ANDREW'S
DOCTOR WHO REVIEWS 
After two heavy episodes, it’s great to get a lightweight,
fluffy and enjoyable Doctor Who story. There’s some really solid performances
here, some scares, some humour and an emotionally light touch which suits it
well.
The Doctor, Amy and Rory arrive on a 17th Century
pirate ship in the middle of the ocean. It is being terrorised by a creature
that rises from the sea whenever someone has an injury, however small, which
creates a black spot on the injured person’s hand. When the creature, dubbed as
a Siren by the crew (and played by Lily Cole), touches the marked person they
disintegrate.
Rory, inevitably, injures himself, and is marked with a
black spot, but the Doctor and Amy lock him away from the Siren’s song, so he
cannot be touched. After a while the Doctor realises that the Siren always
needs water or a reflective surface to make an appearance. In order to stop
this happening they have to jettison everything shiny, including the ship’s
store of treasure.
Hiding away in the ship’s powder magazine, the surviving
pirates, including their Captain, Avery (Hugh Bonneville) find Avery’s son,
Toby (Oscar Lloyd) is already in the magazine but is also already sporting a
black spot. When a storm blows up the pirates set sail and try to leave, but
Toby discovers a gold crown that his father has hidden away, it falls to the
deck and the Siren takes Toby. Rory then falls into the sea and the Siren takes
him also.
The Doctor begins to realise that all is not as it seems, so
he deliberately wounds himself, Amy and Avery so they all get black spots. They
are all then taken by the Siren and appear on a spaceship where all those taken
are being held in suspended animation. The Siren is, in fact, an artificial
intelligence doctor and her job is to fix those wounded, the Black Spots are
merely tissue samples.
Amy persuades her to allow Rory to be freed and Amy revives
him using CPR. Avery and his son, and the pirates, take the spaceship and head
off into space.
This is a good little Doctor Who story, well filmed, well
acted and enjoyable. Amy strikes an impressive figure doing her swashbuckling
pirate act and this is one of the first stories where I felt Amy worked really
well as a companion. Rory dies once more, but for once it is integral to the
plot line.
Hugh Bonneville is excellent as Captain Avery, as you would
expect from such a renowned actor and Lily Cole is perfect casting for the
ethereal, other-worldly Siren and is pretty scary when she does the
transformation into angry vampire-like creature whenever she is threatened.
Although many love the whole River Song/Amy/Doctor dies
complicated plotline of this season, I’d sooner see more episodes like this
which just get on with telling a really good story than tie me up with
headache-inducing wibbly-wobbly plots.
So, if you fancy a bit of old-fashioned Doctor Who you could do a lot
worse than The Curse of the Black Spot.
NEXT UP: THE DOCTOR'S WIFE
© Text copyright - Raving Loony
Productions and
Andrew J. Müller,
Roy Barton
and Shaun Runham
© Photos and Artwork - Andrew J. Müller
© Web Design and Layout - Andrew J. Müller
2022
