DW 6x03 - The Curse of the Black Spot.
I haven't seen many reactions fo the episode yet, but I imagine there will be a collective "meh" throughout fandom.
Not that it was a BAD episode, per se. It was written by Steve Thompson, who wrote what IMO was the least successful of the three Sherlocks last year - but in both cases he had a bloody difficult act to follow. The first episode of Sherlock was practically perfect telly, and, love 'em or loathe 'em, TIA and DotM were well written, edge-of-the-seat stuff - so it could be argued that Thompson has drawn a pretty short straw during his association with Moffat!
Here, he's had to provide the first standalone episode of the series and I suspect, had it followed The Beast Below last year, I'd have been shedding tears of joy (unlike the tears of boredom I was shedding during TBB).
A few quibbles aside (more on those later), I thought it was a solid enough episode. It was fast and silly, and there were some good lines - Yo, Ho, Ho! Or don't pirates say that any more? - and the captain's reaction to the TARDIS as being just like any other ship - Steering, Navigation, Compass... - and speaking of the captain, how awesome was Hugh Bonneville's beard?! And the rest of him :-)
There was also a nice little reference back to the events of TIA when the Doctor says that death comes to us all as Amy and Rory exchange meaningful looks about the Thing They Can't Tell The Doctor.
The quibbles. Is DW going to turn into South Park? Oh, my God - they killed Kenny Rory! isn't just starting to get old, it's positively ancient. And killing the kid... it was a bit of a shock, I admit, but then I thought "hang on - they're not going to actually kill a child on DW, are they?" so it was pretty obvious it wasn't going to stick.
The Siren isn't so much an evil entity as a misunderstood alien just trying to do good. Well, okay - that's pretty standard DW fare, but it just seemed rather "tacked-on" if that makes sense, because there didn't seem to be any earlier inklings at all that all was not as it seemed. I thought the CGI people did a pretty good job on the Siren though.
The Siren as doctor... that was okay, it was just - as I suspect it did for many people - that the hologram-doctor can't help but evoke memories of Star Trek.
And rather like some episodes last year, we end with a smack on the anvil as we're reminded that Amy might or might not be a little bit pregnant.
Know what? I don't really care. I want to find out who shot the Doctor, who the girl is, who River is, why the TARDIS exploded and... oh lots of other things that interest me far more than anything to do with little-miss-so-important. They're probably connected - or it's all a bit red herring and the Doctor just hasn't noticed that the scanners are on the blink.
Moffat had better not be writing cheques he's no intention of cashing.
ETA: Up next - OOOOOOOOOOD! Oh, and Neil Gaiman. I was trying to explain that this is probably the most anticipated Sci-Fi event in the history of the entire universe. I don't think the kids were that impressed.