Our heroes draw reminders in places they can't see without a mirror, telepathic beepers are manually operated, and River goes full-on John Woo
The Doctor doesn’t know CPR in this pseudo-prequel to The Smugglers
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In this pseudo-prequel to C028 The Smugglers, the young and future dead doctor, exercising his right to non sequitur, takes Amy and Rory to a pirate ship in the middle of the ocean.
Her crew, they soon learn, are haunted by an annoying, glow-in-the-dark siren who seemingly evaporates anyone who sheds even a drop of blood.
Queue mad dodging nails, sails and a wailing female through a series of ever smaller compartments below deck, while the Doctor runs through one false theory after another.
Behind the scenes gold below. Yarrrrgh!
Ahoy Me Hearties! Yo Ho Ho! Here be me’ mini review for ‘The Curse of the Black Spot’
Avast Ye! Things me thought be treasure!
1. The piratey theme. Argh!
2. The Black Spot!
3. The sexy siren! Especially when her arm jumped from the barrel! Argh!
Batten down the hatches and Shiver me’ timbers! Here be me’ Beefs!
1. The mermaid not being a true beastie of malicious intent. Boo Argh!
2. It should have been MORE piratey! There should have been a parrot! A PARROT! And a better sword-fight and mutiny! Boo Argh!
3. I be promised a Whale of Adventure across the 7th (Doctor) seas! But most the tale be a boney cuttlefish! Boo Argh!
Here she blows: me’ summary! ‘Twas a scurvy tale in parts w’ some booty to be had. But Alas, it proved mostly a landlubber, and so, me gives it 1.8/5 Bottles of Rum!
Hey folks! Ready for a mini?
This week we get pirates. I can only hope Drew is around to enjoy this, based on the Space Pirates review he crashed way back when.
An episode which features our core three trapped on a small ship with an increasingly small crew should perhaps feel claustrophobic. Yet, like the infinite horizon of the ocean this feels expansive.
There’s a mermaid-witch, a black spot, Amy in a tricorn hat, the captain’s stowaway son; each brings fresh clues to the mystery. (ok Amy in pirate getup isn’t so much a clue as it’s just plain fun) Don’t listen to the Doc at all though- he’s off the mark for most of the episode.
I like the captain to captain interactions. It’s always nice to watch what unfolds when the Doctor is presented with a relative equal.
The evil siren turning out to be a benevolent space medic was a good ending twist. And the demise of the alien crew from invasive germs was a nice callback reminiscent of the Steven and Dodo episode about Monoids. (Brings back good memories of poking fun at the “security kitchens”!)
Bringing it back to modern Who, overall this is a solid well-paced episode I enjoyed.
Amy is confused moment: Lady inside a panel. With an eyepatch? I’ll just ignore that!
Rory death count: 3
(This is not counting erasures or faked deaths)
Rating: Yohoho, Yolo!
Rating for Rory Williams: Yol3 so far…
Ahoy!
Didn’t like this one as much, a filler episode to stop having to come up with exciting related stuff.
For the record all Doctor Who fans, Rory is a shit nurse. The CPR technique he passed on was atrocious. You pinch the nose and tilt the head back otherwise the air escapes through the nasal cavity and the CPR rate is 100 times a minute, not once every few seconds as Amy did.
Take a first aid course!
It felt like the episode was meant to be longer but they cut a lot of important bits. The whole episode just seemed “off” to me. One of the actors disappeared halfway through the episode. The story felt very subpar, and the Rory death scene was the icing on the “poor episode” cake. How many times is poor Rory going to have to die?
The missing pirate. 18mins into the episode, there are 4 people in the gunpowder room. Amy, Rory, Toby, and a pirate that the son cut with the sword who then proceeds to barricade the door with the barrels. Then at 21mins, we are back in the gunpowder room, no injured pirate. Just Amy, Rory, and Toby… wtf.
It felt like bad fan fiction. Nothing was added to the overarching plot. The eyepatch woman was a rehash (maybe). The pregnancy test remained the same.
1.5/5
I might be mistaken, but in Vampires of Venice (which I saw a few days ago) the Doctor tries to open a door with his Sonic Screwdriver and says “won’t work cause it is bolted” or words to that effect. But in the Curse of the Black Spot he uses it on a door and you can see the bolt popping out on the other side. Am I missing something here?
When I first saw this episode, I was rather grumpy that they weren’t going to be directly continuing the main plot of the season. However, now I know that it matters later somehow? Though I can’t for the life of me remember how?
Questions. When the Doctor goes to open the wooden barrel of water with a wooden lid, he uses his sonic on it. Am I missing something important? And did the Doctor’s cavalier “If something’s going to kill you, it’s nice that it drops you a note to remind you!” make anyone else cringe from Feels?
Though I never particularly enjoy watching this episode, I do have life quite a bit better than those poor alien chaps when it went all War of the Worlds up in the second ship. And I certainly don’t hate it as much as I do some episodes. So… I’ll go with 2.0. Though, as the Doctor says, “Things can suddenly change when you’re least expecting,” so maybe you will have changed my mind by this point.