The surprisingly dark road of Doctor Who continued last Saturday. It begins with presenting us with a pirate adventure before taking a dark turn after five minutes and brilliantly subverting the audience's expectations and taking us into a Hollywood Slasher programme crossed with a ghost story. After two dark and scary Who episodes, I was expecting a light hearted affair about pirates and, this being Who, some sort of alien. Instead we got a ghost who would appear from reflective surfaces and "kill" those who were injured or who drew blood. It should be noted at this juncture that instead of killing her victims, the siren was revealed to be some sort of Florence Nightingale figure from a parallel universe who rescues injured or dying people and keeps them alive. This continues New Who's pattern of misunderstood and relatively harmless alien antagonists, such as the aliens who lived down the mine last season. There's also a subtle parallel between the siren and the Doctor. The siren can in theory save people from death yet not heal them, while the Doctor can heal himself and stop him from dying. Neither, however, can save other people from dying. I actually liked this plot immensely; the fear of getting injured only slightly or else the "killer" appears, the suffocation of being trapped on a ship in the middle of the ocean, the twist that the victims are not really dead but instead are being kept alive in another universe, all very well done. Hats off to the writers. If this was the only plot and had no children in it, this episode would be perfect. As it is, it's a fine entry into the Who series, keeps the tone and feel of the series consistent, which is a plus.
The three main characters were their usual bouncy selves. The Doctor played arrogant, sarcastic detective, making witty observations in the face of doom. He works out how the siren is getting in rather quickly, and takes time to scoff at the notion of a pirate curse. You'd think a time-travelling alien would be a little more open minded. Since this series looks to be darker, we see another side of the Doctor that we haven't before. Last week saw the s*** eating cockiness at the prospect of alien genocide side to the Doctor. He shoots his gun while exchanging witty words with River Song. This week we see the Doctor shouting at people angrily in the rain, scolding the captain for not discarding something which endangered the crew. He seems more like an action man than ever before, but since the stakes are high and peoples' lives are at risk, it is understandable. Meanwhile, Amy, looking good as a pirate wench, jumps between jumpy and questiony, scalding the Doctor one minute and protecting her man, Rory, the other. The usual routine. Speaking of Rory, he almost dies twice this week. Again. Only he's brought back to life by the end of the episode. The character seems to exist as someone for the Doctor and Amy to rescue every episode, to pull some worried and bemused faces and act as an Everyman for the audience to relate to, at least the ones who hate women and mumbling nerds in their twenties. The actor does a good job and has great chemistry with Karen Gillen.
The supporting cast was pretty forgettable, particularly the main pirate guy, the captain. Like almost all the one-shot characters from the last series, he reacted to the Doctor and the TARDIS in the same way, with awe but not exactly shock, before questioning the hero at every turn. We are expected to care about him because he spends the episode hanging around the Doctor and looking forlorn. There was also a ten-second sub plot about mutiny. Of course, this being New Who, an annoying child had to be shoe horned into the story, probably to remind the audience that this is still meant to be family entertainment. Unlike the child (or was it?) in last week's episode, this annoying brat adds nothing to the story and the episode would be near perfect if it wasn't for him and his back story. This week's child is a ship stowaway and also the captain's son. We are given this contrived, tacked on sub plot about the captain valuing his treasure over his family (!) and abandoning them to go off on cool pirate adventures. That's fine, except that this all seems pretty banal in the face of a killer ghost who prays on those who bleed. We have these characters that show up for this episode (probably, sadly they don't die at the end) with this cliché, groan inducing sub plot. I personally didn't care about these characters, nor did I sympathise with them. There was one absurd visual of the newly reconciled father-son team flying off into deep space in a space ship with the rest of the crew in a moment which pulls us back into sci-fi fantasy. That being my only gripe, I enjoyed this week's episode, and the preview to next week's looks promising with the usual blend of zany humour and scary grit. I'll be watching.
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