Day 773: The Curse of the Black Spot

The Curse of the Black Spot was a complete disappointment for me. I went into it knowing that it had one big issue about it, which I'll go into later, but otherwise I was expecting a fairly nice romp with pirates in it. Instead, what I got was something that was just boring.

The pacing of this episode is really poor. Every other moment I'd look at the time and be shocked that I was still only a very small portion of the way through the episode. It's partially because the story is written with the intention that it be all about building up tension between scenes, with the constant threat of the Siren ever looming. The problem is that this never comes across on screen, because the Siren never comes across as particularly threatening. It could have perhaps worked if the actors playing the pirates were directed to be more paranoid or worried about the Siren's effects, but they weren't, so we're left with a story that just consists of the characters hiding in rooms aboard a pirate ship.

Meanwhile, there's also the big problem that is the Boatswain. The editor of this story made a huge mistake, because they removed an entire sub-plot from the final episode. Well, that's not strictly true, moreover that they removed half of a sub-plot, which makes the situation even worse. The character of the Boatswain, a secondary character in the story who gets a few scenes with the main cast, disappears halfway through the episode, only to reappear at the end in a completely different setting with no explanation as to how he got there. It's an awful mistake because it shows that the editor doesn't care about the story, instead opting to remove scenes that they feel are superfluous instead of paying attention to the story as a whole and the effect that removing those scenes would have.

And all of that is still only scratching the surface as to how this episode is really bad. It manages to deliver one of the worst renditions of first aid that I have ever seen in any form. The ending of the episode relies on the fact that, provided that you can guess where the wheel is on a spaceship, you're qualified to pilot it. The direction never takes advantage of the fact that they are shooting on a real sailing ship, with it instead looking like a cheap studio set in Cardiff. It all ends up producing one of the worst Doctor Who episodes of the revived series, and a real curse of an episode to watch.