Doctor Who: "The Curse of the Black Spot"

[lizbee]

I guess any episode following on from the last two would be a bit of a letdown, but this was a bit so...meh, wasn't it? I mean, I'm in favour of pirates, Hugh Bonneville, Amy Pond swinging on ropes and wielding a cutlass, gratuitous shirtless Rory and touching father-son stories, but the whole didn't quite equal the sum of its parts.

Also, I felt like we've a lot of this before. It's not a monster, it's alien healing tech that doesn't know how humans work? "The Doctor Dances". The song is anaesthesia? "A Christmas Carol". Stephen Thompson's other TV writing credit was Sherlock's "The Blind Banker", so at this stage he is ... what, faily and derivative?

I mean, don't get me wrong, the emotional stuff was great. I really liked the relationship between Avery and his wee moppet son, and the Amy/Rory stuff was very good, and I enjoyed the Doctor bonding with Avery. But those bits were all padded with more tedious stuff, like the overlong and overdone scene with Avery in the console room.

On the upside, we have some ongoing things like more Eyepatch Lady and Schrodinger's Pregnancy. Why has the doctor not forgotten about that, but apparently didn't give the wee Time Lord girl a second thought? Did the Silents make that happen? Or is he playing a longer game?

With all this talk of other universes this year, I'm wondering if Amy is pregnant in one universe, but not the other. Pregnant and a prisoner, with Eyepatch Lady as warden/midwife. And next week the Ood are back! One of my friends, possibly fannishnonsense or violetinbloom has this theory that the Ood were originally enslaved by the Time Lords, which is why there was all that stuff in "The End of Time" (remember "The End of Time"? I know, I try to forget, too) about their development being somehow out of sync. And I have a corresponding theory about the Silents being created as Time Lord weapons. THESE ARE TOTALLY COMPLEMENTARY AND IN NO WAY WOULD CAUSE THE UNIVERSE TO BE OVERRUN BY ROGUE TIME LORD BIOTECH! Come on, they pulled the fobwatch thing twice! Stop looking at me like that!

Comments

[trouble]

I was actually bored by this episode. I mean, yes, I love me some Amy in a cutlass and threatening folks, but meh pretty much summed up everything in here for me. (But then, I don't enjoy touching father-son narratives, especially ones that don't add up.)

I like your theory about the universes!

[copracat]

This ep did not grab me, though it had it's good points: Hugh Bonneville, Lily Cole, shirtless Rory looking lovely...

I'm not sure what it had too much of or too little of but it was something. Not enough salt. Too much cabbage.

[susanreads]

I'm in favour of those things too, except for the touching father-son stories, which are everywhere. Another dead mother, how original. (I originally typoed "Another dead other", which ... yes, I did notice which of the pirates "dies" first.)

Apart from that, there's a lot of pretty, but also a lot of not making sense. Suddenly the seacaptain can fly a starship, suuuurre. It works better for me if it's all happening inside Amy's head, in some sort of altered state of consciousness that Eyepatch Lady is supervising, which would also explain some of the callbacks to previous episodes. I hope we're not getting another whole season that's going to end up not having happened in the "real" timeline, though!

Ood are good. Looking forward to the Ood.

[idlerat]

When did the Doctor see the wee Time Lordy?