The Curse of the Black Spot

And so a very long run of very good stories comes to an end. There's no other way to say this, but The Curse of the Black Spot just isn't very interesting. The premise does intrigue, and there is quite a lot of fun had early on with the idea of burly pirates being terrified of pin pricks, and with Amy's rather tasty sword fight - but sadly it seems that the more this episode's central mystery is unravelled, the less interesting it becomes.

Part of the problem is that although there's a richness of spooky piratey-ness available (we've all seen Pirates of the Caribbean), it's barely conjured at all here. There's little sense of being at sea, becalmed or otherwise. There's no swell, no mist in the rigging, no slap of waves against the creaking hull. When we're below decks, we might as well be in a barn. When we're up on top, the Cornwell-obscuring mist smothers everything. There is eventually a storm, but it just happens, as if a switch has been thrown.

To be fair, the initial encounter with the Siren is spooky, and rather good - mainly because of  Rory's intoxication - but as soon as she has appeared once her novelty expires. A guest star of Hugh Bonneville's standing should lift things considerably, and Avery is a nice enough chap, but I can't help but think this story needed a slightly more flamboyant or unpleasant character at its heart. Certainly the addition of his son to proceedings doesn't make things better - of all the strained parent/child relationships we see in Series Six (and there are many) this by far the least interesting.

I did very much enjoy the Doctor's evolving hypothesis, continually revising his explanations in light of new information. He also makes a point of railing against the idea of curses and superstitions. It's a beautifully scientific and rational approach, in line with the cleverer version of the Doctor we've been treated to during Series Five - but it's not the sort of thing that should stand out in an episode.

The idea of two ships stuck in their different dimensions is a good one and makes me think that proceedings would be much improved by some sort of CGI ghost ship outline teasing our time travellers. Goodness knows as it is there seems very little reason for the Doctor to suddenly decide to acquiesce to the Siren's ministrations. It's not so much an intuitive leap as an act of desperate, unwarranted straw-clutching. Sadly when the last vestiges of mystery are removed (only to find that the Siren is all rather too similar to the Chula nanogenes from The Doctor Dances), we hit peak-dullness with a protracted riffing on that old chestnut 'is Rory dead or not?' In order to make it at remotely convincing, the plausible-death-pause has to be milked to an absurd degree before the inevitable vital splutter sounds.

For all that, the final image - the pirates... in SPACE! - is strangely satisfying. The incongruity of it is nice, but really I think the joy of it is that we are left imagining them invading the clean, sterile world of spaceships and orbital stations with their seventeenth century entrepreneurial spirit: all rum and cutlasses and blood. I think I would have enjoyed that more.


NEXT TIME...