctor-who/images
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