So close…
The Curse of the Black Spot
After the madness surrounding the Pandorica and the Silence things seems to be back on track. Following a distress signal brings the Doctor and friends to a pirate ship in the 17th century. Things are not going well on board the ship, as a number of crew members have been killed by a water spirit shortly after a black spot appears on the back of their hands. This occurs whenever they are in any way injured, and the spirit seems to use water as a way of transporting onto the ship.
While seeking refuge from water in the ships hold they discover the son of the captain who has stowed away. Wanting to spend time with his father he is dismayed to find that he in the son of a pirate. After more deaths the Doctor finally surmises that the ‘spirit’ is a medical program on a spaceship occupying the same space in another dimension and it abducting the humans to fix their injuries.
Although this is not amongst the most memorable episodes it does an excellent job of unfolding the mystery. At the beginning is genuinely seems like a supernatural creature, yet the sci-fi explanation works just as well (in a Doctor Who way). The ending is actually a surprising and rather nice conclusion to the father/son sub-plot. Not a bad episode.
The Doctor’s Wife
How do you make something awesome like Doctor Who better? Bring in Neil Gaiman. Gaiman is without a doubt one of the best writers of his generation, producing endless works in novels, shorts, comics and picture books that delight on every level.
The Doctor receives a ‘communication cube’ from what seems to be another Time Lord and follows it back to junkyard asteroid. When they approach the soul of the TARDIS is removed and put into the body of a woman. The people of the junkyard who cause this event have used the communication cube to lure Time Lords in to the junkyard so the can kill them and use their body parts to replace their own.
It’s hard to express just how brilliant this episode is. The dynamic between the Doctor and Idris, the TARDIS, is absolutely perfect. There’s no other way to describe it, the scripting could not be better here. The overall concept is fantastic, and plays out really nicely. The mythology of the TARDIS is really explored in a way that hasn’t been done in years and they used the perfect writer for the part. If you see only one episode of the 11th Doctor make it this one.
The Rebel Flesh/The Almost People
Some of the double episodes such as The Pandorica Opens and The Big Bang fit nicely together and justify the run time. Not so much with this pair of episodes. Once the point gets made it seems to drag for the sake of emphasising it, which is rarely a good approach.
Arriving back on Earth in the 22nd century the Doctor, Amy and Rory land near a castle that is home to a refinery. In order to safely use the acid needed the crew use ‘gangers’, double gangers created using an artificial flesh substance. The place comes under threat from a solar storm putting the lives of humans and gangers in danger. Early in the piece the major conundrum comes into play – to what extent are the gangers people?
There is plenty of good action and suspense in the episode, and some good The Thing moments that come into play with not knowing who is and isn’t a flesh. Amy and Rory wind up at odds with each other when the debate about the gangers deepen. It’s clear what the writers were shooting for when they made this one but it just gets hammered in. By the time the heroes return to the TARDIS everything has been resolved…until the big reveal concerning Amy.
