2. The Curse Of The Black Spot
For my money, this episode flat-out sucked insofar as it committed the cardinal sin of series 5-7 Doctor Who killing off Rory for the sake of dramatic emphasis. But firstly, the premise. To my mind, the idea itself was really good, working as the sort of genre TV that you might expect of Scooby Doo. Namely, there's a monster (the Siren) and the Doctor and company had to avoid it and figure it out at the same time. Yet the twist that the 17th century pirate galleon setting is actually sharing the space with an alien spaceship, was excellent, if only because it came out of nowhere in the most brilliant way. But when they chucked Rory off the boat's side, the whole thing took a backseat to the will-Rory-live plotline. Now, we all know that killing off Amy Pond's perennially unlucky husband can be extremely effective. Amy's Choice shocked us, Cold Blood gave us an unexpected gut-punch and when his actual 'death' in The Angels Take Manhattan inspired the best acting Karen Gillan had given during her tenure as a companion. But at this point, we knew Rory wasn't really going to die, so any attempt at raising the stakes by getting rid of him for a bit just seemed kind of false. It might be a bold claim, but I really don't think any viewer thought Rory was in danger, even when they took him off life support, so it gave the rest of the episode seem a bit insincere, as if we knew the writers were trying to throw us a bone. Combine this with wasted guest star turns from Lily Cole (underused) and Hugh Bonneville (used incorrectly as a nice killer Pirate) and you couldn't help but feel this episode could've been something more.