This Week in Doctor Who - 5/7/11

Doctor Who is back again, in the first one-off episode of Series 6. How did it turn out?

Episode 3 - "The Curse of the Black Spot"

Not well, that's how. Maybe it's just my bias against pirate/swashbuckling things (honest, I've yet to see any of the Pirates of the Caribbean films) or maybe because this episode was written by the guy who wrote the least popular episode of Steven Moffat's new Sherlock series (as I've been told, I've yet to watch the series myself). But, point being, I didn't like this episode, and go as far as saying it's the worst episode of Moffat's run since "Victory of the Daleks," also the the third episode from last season.

My problem starts with the opening, there's nothing carried over from the last episode. I get how series like this work, I've been a fan of Star Trek and Doctor Who for many years and know that not every episode has linked continuity. But when you have a cliffhanger like in last week's episode, you expect some follow up; and there is none, which make this episode feel all the more like a throw away.

Basically, there's a pirate ship in an undisclosed time and location, where a man accidentally gets cut and black spot appears on his hand, which brings in a whimsically haunting siren that makes the 'cursed' men disappear. And then the Doctor and the Ponds just show up. There's an attempt to make the story touching, with the captain and his stow away son, but in the end of it all I just didn't care. And, it turns out she's not some evil siren, she's a trans-dimensional.. nurse? Yeah, I thought it was stupid too.

And in the end the pirates have a space ship. I thought this was ridiculous, and that's coming from a guy who watched Zardoz for the 5th time earlier today as well as the Fringe finale. I've also done alot of rewatching of old Doctor Who lately, and for bit, I just wished I spent the 45 minutes of this episode watch those instead. Alas, next week is Neil Gaiman's episode, hopefully that proves to be better, cause right now I'm not feeling it.

Overall Score: 6/10