The Curse of the Black Spot

I enjoyed it. It was fun. It obviously wasn't on a par with the opening episodes but this was supposed to be a break from that and it succeeded. It was a very old school episode and I've been wanting to see a Doctor Who story involving pirates for a while. Rory being killed is becoming a bit of a running joke though.

I feel like this episode has a terrible reputation but it's just mediocre more than terrible.  The ship doesn't look half bad as a set, although the ghost thing is pretty goofy looking.  Our characters also feel a little more annoying here than the usual sort of endearing tone the Moffat era could take.  Like the whole Rory dying thing already felt way played out and just silly at this point.  It's where the story started to lose me because it feels like we are just going by the Eleventh Doctor formula with episodes like this, not offering anything unique even though it's a pirate story - that should be a certain brand of fun I just found missing here.  In comparison, I feel like the show made a better use of the Western trope in Series 7 compared to here.  The Curse of the Black Spot's story isn't remarkable but it is a very easy one to sit through.  Not my favourite but not unbearably bad, either.

Its been quite some time since we've had a clunker of this magnitude. It whips by quite well in the beginning, when the scope is just "pirates!" But as the alien menace and the son are revealed, things start to click out of place and logical inconsistencies appear. Gallifrey Base must have feasted on these back in 2011.

There's so many well worn ideas that don't usually mix together fighting for space. You have a recycled nanogene plot (the menace in fact is curing not killing), trying to fit alongside the legend of sirens calling sailors onto the shore, except she's not on the shore, she's using reflections as portals.

Without nitpicking, the most inconsistent element must be the danger of reflections. They have tonnes of barrels of water, but its too dangerous to put the pirate's treasure into the barrels to secure them?

When the pirates get the black spot they are always dispensed with immediately, but Rory manages to receive this without being taken out of action for some time, why is not effort put into holding the other victims back? What does the siren do in instances when people are too ill to approach her?

When Toby was hiding in the hold for three months, sick with a black spot, did he not open a barrel of water once to take a drink?

Once the show has shifted to the spaceship setting (which marvelously I had absolutely no recollection of) the questions persist. Why is the siren able to stabilise but not cure basic illnesses that have, in the future, long been cured?

Then you have Rory almost dying. Hilarious at this point in his story. You can't pull that trick again. They Keep Killing Rory.