...And a Bottle of Rum [possible SPOILERS for Doctor Who episode Curse of the Black Spot!]

[jjpor]

I say "possible" because as I sit down to write this I can't actually think of an awful lot to say about Curse of the Black Spot...

I didn't post anything on Day of the Moon, even though there was plenty of interesting food for thought coming out of that episode, mainly because I spent most of last week discussing that food for thought in various places other than my Livejournal and didn't have the time or inclination to do it all twice. I'm sure you know how it is.

Anyway, having managed to stall for time for a whole paragraph...

Er...Hugh Bonneville was good? He always is. Smith, Gillan and Darvill continue as reliable as ever? I like sailing ships? Lily Cole was in The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, which I consider possibly to be Terry Gilliam's best film since...er...well, possibly Baron Munchausen? Yes, I like Baron Munchausen - so sue me. :D

So, as you can see, er, not too much to say about this week's episode. I don't think it deserves the level of vitriol it seems to be getting from some fans - I honestly didn't think it was appalling or a personal affront I will have to duel Moffat to expunge or anything. I said something a while back in relation to some NuWho story or other that sometimes when something looks like it's going to be good and then turns out to be only average it's actually worse than if it was just rubbish all the way through. Well, this one never looked like it was going to be good, particularly. So you can say that for it.

Seriously, I wonder if it was my personal expectations going in, because when last week's one ended and I saw the next time trailer I thought "Oh, a filler episode. Well, we'll be back to the arc sooner or later." So yeah. Curse of the Black Spot - whiled away 45 minutes, wasn't terrible. There.

Except... I have thought of one halfway coherent observation while I was taking all that time saying nothing. It reinforces a theory I formed while watching S5, with regard to the stories Vampires of Venice and Hungry Earth/Cold Blood in particular. Namely that Moffat doesn't seem to exercise the same degree of editorial control over his writers that RTD used to. It was famously said that when he was ruling the roost, RTD used to rewrite virtually every script until it was his story in all but name. The only exceptions were Moffat himself, and Matthew Graham for Fear Her, which...I'm in the camp that doesn't like that one. Sorry. But yes, one of the reason why Moffat's scripts seemed like "events" during the RTD years was undoubtedly that, not only were they by and large a bit bolder and a bit quirkier than RTD seemed to favour (not that he couldn't "do a Moffat" himself when he wanted - see Midnight. Pity he didn't do it more than once or twice in the whole five years he was in charge), but that you could tell they were different. Something about the tone or the dialogue or the different writerly preoccupations. Whereas, everybody else's stories, regardless of the actual author, were all but indistinguishable from Rusty's own. And that was no doubt deliberate - not necessarily in terms of Rusty playing it safe and sticking to his formula for producing popular family entertainment (although that was no doubt a consideration) but also in terms of having a coherent tone and vision for the whole series.

Which goes towards my other theory - namely that, whatever you may think of their different merits as writers (or lack of them, conceivably), which at the end of the day is probably no more than personal preference, RTD strikes me as a far slicker, more ruthless, perhaps more cynical, showrunner than Moffat. Not that that's necessarily a bad thing in the world of television and the ratings game and all that.

Anyway, that, I would argue, is not the case with Moffat-era Who,. The difference in tone (if not in quality, necessarily) between Moffat scripts and non-Moffat scripts is sometimes glaring. Vampires of Venice, for instance, by Toby Whithouse, was pretty much a Ten script with Matt Smith doing his best to make the lines sound like Eleven. The fact that it was hilariously funny and benefitted from good guest characters and actors sort of obscured the feelling of strangeness. Not so with the Silurians story, which having now watched it again I confirm was an absolute stinker - I was far too kind to it (!) in the reaction post I put up here last year. Take a bow, Mr Chibnall! :D

To return mostly to the original topic, I had the same feeling watching Curse of the Black Spot. Steve Thompson is almost regarded as the Antichrist in some corners of internet fandom for his Unfortunate Implications-laden episode of Sherlock "The Blind Banker" (think Talons of Weng-Chiang without the flimsy "excuse" of having been made in the 70s - and without all the good bits too ;D), and I don't think this one will have done much to win over his anti-fans really. As I say, it wasn't even bad, but the fact that the relatively straightforward not to say cliched plot was something of a comedown from last week's jaw-dropping stuff probably made it look worse than it was. Plus...the tone was off. You know, Eleven didn't really sound like Eleven. Well, he did, obviously, in terms of voice, and he certainly looked like and moved like Eleven, but the things coming out of his mouth were the sort of things someone who'd seen maybe a couple of episodes of S5 might think he'd say. The same with Rory and Amy - I mean, they were recognisably Rory and Amy, but seemed to lack something of their usual depth and character development. It was Eleven Who by the numbers, I think I'm trying to say - not bad, exactly, just...adequate.

Of course, it didn't help that they faked Rory's death again and that the main plot point was lifted from The Doctor Dances...

So yes - Moffat Who, less homogenous than RTD Who, sometimes for better, sometimes for worse, sometimes for "meh".

And I kind of suspect that Moffat's apparent laissez-faire attitude might have something to do with him spending so much of his time on things like Sherlock rather than any difference in showrunning philosophy from RTD. Don't get me wrong - I really enjoyed Sherlock, but I do wonder sometimes about Moffat's workload.

But...next week's looks like an absolute cracker! And I say that even without taking into account who wrote it. Presumably, this will be one of the "sometimes for better" examples from above. I hope, anyway. I just hope all the Gaiman-hype and the undoubtedly unrealistic expectations it has probably generated in the minds of some fans don't work to the story's detriment if it turns out to be merely very good as opposed to GREATER THAN CITY OF DEATH!!! or whatever.

We shall see, anyway...