angelophile | Review: Doctor Who - The Vampires of Venice (Reply)

Ah, vampires. They're all the rage now, aren't they? And since Nu-Who's tackled werewolves, ghosts, witches and zombies (wait, maybe that was just Christopher Eccleston), it was only a matter of time before everyone's favourite blood suckers turned up. Of course, the Doctor's encountered vampires before, most recently in the Seventh Doctor's era story The Curse of Fenric, which was pretty much pure awesome on a stick (WWII setting, Russian spies, Norse mythology, ancient vampires, Nicholas Parsons), so it was interesting to see where they went with this one. Apart from Venice, obviously.

So, in short, this was a fun episode. Not outstanding, with some weaknesses, but fun.

First up the poor:

Exploding vampire guy. Whut?

Ropey bluescreen effects, particularly when they actually showed the canals and the Doctor's long climb.

What's interesting is that Father Octavian last week got probably as little screen time as the Doctor's new temp companion, but 100 times more character and emotion. When he died, I had no reason to care. He hadn't even been shown any mouring for his daughter - the next scene shows him placidly sitting there while the Doctor chats and Rory's hand over his face. They could have slipped a cardboard cutout into the scenes where he appeared and I'd barely have noticed. Poor show.

What, they just left the human devouring male aliens in that stretch of canal then? And that was the only choice for repopulating the species? Not wanting to sound icky, but wasn't there some kind of biological solution with mom? Creepy eldest son seemed up for it. Definite vibes there. Cue the Tom Lehrer.

And, surprisingly, those are my major gripes. Oh, I could nitpick more, but, as I said, this was a genuinely fun episode. It nicely played off the ideas of cliched vampires (lack of reflection, fangs) and came up with entertaining sciencebabble after the aliens reveal to explain all of it.

One of the highlights for me was, contrasted with the inventive explanations for no reflections and fangs, they tossed in a wonderfully tongue in cheek low-tech solution to the climactic problem. After so many episodes like Daleks in Manhattan where science babble and hitherto inhuman feats combined to solve the climax ("It's made of dalektanium! The sonic screwdriver won't affect that! But if I reroute my genetic pattern through the manifold decompression chamber... it just might work!") that was genuinely hilarious.

And there were plenty of laughs. The churlish might suggest that the lighthearted tone of the whole thing undercut away from any moments of tension of true horror - the vampires themselves? More tongue in cheek cliche than terrifying creatures of the night - but that's kinda what made it enjoyable for me. It didn't take itself too seriously. It wasn't meant to be particularly chilling, which, after a two parter with the Weeping Angels is no bad thing, and just a tasty, funny, entertainment. For that, it worked, with the dialogue being particularly generous with witty one-liners.

Notably hilarious - the pre-credit sequence at Rory's stag party. Yes, Eleven is just adorably not good with people isn't he?

And speaking of Rory, whist having him clambering on board the TARDIS might have felt a bit like Mickey-lite, with useless boyfriend tagging along for the ride, I've actually warmed to him very quickly. He's a bit generic so far, but was given some chances to shine, including calling the Doctor out on his charismatic ways and his non-reaction to the TARDIS interior, with lovely wobbly Doctor being all disappointed.

So, another great performance by Matt Smith, who's proving to be lovably crap. All left feet, with none of the inherent instant answers and action hero stylings of Tennant. Geeking out over buxom vampires and flashing William Hartnell's library card about. There were very few weak spots this week, he was a joy to watch.

Amy got a little bit of a short straw this week, given few opportunities to do anything but run around in her nightie again, make her patented scary face and come across as a bit of a heartless so and so to poor old Rory. Luckily it seemed to have worked out for the best by the end of the episode and here's hoping all that silliness is forgotten.

But overall, it was a lovely souffle of an episode - all light and tasty, beautifully tongue in cheek and playing with the cliches, some nice location settings and atmosphere, some great funny lines ("You owe Cassanova a chicken?"), nice performances from the central, well, three now, apparently. I doubt it's going to win any awards, but it's definitely one of the stronger and simply entertaining episodes of the series so far.