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| Bewitching or bewildering? |
Ever look into a mirror and think you're seeing a whole other world? Well, this time, you're ripping off Lewis Carroll.
I've never been one to grade a Doctor Who episode in the "high C's", but I think we can all see aye to aye when calling this pirate-themed adventure a shallow current in the deep arcs that Series 6 has to offer. Though this episode sets sail with better writing than these lame puns and more than enough mooring with Hugh Bonneville's remarkably sincere performance, "The Curse of the Black Spot" failed to catch a fair wind and unite the disparate elements that, individually, might have hooked us into this otherwise becalming episode.
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| Burning the script. |
From the start, however, "Black Spot" suffers from the absence of the best gimmick of all: an instantly familiar figure around which the plot can revolve. Rather than an artist such as Dickens, Agatha Christie, or Van Gogh, "Black Spot" introduces us to Captain Henry Avery, of whom very few viewers will have heard. Frankly, it would not astonish me if Thompson has never learnt of him either.
While Avery will surely interest anyone acquainted with pirate lore — watching Pirates of the Caribbean does not count — Thompson only briefly touched upon his exploits against the Grand Mughal in the Arabian Sea and the worldwide manhunt that captured the public's hunger for thrilling news. His cannonball volley on a Mughal convoy and the crew's bloody hand-to-hand combat on deck left Avery feared right across the world as the richest pirate in history, and his subsequent evasion of the East India Company's grasp set into motion a journey to Ireland in 1696, after which he was never seen again. In this case, a Siren accosted him.
Unlike his real-world counterpart, the Captain Avery in Doctor Who proved to be only as complex as Hugh Bonneville's performance implies. This was the most successful pirate in history, the most feared man in the seven seas; and only the gun he waved pointlessly about even hinted at the terror Amy, Rory, and the Doctor should have felt. These absent essentials are precisely where Thompson's script feels hollow and without character, perhaps for the purpose of brevity or just because Avery, on every base level, fails to distinguish himself as an engaging figure. Neither historically accurate nor artistically distorted, the representation of Henry Avery shown onscreen suggests more than any other factor that "Black Spot" suffers from the Curse of the Filler Episode.
The presentation of Toby Avery appropriately, if shoddily, furnished Bonneville's masterful portrayal with unmatched richness of charisma onscreen and on deck. The expertly directed scene of the Doctor and Avery staring up at Sirius seemingly prepared us for some heavy choices: would this pirate captain surrender his swashbuckling life for more than a cursory relationship with his son? As the Doctor screams above the storm, how much does treasure mean to him compared to the life of his child? These are fundamental questions, and they are never properly addressed within those brief forty-five minutes.
Yet even as the Doctor tossed about a couple of cute pirate references, from "Yo ho ho" to gruff laughter and parrots, he did not appear to improve Avery as a man or as a father. The events of "Black Spot" simply removed Avery from his vices, supplying a choice between living alone on a pirate ship stuck in the middle of nowhere and spending some quality time with his son on a shiny spaceship. And, hey, free health care.
As so many others have already pointed out, the Doctor's Let's all stab ourselves! plan fell short of the mark, though a bit of breathing space might have substantiated the hasty scheme that Avery had no reason to so blindly accept. This captain, leader of pirates, should have known better than to follow a man who thus far had been wrong in nearly every respect, or at least some reconciliation could have added purpose to his shifted trust. Had Amy's distressed festered and Avery's loneliness expanded into the emptiness he had carved into his life, "Black Spot" could have benefitted from a handful of breathing spaces, styled much the same as the aforementioned Sirius scene, to reinforce "characters" who existed only as two-dimensional caricatures.
Forcing the Doctor to race through his theories, though admittedly giving us the brilliant suggestion to "ignore all my theories up to this point", consolidates the action and passions we ought to be experiencing, and sacrifices the growth of its characters for an arbitrary broadcast length. This remains only one of many reasons why I believe fifty minutes is the ideal length for any Doctor Who episode, though an additional five minutes would have done both "Black Spot" and "Beast Below" a great deal of good.
This run time further regulated the scope of any reasonable detail or explanation. The Russian nesting doll justification for having two ships occupying the same plane left me unsatisfied; and the whole "reflections equal portals" principles was certainly intriguing but left too much unexplained. There exists a well-defined boundary between purposefully leaving negative space and being ostensibly negligent.
To liberate some of this breathing space, Rory's drowning and resuscitation scene could have been dramatically shortened or aborted entirely, if only to avoid backtracking on all the headway Mr. Pond had made in "Day of the Moon" towards becoming an independent member of Team TARDIS. Removed far from the tentative centurion of "The Big Bang" and the confident romantic whom Amy always hears no matter the distance, Rory has been unfairly relegated back to his regular position as a third wheel. And he's absolutely right when he tells Amy to imitate CPR from the television, since their wet and weepy overacting ticked all the boxes of average soap opera quasi-drama.
This episode could have been so much more than that.
To focus on the plentiful deficiencies of "Black Spot" would nevertheless prove disheartening. So, me hearties, let's not belabor the underwhelming pirate crew, who cower at the slightest pinprick and come off as ineffective, deprived of any parallel to the barbarous seafarers to whom the seas once bowed. Also, ignore the unusually convenient resolution in which a seventeenth century sailor keeps an even head when faced with alien life and the vastness of the universe before piloting a starship with his two-word vocabulary of "atom accelerator".
Instead, enjoy the sound team's nautical climate: quiet creaking and lapping waves, at all times subtly evoking a waterscape that genuinely enchants better than the Siren ever could. Murray Gold's seamless soundtrack wove through this salty adventure with tracks reminiscent of Pirates of the Caribbean and redolent with "The Beast Below". Appreciate the special effects that crafted Lily Cole into a mistress of brine and serenity. The haunting vocal talents of Halia Meguid complimented and completed Cole's ethereal Siren. Most of all, Hugh Bonneville has earned boundless praise for saturating a dry script with the profundity Captain Avery deserved.
In Summary: Acting more like an impression of — rather than as — a mature narrative, "The Curse of the Black Spot" repeatedly robs its audience of the sobriety and quiet complexity on which its final act attempts to capitalize.
10thPlanet is the lead Whoniverse news writer and post slave of Life, Doctor Who, & Combom. He can be contacted at [email protected], followed on Twitter, or personally stalked at his primary residence in southern Florida.
17 Comments:
Sorryfor the verbosity. I didn't actually write this review; a dictionary probably did. I get wordy when I'm half-asleep.
it sounds good, i should watch it :)
Pirates of the Caribbean meets Empty Child. And yet, I loved it. :-)
Well done, 10thPlanet. "The Curse of the Filler Episode" wahaha! Lovely (terrible) puns. I don't know if I realized you're from Florida before. I live in Fort Myers, near Captiva, where we have our own pirate legend--Gasparilla, who kept his female captives there.
Great review of a not-so-stellar episode. I enjoyed watching, but it won't be one I'll revisit often.
The ship/computer that just wants to do its job right but goes "overboard" so to speak ... that's by now a hoary Moffat cliche (Empty Child, GITF, the Library two parter).
As showrunner, he obviously assigned the same setup to Gareth Roberts for the Lodger, and now to Thompson for this one. At least with Roberts, we have a writer who was able to take the too-familiar concept and make something out of it, unlike Thompson.
Limited showrunner+limited writer = lame episode.
All the same, a fun episode not burdened by the setting up of lots of story arcs. Although not an original idea (see the nanogenes), the siren was well-realised. And pirates v. Doctor Who - what kid isn't going to like that?!
This is rather similar to your average English essay, 10th: thesaurus-like, pretentious, and over-punny.
Bslotkin, really? "Over-punny". Did you even read more than the first paragraph? "Though this episode sets sail with better writing than these lame puns and more than enough mooring with Hugh Bonneville's remarkably sincere performance". It's called humour, try looking that up. ;)
Stand down, D0c. I know BSlotkin in personal life, and everything he's saying is entirely true, if a little cursory. I wrote this review last night, and lookin back I wish I'd have substituted some "big" words for ones people might actually understand.
I liked it a lot, reminded me of the traditional series. The TARDIS just materialising behind some plastic sheets was the worst part for me. Oh, look, it's back in Torchwood London.
The Stones of Blood meets The Next Doctor meets The Girl in the Fireplace was my lasting impression. Enjoyed it a lot, though. Very cinematic and fast-paced with some cracking dialogue. Can't wait for next week.
There were plenty of good parts, but I thought the episode was fundamentally the lame duck of the series.
"Stones of Blood"? Really? Obviously I'd have said "The Smugglers".
Nice review. Well done and well thought out. This was weird even as filler and there were a lot of just plain strange things that happened along with several errors too. The fellow in the magazine vanished after the captain and the Doctor returned. The Doctor talks about the virus that killed the alien crew and says that it is from “our world” but he says they were human viruses. Why did the three of them just land in some random room on the alien ship and not in the sick bay beds like the other patients. The medical hologram didn’t even seem to be looking for them. I also had a hard time swallowing the pirate crew flying the alien ship too. I’ve seen a lot worse but this was kind of a strange ep.
'Stones of Blood' - spaceship in identical location in hyperspace. Yes, 'The Smugglers', obviously!
Oh, right, the hyperspace thing. I completely forgot about that.
Apparently it's been way too long since I watched "Stones of Blood" because I didn't remember that at all.
"I’ve seen a lot worse but this was kind of a strange ep."
This. Very much this.
Someone mentioned the importance of reflective surfaces this season. If their theory holds true, this ep will end up seeming more important later because of what we learned during it.
Enjoyed reading your review, enjoyed watching the episode, so I really don't give it aslow a rating as some are, but then I'm just pleased that it's on the air at all, so anything is good for me. However...
The only "negative" feeling I got while watching was the change of pace interaction I felt between the Doctor and the companions. Or actually I can't even describe what I think was "rushed". It felt like "OK, let's go on an adventure instead of dealing with all of this", "Right, here we are on the adventure, let's get this solved and get out of here".
I also felt the interaction between the Doctor and the companions was kind of "weird" as well. Tension, standoffish, I really can't put my finger on it. Maybe this will come back later and it will be explained.
And what's with eye-patch lady???
I pretty much agree--worst episode of the Moff's tenure so far, but best thing on TV all week anyway, and it was largely the atmosphere and Hugh Bonneville's great take on a barely-scripted character that made it work.
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