Another week, another Who! This is arguably one of my favorite times of the year. I mean, who doesn’t get excited about a man weekly traveling in a box through time? Those aren’t the people I’d like to know!
So, for the third episode of Season 6 Part 1, we have an episode in which the Doctor arrives on a pirate ship stuck in the middle of an ocean, plagued by a ghostly siren who comes after anyone who drops even the tiniest of blood – and on a ship full of pirates, not spilling blood might be a minorly difficult task. So who exactly is the Doctor going to be the stuff of legends? And is he going to do a good job while going at it?
Check beyond the cut for some thoughts on the episode. Mild spoilers are discussed.
There is one thing rather noticable about any season of Doctor Who: the episodes that aren’t written by the showrunner are extremely hit or miss. This is obvious, because it’s the showrunner who writes the scenes that REALLY move the plot along between the long arc of the season. That’s why you can usually get most excited about the first and last episodes of any season, because that’s where everything becomes clear. Everything in between is usually just filler, with a few minor hints for continuity sake.
This brings us to this week’s episode: “The Curse of the Black Spot.” Written by Stephen Thompson, the episode is decidedly a filler episode for the season – but here’s the clever bit. Some of you may recognize Thompson’s name as the man who wrote the second episode of Moffat’s other current show, Sherlock. While that episode was also a filler episode between Gatiss and Moffat’s respective episodes, it was also a rather good episode. Such is the case with this episode. It is recognizably filler from the beginning: the Doctor on a random pirate ship out in the middle of nowhere? After two episodes of vicious continuity revival and hints and portents all over the place, now the Docter is hanging out with pirates. It’s the very definition of filler, but thankfully it’s filler with a satisfying pay-off.
The episode basically gives back as much as you invest. The other episodes really pulled you in and demanded your attention, but this episode moves at a different speed. The episode is definitely a bit oddly paced, and it’s one that is rather easy to watch while you do any number of things in the background. The plot here is not as tricky as the other more time-centric episodes; while before we hopped all over the place and only saw the endgame at the end, this is very much a mystery that is slowly unraveled through the course of the hour. You’ll discover things at the same rate the Doctor does, as opposed to the other way around, and because of that there are a good deal of scenes that feel like they don’t “matter” as we establish the universe that the Doctor is in for this episode. While there are a few clues as to what’s going on with Amy Pond this season (based on what we saw previously with her face in the door/quantum pregnancy shenanigans), the episode remains focused on the fight against the siren.
Of course, it’s the siren (played wonderfully by Lily Cole, who you may recognize from The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus) that does inevitably offer the eventual pay-off (as it rightly should). For all the time spent meandering about on the ship, it’s the eventual reveal of the dual-universes crashed upon one another that lead to the only scene in this episode really worth talking. While I suppose importance can be given to the new characters on a personal level, they came across rather stereotypically vapid; simply tools to get the Doctor from point A to point B. It’s our regular cast that we have active involvement with, and as soon as Rory gets pricked in the beginning of the episode, you know it can’t end well. This is where Thompson pulls out the big guns, as the Amy/Rory relationship has been rocky for quite some time. It’s always nice to get scenes where Amy professes her love for Rory even half as much as he loves her, and considering he waited 2000 years for her I think it’s fair to say he loves her quite a bit. This really also only goes to speak mountains about the performances by Karen Gillan and Arthur Darvill, who have one of the most believable relationships on television, despite Amy’s rather flirtatious nature (she was an employed stripper-gram for a while, after all).
Ultimately, Thompson’s episode is one that will probably be forgotten perhaps until the end of this season come the fall. It is uncertain as to if Captain Avery and his crew are going to be coming back to save the day in their newfound ship any time soon, but the return of Frances Barber’s weird new character does give a brief reminder of the oddity that is going on. Amy Pond is the character to watch this season, because all lies with her it seems. And if the various theories about the Time Lord kid and Amy’s uncertain pregnancy are at all true in any way, this could be Amy’s last adventure as much as it is the doctor’s.
