S32 (6) 3 – The Curse of the Black Spot

[PhaseShift @phaseshift Time Lord]

Repeated on BBC3 on Friday 1 February, among the many mysteries in store, the greatest may be “what the hell happened to that bloody pirate?”

Our original thoughts on this can be found here.

[Craig @craig Emperor]

@phaseshift I just watched this again and the disappearing pirate turns up at the end, so I think they must have just edited out his “death/disappearance” for time reasons. Is a bit stupid though.

I didn’t really like this episode the first time, a bit too silly/”Dinosaurs on a Spaceship”, but watching it again it seems like light relief after the first two episodes, with the Doctor dying and the Silence being introduced.

And the next episode, The Doctor’s Wife is also, although brilliant, light relief before the series starts to get dark again, with Amy having been stolen etc.

So, with that taken into account, I enjoyed it a lot more this time, knowing it was a breather from, what was to become, quite a dark story arc.

[janetteB @janetteb]

Watched this one again recently. It was a lightweight, fun episode reminiscent of old Who. Not one to be rewatched too often but as you say @craig, a good filler between more serious stuff.

Cheers

Janette

[Rewvian @rewvian]

So this episode’s villain was a siren that chased after the injured and sick members of a pirate crew.  Rory gets a cut and also becomes a target for the siren, and gets a black spot on the palm of his hand like the other victims.  For much of the episode it is assumed the siren can travel through water, until the Doctor realizes she can travel through reflections on mirrors and shiny objects to reach the injured.

The siren, when enraged, turns red and gets a scowl.  It almost reminded me of the robots from The Beast Below in a way.

The episode had its funny moments: “If something’s gonna kill ya, it’s nice that it drops a note to remind ya!”  When the Doctor describes the situation they’re in being like two universes colliding, and asks if they understand, “Good, cause it’s not like that anyway.”  The pirate captain partially understanding the TARDIS controls was entertaining.  And who could forget, “…Alien boogies.”

I did notice a potential goof in this episode as one of the crew members gets cutlassed by the boy, but we never see him meet his maker at the hands of the siren.  He just kind of vanishes like the other crew members have – it’s possible this was some scene that didn’t make it into the episode.

We get to see eyepatch woman again below-deck.

In the end everyone lets the siren get them because she teleports them to a hospital room where she puts them all on life support.  She is a doctor tending to the sick, not a shark-like creature coming to gobble people up at the scent of blood.

Rory is still drowning, and when taken off of life support needs to be resuscitated.  Amy manages to do this.  Meanwhile the pirate captain becomes the captain of the medical spaceship where the siren was from, and keeps his sick boy hooked up to the life support.

It ends with a question as to whether Amy is fine or not, since the TARDIS computers are giving the Doctor strange readings about her.

As with a lot of the old-timey episodes it took me some work to muster up the energy to watch it, but once I was into it I saw it through.  I reckon there have been much better filler episodes, but it was kind of cool seeing a pirate crew wind up as a spaceship crew.

[Author]

Posts