Who Review: Curse of the Black Spot

SPOILERS!

But only for this episode; no arc-wide shocking revelations this week.

Hands up if the title reminded you of "Curse of the Black Pearl." Probably intentional, because of the whole pirate ship thing. I loved the Doctor's first line: "Yo-ho-ho! Oh...does no one actually say that?"

I thought this was a pretty good episode, but there were a lot of twists and turns and not all of them were fully explained. I thought the Doctor shouted, "Completely forget my previous theories!" a couple times too often. Still a good episode, though. I think shows that only do 12 or 13 episodes a season (rather than the more common 22) have a higher percentage of good shows. The writers presumably have more time to work on them, and each episode has to count.

I did think it was clever that the Siren is summoned through reflections because she is from the mirror universe (hands up if you immediately thought of Spock with a goatee!). I like how the pirate crew all decided to stay there. I loved how the captain immediately knew what everything was on the TARDIS. Oh, and I figured out that they would find the TARDIS if they allowed the Siren to touch them, because I recognized the disappearing effect. Once they got there, though, the ending seemed...rushed? I guess that is the best way to explain it. The Doctor was able to immediately work out exactly what was going on. "Hold on! She's not evil! She's a computer! This is a hospital! Amy, stick your hand in the circle and then you can take Rory!" After all of the Doctor's incorrect theories, I would have been hesitant to trust him on that one.

I was convinced that Rory had actually died...for about two seconds. I was already wondering, "If he dies, how are they going to bring him back THIS time?" Of course, if he had died, it could have given the Doctor and Amy an excuse to shack up. In other news, the Doctor is still going to die in the future and Amy is still sort of pregnant.

Next week: Neil Gaiman's episode! He has trailers and minor spoilers up on his blog. I cannot wait!

Side note: Read this article that I found out about from EPBOT. If you are/were a geek in high school, congratulations! You are more likely to be successful than the popular kids. Geeks for the win!