Doctor Who - Curse of the Black Spot Review

This review can also be found on Step2Inspire.

If you were to ask me what I loved other than Doctor Who, I might answer with tea and biscuits. If you were then to say “No, not tea and biscuits, what else?”, I’d probably reel off an entire list; Dostoyevsky, dinosaurs, ducks, Diana Vickers, Descartes, democracy (mostly D’s at the moment), but somewhere in that list would be pirates. The point is, I do like pirates, there’s something about the dress code that comes with sailing under the Jolly Roger (although I do question their choice of name…). I’m very fond of 16th century fashion, and I’d wear it a lot more frequently if it weren’t for the odd looks I’d get when doing the weekly shop in Waitrose. Anyway, let’s just say I said pirates in the first place… So imagine my joy when Doctor Who and pirates came together in three glorious quarters of an hour!

After the epic opening two episodes, the Curse of the Black Spot felt a lot more relaxed and took us back into traditional stand-alone adventures. Confined to a pirate ship being stalked by a siren, determined to take anyone with the slightest of ailments, the Doctor and co set about figuring out just how to rid themselves of the ‘curse’. As it turns out, the sired isn’t so much a curse as an automated medical unit from a spaceship parked in the same multi-dimensional space as the pirate ship, and everyone thought dead is in fact alive in a medical facility. (Sorry, again, spoilers…)

Hugh Bonneville was splendidly cast as Captain Avery, but he didn’t quite feel ruthless enough to be a proper ‘nyar’ pirate, especially when he discovered his son on board. Not a fault, just an observation - the pirates didn’t feel like the scourge of the seven seas, more like a band of adventures with a penchant for shiny things and bad personal hygiene (and fantastic dress sense - I do like pirate fashion!). Then again, probably not all pirates were the cut-throat marauders we’re used to seeing, and Avery’s compassion for his estranged son made the character feel much more human than the classic interpretation of a pirate.

By far the most stand-out aspect of the story, though, was the siren. The casting of Lily Cole was absolutely sublime - after all, if you’re looking to cast an ethereally alluring mermaid, who better to play the part than the ethereally alluring Lily Cole! Despite not having any lines, Cole’s character felt fully characterised with a blend of enticing song and pernicious rage, all the while feeling thoroughly other-worldly.

The mysterious hatch-opening-eye-patch-woman makes another appearance, reassuring Amy that’s she’s doing fine and to stay calm, and there’s also another tease at the end regarding Amy’s on-again-off-again pregnancy. Out of the two, I find the hatch-opening-eye-patch-woman more intriguing, but I’m starting to wonder if the two are linked somehow. Perhaps if, like throughout last series with the cracks in time linking each point in time to another, the hatch-opening-eye-patch-woman is from a parallel time-line in which Amy is pregnant, her current confusion and the TARDIS’ mixed readings could be the result of a bleed-through effect. Or I could be wrong. Which I refuse to acknowledge can ever happen. I am always right.

In the end, the moral of the story is that you must be willing to give up all your worldly possessions for the ones you truly love. But if you don’t, your son will be abducted by a homicidal mermaid who actually means no harm, and you’ll get to gallivant across the stars with your piratey chums in your newly discovered spaceship. To be honest, I think the latter perfectly justifies selfish materialism!

Avast, me hearties, we set sail for Sirius B!

Next week, it's The Doctor's Wife, written by Neil Gaiman. Dare I say I'm ludicrously excited by the prospect of another Time Lord and the image of an Ood?!