DW S603: The Black Spot
May. 9th, 2011 10:04 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
Disclosure time: I don't have a piracy kink. I used to have one, as I was reared on a steady diet of Errol Flynn movies, bodice rippers, and Hornblower novels. Then my fic brain got interested in the minutia of sea life and I discovered that sailing was like sausage making: best viewed from a distance. But speaking as someone who went through Piracy Kink Rehab and married someone who never had a piracy kink, we loved this episode. Not one of the all-time greats, not without its plot holes, but a very enjoyable (and sometime quite scary) 45 minutes.
Of course it got the CPR wrong. Of course there's no explanation of how the kid found his Dad's ship. Of course a ship full of gunky stuff like tar, pitch, and general grime would have to ditch it's reflective surfaces instead of simply dirtying them. I can't respect them for getting those aspects wrong but the rest of the show was quite good, for all that it looked like The Empty Child meets Star Trek Voyager. But folks, just a little more effort and you could have taken this story to the next level.
Of course it got the CPR wrong. Of course there's no explanation of how the kid found his Dad's ship. Of course a ship full of gunky stuff like tar, pitch, and general grime would have to ditch it's reflective surfaces instead of simply dirtying them. I can't respect them for getting those aspects wrong but the rest of the show was quite good, for all that it looked like The Empty Child meets Star Trek Voyager. But folks, just a little more effort and you could have taken this story to the next level.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-05-09 05:58 pm (UTC)I'm not sure if my predilection for piracy was what made this episode fail for me, though. Yes, the pirates were rubbish, and no they didn't do any piracy. Why bother making them pirates to begin with? All that aside, the story itself felt dull. I don't think that would have changed even if I hadn't been grumpy about the rubbish pirates. Lovely idea about a tiny cut equalling 'death', but the "they're not dead really" thing rather spoilt it. Maybe I'm too bloodthirsty, though. I don't know.