Ten Statements About....DOCTOR WHO SEASON SIX, EPISODE THREE: CURSE OF THE BLACK SPOT (2011)

Shut Up!  She's cute... (And yes, I would shiver her
timbers...why'd you ask?)

"The Ship is cursed!"

"Yeah, right. Cursed. Is big with humans. Means bad things are happening but you can't be bothered to find an explanation."

1) PIRATE AMY! I'm totally in agreement with Rory here--Karen Gillen should dress as a pirate more often, and her kinda, sorta swashbucking is thoroughly coo'

(Incidentally....does Rory's comment put more fuel to the 'Amy and Rory Have A Cosplay Fetish' thing?)

2) One of the reasons I love Matt Smith as The Doctor is that he's managed to take many of the aspects of previous Doctors and blend them very subtlely. Many of his interactions in this episode have a very David Tennant feel to them...and yet, he reins in the Tennant manic-panic delivery so it doesn't grate on me as Tennant did after a while.

3) I love how quickly Hugh Bonneville's Avery is able to suss out the TARDIS after getting over the initial shock because, well...'a ship's a ship.' Thompson's script plays this character very, very smart--which he'd have to be, to survive as a ship's captain at that time...and I think the Doctor senses this, which is why he begins to defer to Avery after a bit. In that sense, Avery reminds me of Richard Mace, from one of my favorite Davison stories, The Visitation.

(Doesn't mean I am excited at the implied prospect I'll be seeing Avery and his crew again...)

"Can we hurry this up?  I'm due on the set of SPEED RACER II."

4) The twist at roughly the twenty minute mark regarding the method of travel for the Siren is pretty clever. Although they miss a potential prime scare moment about four minutes later.

5) The intrusion of the element from the overarc is just that...an intrusion. It's unnecessary, and the story would've flowed better without it.

6) I'm sorry...I tried. I really, really tried. But I just can't be scared of The Singing Green Christina Ricci....

7) Ahhhhhhh....so that throwaway line about a distress signal in the first act wasn't a throwaway line.

The search for the perfect Time Lord Hat continues...

8) So it turns out we're once more in the realm of what has become a New Who--the antagonistic thing that was not intended to be antagonistic. One that has been used at least twice by Moffat himself.

9) Rory IS THE MAN, and pretty much my favorite character on the TARDIS right now. That is all.

10) I am becoming more and more convinced that the 'Alternate Dimension Amy' theory I once developed to explain some of the discrepancies of last season (you know, before we learned that the bulk of it was all part of The Silent's Trap) is very much in play this season.

In short...a very, very minor episode. There are elements I like, but it's obvious to me that this is another walk in all-too-familiar territory, and the overarc stuff just disrupts the story flow. This has the potential of being the "Vampires of Venice" of this season...and if it is, then the season might still be on good footing. But on it's on...a big treasure sack of 'meh'.