Spoiler alert: While we will discuss what happened in last Saturday’s episode, we’ll avoid talking about any future plot details.
This week’s episode was my kind of Doctor Who: a sharp, self-contained story with a good mixture of mystery, intrigue and goofy science. The premise is simple: The Doctor, Rory and Amy find themselves on a 17th-century pirate ship trapped in a calm sea and beset with a mysterious creature who is (apparently) picking the crew off one at a time — even if they are only slightly wounded — and marking her intended victims with a black spot on their palms.
Even a small scratch is enough to draw the rather Avatarish looking blue mermaid/siren — played by elfin super model Lily Cole — from the sea or any convenient reflective surface. The Siren’s propensity for preying only on the wounded lead the crew to describe her as being shark like:
The relationship between Avery — The Pirate Captain played by “Downton Abby” alum Hugh Bonneville — and the Doctor gets off to a rocky start. But once they get past the whole, “you have to walk the plank” thing, they quickly become allies and there is a real chemistry between the two actors as their friendship grows as they tackle this menace together. At first the Doctor thinks it’s only water she can emerge from, but after recognizing his error — and somehow losing the TARDIS in the process — he breaks every window and mirror on the ship:
Of course, this being a pirate ship there is treasure galore, and where there is treasure, there are shiny surfaces. So, next the doctor launches on a campaign to throw all of the treasure overboard, although I’m not exactly clear why just throwing a tarp over it all wouldn’t do the trick — no light, no reflection. But this gives The Doctor a chance to teach the ills of avarice when the Captain secretly keeps a golden crown which later allows the Siren to emerge and take the Captain’s own stow-away son, Toby, who is sick with Typhoid.
After Rory is thrown overboard and then saved by the Siren, the Doctor realizes that the Siren is not killing them, but rather trying to save them. After a quick little pinpick and a ride from the Siren, The Doctor, Amy, and The Captain find themselves on a space ship trapped in a temporal rift — two crafts (a space ship and a pirate ship) parked in the same space. Of course, this plot device is not new to Doctor Who. The classic Doctor Who Episode “The Stones of Blood” used a similar idea to help explain stone circles in England (it’s a long story).
So, it turns out that reflections are gateways between the two planes of existence, and thus the ships. Rory and the crew were taken to an automatic sick bay —with looks reminiscent of the movie Coma — where, in actuality, the Siren is a virtual doctor with her crew long dead from alien (ie. human) viruses leaving behind a lot of alien (ie. Alien alien) mucus, or, as the Doctor puts it after sticking his hand in a big glob of some, “Alien Bogies.” Reminds me of something out of the Young Ones.
The black spot is the Siren taking a tissue sample from the patient for analysis. The problem is that, although she can keep the wounded alive in stasis, she can not heal their alien (ie. human) physiology. For most of the crew, suffering only from a few cuts and bruises, this is not a huge issue, but for Toby (incurable Typhoid) and Rory (on the edge of drowning) the stakes are a bit higher.
Amy manages to save Rory with the kiss of life (although it looks to me like she is giving up right before he sputters back to the land of the living) while the Captain, his son (still in stasis), and crew fly off into the stars aboard the alien space ship. Could there be a possible spin-off in the making? All we need is space-ninjas and it would be the BEST TV SHOW EVER! Space-Pirates vs. Space-Ninjas!
One thing, though I’m sure you are wondering. How does a 17th-century pirate captain know how to fly an alien space ship? As The Captain points out earlier in the TARDIS, “A ship’s a ship.” OK, fair enough.
In the wider story arc for this season, we get a few more tantalizing glimpses of the one eyed woman, last seen behind a door in the orphanage from the previous episode, saying simply “No, I think she’s just dreaming”. In this episode we get a better view at the woman, who is clearly wearing a futuristic looking eye patch. While Amy is dreaming we hear the mysterious one eyed woman say “It’s fine. You’re doing fine, just stay calm.” Amy wakes to see the woman at an opening in the ship’s hull where there should not be an opening, which quickly closes leaving no trace. I don’t know about you, but to me this sounds like something you might say to someone in labor.
We also get brief a flash back of the Doctor’s death from the season opener and the Doctor is also still scanning Amy and showing Positive/Negative flipping back and forth, and the doctor muttering “oh Amy.”
On a personal viewing habits note… this was the first week that I’ve watched Doctor Who on BBC America with all of the commercial interruptions. Last week I got home a little late, so we watched it on DVR and skipped through the commercials and the week before, the BBC was kind enough to present it with limited commercial interruptions. But I did find the commercials breaks highly distracting on all three occasions, most of all this week. The fact is that when broadcast in the UK, there are no commercial interruptions and the shows are not paced for them. So, BBC America has to interrupt the program, often at awkward moments in the narrative. I’ve also purchased the season on iTunes, and, with my AppleTV, my family and I have decided to just start waiting until Sunday morning to watch them in HD without the commercials. Of course, I’m worried that if everybody does this, then the ratings will plummet and the show will get cancelled.
Anybody have any thoughts on this topic?
