Doctor Who blog: The Curse of the Black Spot

“Wheel. Telescope. Astrolabe. Compass. A ship’s a ship.”

I need to tell you something. I love the stupid episodes of Doctor Who. The big epic twisty episodes might be more popular generally, but the silly, standalone ones hold a special place in my heart; the fact the main point of last year’s ‘The Lodger’ was to remind us of how odd the Eleventh Doctor is was one of the things I liked the most about it, and when I wrote about my 10 favourite pre-‘Waters of Mars’ episodes, ‘The Unicorn and the Wasp’ came seventh. It was an Agatha Christie-style murder mystery with Agatha Christie in it. A sense of fun isn’t the easiest thing to convey on screen, but I think Doctor Who is one of the TV programmes that manages it the most often.

Now, this is all a bit of an explanation for why, despite the fact that quite a lot of people didn’t really like ‘The Curse of the Black Spot’, I rather enjoyed it. It dragged in places, and the disappearance of Boatswain half-way through did jolt me out of the story a bit. The attempt to show the darker side of pirating nearly paid off, but was somewhat weakened by the fact that they were all allowed to sail of into the sunset on a spaceship at the end. And yes, that was some truly awful CPR technique Amy showed at the end.

But, do you know what? It had some lovely moments, too, and the best ones were nearly all the more light-hearted ones. The Doctor’s repeated “Ignore all my previous theories up to this point” was a great use of Matt Smith’s comic timing and expressive face, and there’s something just inherently funny about alien snot. Arthur Darvill’s “enchanted by the siren” acting was just hammy enough to fit the mythological quality of the idea, and Karen Gillan clearly had a ball getting to be the one wielding the sword. There were some good darker moments too, and the explanation of the parallel ship and the siren-as-doctor tied everything together nicely.

Yet, the real star of it for me was Hugh Bonneville. The other thing you need to know is that I really, really love Hugh Bonneville. I loved him in Notting Hill. I loved him in Rev. I adore him in Downton Abbey. So any episode of anything that has him playing a pirate automatically gets a 5/10 off the bat. Add in the fact that it’s Doctor Who and he has that magnificent beard, and we’re already on 7/10. He managed to play both the lighter and darker elements of the character beautifully, even if the darker element wasn’t fully developed by the script. The scene with the two captains in the TARDIS was one of the highlights of the episode, partly because of the script, but mostly because Hugh Bonneville and Matt Smith are just wonderful.

This wasn’t the greatest episode of Doctor Who ever, not even by the standards of the sillier episodes. But to criticise it for not being as epic as the opening episodes is to completely miss the point; a series of Doctor Who needs this kind of episode just as much as it needs the bigger ones. Besides, it had Hugh Bonneville in dark red velvet and a beard. Can’t go too wrong with that.

Next week sees the highly anticipated and completely mystery-shrouded Neil Gaiman episode 'The Doctor's Wife'. Will it deliver what the title suggests? Or is it more complicated than that? I have literally no idea.

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