Grade: B
Curse of the Black Spot is a classic filler episode of Doctor Who; low on noticeable character development or arc significance, but rife with adorably Doctor-ish moments and one liners, with a passable if forgettable B-plot. A definite drop in quality after the stellar season premiere, but still, could be worse.
We open on board an old-fashioned pirate ship, where a terrified, apparently injured crew member is examined by the captain and pronounced a "dead man". The fatal wound: an almost imperceptible paper-cut and a black spot on the man's palm. Suddenly an unearthly song is heard, and the crewman, terrified, declares his intention of escaping from the ship. He rushes on deck, only to vanish completely. His captain and few remaining crew-mates, in a futile attempt to find any trace of him, instead discover the Doctor, Amy, and Rory emerging from the belly of their ship. The Doctor explains (to the bemusement of the 18th century pirates) that the TARDIS sensors picks up a ship in distress, and were drawn to those particular coordinates. Unimpressed, the pirates decide to dispose of the supposed stowaways, explaining that they're becalmed and aren't interested in having three more mouths to feed. The Doctor is nearly forced to walk the plank, but Amy manages to acquire a sword to defend him with, and in the scuffle, both Rory and a crew member suffer minor injuries. Both of them immediately develop black spots on their palms, and, moments later, an eerie green woman emerges from the sea and enchants the injured men with her song, causing the pirate to vaporize on her touch. The Doctor and Amy manage to get Rory below decks, while the captain explains that the woman is believed to be a Siren, and insists that the ship is cursed. Another crew member gets a minor injury, and the Siren manages to materialize through the hull of the ship and spirit the man away. The Doctor deduces that the siren is able to travel through water, and the remaining company takes refuge in the ship's powder hold, which is entirely dry.
There, they discover the Captain's young son, who, believing his father to be a naval officer, stowed away on the ship before it sailed, and gives the captain news of his wife's death. The boy is ill with a fever and has himself been menaced by the Siren, leading the Doctor to realize that she is taking all human beings on the ship with any detectable illness or injury, however small. He and the Captain depart the hold in order to find the TARDIS, but the Doctor has a difficult time starting the time machine and, as soon as he does so, it begins to dematerialize on its own, barely leaving the Doctor and captain with time to escape from it. Meanwhile, back in the hold, the boy becomes infuriated with one of the remaining pirates who informs him of his father's true nature; grabbing a sword, he cuts the man, making him a certain victim of the siren if he leaves the hold. Making their way back, the Doctor and the captain, who has given his name as Henry Avery, come across a terrified crew member determined to barricade himself away while he is still uninjured. Following him, they watch him lock himself in a small closet; soon after he does so, however, he acquires a small burn and is taken by the Siren. Knowing that the closet contained no water, the Docter reevaluates his theory and realized that the Siren is, in fact, able to materialize out of any reflective surface, such as the gold, bejeweled crown which was on the closet floor. The Doctor rushes to destroy any reflections on board the ship, including mirrors, treasure, and glass windows; he tells Avery to jettison the crown but, unable to part with the gold, the captain secretly pockets it instead. Knowing that the calm ocean is reflective and therefore a threat to them, they wait until a storm begins and then go out on deck, hoping to pilot the ship elsewhere. Avery orders his son to fetch the compass in the captain's coat, but the boy accidentally pulls the crown out instead, creating a surface for the Siren to materialize from. She spirits the boy away and then, as Rory is dislodged from the ship and falls into the ocean, dives to collect him too. The Doctor realizes that the Siren has, in fact, shown no signs of malice, and reasons that the odds are against her actually having been killing the men she takes. With Amy, the Doctor, and Avery, the only remaining humans on the ship, all having something or someone to regain from her, they agree to prick their own fingers and allow her to take them.
Having done so, they awake in an unfamiliar room. The Doctor realizes that they haven't really moved at all, but are in the exact same coordinates in an alternate dimension. Here there is also a becalmed ship, an alien vessel in which all the crew have died. Able to see the pirate ship through the external windows of the alien ship, the Doctor explains that reflections in one world became gateways between the dimensions. Finding a futuristic sickbay which contains the unconscious forms of all of the vanished pirates, including Rory and Avery's son Toby, the Doctor realizes that the supposed Siren was actually a virtual medical program from the alien ship, built to detect ill or injured life-forms and put them in stasis before they could die. Able to project herself from one reality to the other, and unable to save the crew of the alien ship, she began taking injured humans instead; the "black spot", believed to be a sign of death, was actually a tissue sample taken with alien technology. Finding the TARDIS, which latched onto the alternate reality and materialized there, the Doctor assumes that they are free to leave; however, the "Siren", designed to protect the medical bay, appears and attempts to prevent them from making any contact with the anesthetized humans. Trusting that the medical program is intelligent enough to recognize the concept of human relationships, the Doctor has Amy stand by Rory and show the Siren her wedding ring; eventually, the program appears to understand and transfers responsibility for Rory's care to Amy. Waking Rory up, Amy and the Doctor explain that he was near death by drowning when the Siren retrieved him, and that if they detach him from his life-support systems he may die, even with CPR. Meanwhile, Avery, knowing that his son's fever spells death in 18th century England, asks the Doctor to teach him how to work the alien ship, intending to take over its captaincy while allowing the medical program to care for his son. Rory, indicates that he trusts Amy to revive him, and she and the Doctor remove him from his life-support and carry him into the TARDIS, where, even with Amy's CPR, he nearly dies.
That night, with Rory recovering, he and Amy once again discuss the Doctor's future death, agreeing that they must keep it a secret indefinitely. Meanwhile, the Doctor broods over his pregnancy scan of Amy, which remains inconclusive, while Avery and his son fly off to explore the stars.
As I stated above, this is a passable but mostly mediocre episode. After the mind-bending nature and burning questions of the season premiere, this mostly-isolated installment is somewhat frustrating. Only a minute or two of the episode addressed the events of the previous two-parter, and none of the associated plotlines were advanced at all. We got another cryptic glimpse of the cybernetic-looking woman who appears to be able to open windows into Amy's life... is she a nurse of some sort? If so, is the patient Amy's sporadic baby, or Amy herself?
Another mysterious moment was the sudden disappearance of the one pirate who remained with Amy and Rory in the powder hold; in a show where an inconsistency with an article of clothing can be the hinge of the entire season, this was way too big to be an continuity error. I'm sure it will be addressed later, but for the moment, we're in the dark.
Complaints:
- The resolution of the siren mystery struck me as too reminiscent of the ultimate answer to the gas-mask epidemic of so long ago; a well-intentioned alien medical presence follows its directive and attempts to aid humanity, with its ignorance of human physiology bringing about disastrous consequences and causing it to appear malevolent. In a way, the ship's medical program was also a similar concept to the repair droids from Girl in the Fireplace; logic and human welfare are not even blips on the robotic radar when it comes to obeying pre-set programming. Overall, the alien story here was quite repetitive in a lot of ways.
- I enjoyed the fact that the episode's creative team pay plenty of homage to pirate cliches without allowing them to dominate the episode; the scoundrelly, wooden-legged, eyepatched pirate crew are all picked off within the first five minutes of the episode, leaving an eerie calm on the vessel, and allowing Captain Avery to develop into a faceted character. Brilliant choice.
- The Doctor's dialogue in this episode is great; the grander, more serious installments really don't allow his wit and talent for random tangents to shine through. "Yo-ho-ho!!!... or does nobody actually say that?", "Freud would say you're compensating, but then you've never met Freud, have you... COMFY SOFA!", "I suppose that laugh is part of the job description!"
- And, of course, the instantly classic: "Rory!" "Toby!" "THE TARDIS!"
- Matt Smith also shines in the brief scene in which the Doctor loses his temper with Avery's greed and, shouting to be heard over the roar of the storm, gives the captain a piece of his mind. Very intense.
- The Doctor's expression of heartbreak when Rory appears to have died is also brilliantly acted; really, the capacity in which this episode fully succeeds is simply that of showing off the Doctor in all of his various moods. He gets quite a lot of humor, a scene of overpowering anger, a scene of devastating sadness, and all spot-on. In that sense and for that reason alone, I would say that this installment is ultimately a success.
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