First broadcast 7 May 2011.

Three episodes into Season 6, and the Matt Smith era of Doctor Who lands upon its first properly mediocre episode. “The Curse of the Black Spot”, from writer Steve Thompson and director Jeremy Webb, is by no means an awful hour of Doctor Who. Instead it is simply what it is: a simple, self-contained combination of pirate stereotypes and science fiction. There have been worse episodes in this period of the series – “Victory of the Daleks” remains actively awful – but there have certainly been many that were much better. All in all, this one simply sits in its place. One might watch it. They might skip it. I cannot imagine anybody will care either way.

The TARDIS arrives in the hold of the 17th century pirate ship Fancy, captained by Henry Avery (Hugh Bonneville). A mysterious siren is marking each of Henry’s crew, one by one, before they fall into a trance and vanish. The Doctor (Matt Smith) is intrigued by the siren, but the situation grows urgent when Rory (Arthur Darvill) is marked – and becomes obsessed with reaching the siren himself.

It is a peculiar jump from “Day of the Moon” to this. That was all time paradoxes and narrative puzzles, building question upon question until it was actually rather difficult to make sense of it all. By contrast “The Curse of the Black Spot” is maddeningly simple and straightforward, and almost entirely self-contained. It was originally scheduled to come ninth in the season, but was moved forward to provide an amount of whimsy following the two-part premiere. In retrospect it was perhaps a little too whimsical. It ultimately gets a bit lost between the Silents and Neil Gaiman’s high-profile “The Doctor’s Wife”.

There is a neat little science fiction idea at the episode’s core, in that what seems to 17th century minds to be a supernatural siren is actually a highly advanced alien medical technology. In itself it is a fairly clever stuff, but it simply does not feel like enough. The guest characters are all very thinly drawn, and the closed-off setting of a sailing ship in the doldrums is never fully exploited for any sense of suspense or claustrophobia. Key guest star Hugh Bonneville seems oddly miscast as well – he seems too amiable a person to convince as a violent pirate.

It is also frustrating that after “Day of the Moon” introduced so many seemingly urgent narrative threads, “The Curse of the Black Spot” largely puts those threads on hold. There are a few references dropped in to keep the various questions in play, but no forward momentum of which to speak. It all feels like filler: good enough to justify its existence but nothing more, exciting enough so as not the wait the audience’s time but not so interesting one would bother to watch it twice. Not even the prospect of a small link between this – featuring Captain Avery – and 1966 serial “The Smugglers” – featuring his old crew – amounts to much.