Saturday, 27 June 2015

(773) The Curse of the Black Spot

Today is quite a special day because it was announced that Big Finish are doing more stories using characters from the new series. The Judoon, the Weeping Angels and River Song are going to be used.

I haven’t mentioned it for a while but I have been watching these episode on Netflix and I have noticed that especially in the previous two episodes there was a little addition before the titles played and it is Amy talking about her story with the Doctor and then the titles play. I’ve checked the DVD just in case it was my poor memory but it’s not on there. Anyway to todays episode and its not one of my favourites. I think that the swing from seriousness of the previous two episodes to the light hearted tone of this episode was too great. The story sees the Doctor, Amy and Rory arrive on a ship where the crew are being terrorised by a siren-like creature. To be honest that’s the most that I am prepared to write about the story because to be honest I just haven’t got the enthusiasm to write much about it.
So I am going to write about the performances. The performances from Smith, Gillan and Darvill are all quite good but I thought that Darvill suffered because he was the one the got the black spot and that was about as exciting as his day got. Smith seems to be having fun playing pirates and Gillan is also having fun following him. Hugh Bonneville plays Henry Avery and is perhaps the biggest name in the episode as he has been in stuff like Downton Abbey, Twenty Twelve and W1A. He is a good on screen presence and brings a nice vibe to the story but to be honest even Hugh Bonneville cant rescue this story. Lily Cole is a name that got a lot of attention because she’s a model and apparently that’s a big reason for casting her. Her character is one that starts off as a baddie but is soon revealed to be a nurse helping everyone who is ill on the ship and she makes them better.

I wasn’t a fan of the episode in 2011 and four years later I still haven’t been won over by it. With everything going on it was a shame that I didn’t take much more from it. It’s definelty the weakest story of the Matt Smith era with The Beast Below slightly better but only because the novelty of the new team of Matt Smith and Karen Gillan. Here there isn’t anything that I can take from it. Thankfully when the episode ended and I saw the NEXT TIME trailer it reminded me that one of my favourite Matt Smith stories coming up next.

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