Doctor Who Review: The Vampires of Venice

Last time: Amy tries it on with the Doctor. Now, we have the first episode with her fiancée, Rory as a companion. Can their relationship be fixed? How will this story deal with that? Well… the Doctor is in a cake, cracks a joke, takes them on holiday, gets them in danger, then Rory embraces the adventure and the whole Amy almost cheating thing is never really brought up properly. Which is the same with most aspects of this story, there are ideas, interesting ideas, but no real pay-off.

Aspect 1: Rory joins the crew. I like Rory. But here he just acts like Mickey Smith from the ‘Rose’ era. And I liked Mickey too, but really in this episode Rory does bring a lot to the table. He gets annoyed with the Doctor, he gets mistreated by Amy and then at the end he does something brave and everything before is forgotten. He just isn’t very interesting. But he is fun, because Arthur Darvill is a fun guy to watch.

Aspect 2: The Doctor is dangerous. Rory brings this up, that the Doctor makes people a danger to themselves. This is explored well… in series 6. Here it’s just kind of brought up then forgotten about.

Aspect 3: Venice. This story is set in Venice of the past, but except for period costumes it could be anytime, and except for some very unconvincing CGI, it could be any place. The Venice setting is not used very well.

Aspect 4: Vampires. They really aren’t threatening. I can’t pin down quite why, maybe it’s the fact this episodes tone is all over the place, but the vampires aren’t scary. Or maybe it’s the fact that they all get killed in about 5 minutes and never really hurt anyone. I liked the fish people and the explanation of why they appeared to be vampires. But then, in this episode it might as well have been a story about fish people because while they drink blood and don’t like the sun, they don’t seem very vampire-y.

Aspect 5: Characters. There’s a man whose daughter is taken into the vampire house. They are obviously only there for the plot, because as soon as their need to drive the story onwards is gone, then they die. The vampire people have motives and personalities too, but they are kind of tossed aside as well.

So, you’d expect that I would hate this story with all these things it does wrong. But… These aren’t things it does wrong; these are just things it doesn’t do right. Let me explain. The End of Time failed because it was a bunch of bad ideas that weren’t executed well and it wasn’t very fun either. The Beast Below failed because it was a bunch of good ideas that were terribly executed and it really was boring as all hell. This story however is saved from such hatred as those, by the fact that it has good ideas, and while they’re not explored or executed very well, it’s a lot of fun. It’s stupid fun, it’s fun that your brain won’t get very much out of, but it is fun to watch. And it’s very hard to work out why. I think it’s because everyone in it is having such a good time and while the plot might not be great, the script is pretty entertaining. Add in a fast pace and some nice direction, and you’ve got a success.

So, while I seem to have moaned most of the way through this, I actually quite like this episode. It’s not one you’ll remember, or particularly want to watch again very much, but it’s a good enough laugh for 45 minutes. It won’t overstay it’s welcome, and while you may forget it soon after it’s finished, while you are watching it, you’re going to have a pretty good time.

3/5