Doctor Who, "The Vampires of Venice"

Rory: \”You have no idea how dangerous you make people to themselves  when you\’re around.\”

First off, apologies to any readers (cue the sound of crickets) for the late recap. The alien story this week was mostly forgettable, save for the wonderful performance from Helen McCrory as Rosanna, but the interaction between the Doctor and Rory was a highlight. I was expecting the Doctor-Amy-Rory triangle to be a retread of the Doctor-Rose-Mickey situation, but Rory is much more of a Jackie Tyler than a Mickey Smith. Rory calls the Doctor out on exactly what makes him so dangerous to his companions; he doesn\’t ask them to take risks, to put their lives in danger, but he offers them a life in the TARDIS and it\’s irresistible. When the Doctor makes you feel brilliant, there\’s nothing you won\’t do to prove him right.

They seem to really be playing up the fact that the Doctor is an alien and sometimes rather awkward and oblivious about human social interaction. The episode opens with him jumping out of the cake at Rory\’s stag party in order to explain that Amy kissed him, while Rory (wearing an adorable shirt featuring a dorky photo of him and his bride-to-be) looks completely miserable. The awkwardness just builds and builds into an uncomfortable silence before we cut to the credits. If there\’s one thing the new season does extremely well, it\’s comedy.

The Doctor offers a romantic trip on the TARDIS as a way to let Amy and Rory reconnect. He knows that life as a time traveler blots out everything else, making it nearly impossible to return to a normal existence once the traveling ends. They arrive in the Venice of 1580 and almost immediately come across the mysterious Calvierri girls and their matron, Rosanna. While the Calvierris initially appear to be vampires, the group eventually discovers that they\’re space fish, refugees who abandoned their planet when they had to run from The Silence. Only the males of the species and their mother survived for some reason, and their plan is to turn pretty Venetian women into fish aliens by draining them of human blood and replacing it with their own.

In order to infiltrate the Calvierri house, Amy and Rory pose and brother and sister and offer Amy up as a Calvierri girl candidate. Rory is hilarious in this scene, and I love that he was actively involved in this story rather than chasing Amy and the Doctor all over Venice.

Rory: \”So, basically, our mother and father are both dead from the plague. I\’m a gondola…driver…so money\’s a bit tight. So having my…sister…go to your school for special people would be brilliant. Cheers.\”

Amy gets accepted with a little help from the psychic paper, and the plan is for her to open a trap door inside the compound, allowing the Doctor and Rory to sneak in through an underground tunnel. This whole sequence with the Doctor and Rory is fantastic — they\’re walking through a dark, creepy tunnel guided only by torchlight and Rory finds this to be the perfect time to discuss the Doctor and Amy\’s kiss.\”Now? You want to do this now?\” the Doctor asks. I would watch an entire episode of just these two and their banter, so I\’ll just go ahead and say it: I like Rory better than Amy. I also love that the exchange ends when the torch goes out and in complete darkness we hear the Doctor whisper, \”Can we go and see the vampires now, please?\”

Amy has of course been captured by the Calvierris and when the Doctor discovers the corpse of an unlucky candidate, Rory gives him the speech about how the Doctor makes people dangerous to themselves. He\’s got a point and the Doctor knows it, but they\’re interrupted when the Calvierri girls chase after them. Amy escapes with the help of the not-quite-converted Isabella, but not before being bitten by Rosanna and still managing to give her a swift kick to the perception filter before she goes. They meet up with the Doctor and Rory, but Isabella can\’t escape because the sun has come up. As punishment, she\’s forced to jump into the canal, where the fish aliens devour her.

The Doctor confronts Rosanna in a wonderful scene of back and forth question and answer between the two of them. There\’s lots of great dialogue and we get more information about the cracks in time and The Silence, but I think my favorite exchange comes at the end.

Rosanna: \”A partnership. Any which way you choose.\”

Doctor: \”I don\’t think that\’s such a good idea, do you? I\’m a Time Lord. You\’re a big fish. Think of the children.\”

Meanwhile, Amy and Rory are attacked by Rosanna\’s son, Francesco, and Rory adorably defends Amy with a broom. Amy uses her compact to reflect sunlight onto Francesco, which causes him to explode in what looks like a gross cloud of fish alien debris. After the danger has passed, Amy gives Rory a passionate kiss, so it looks like the Doctor\’s assessment (\”She kissed me because I was there\”) was correct.

The Doctor realizes that Rosanna plans to flood Venice so that her children can take over the city. After the Calvierri girls are killed in a heroic move from Isabella\’s father, Guido, Rosanna\’s plan begins to fall apart. The climax of the episode was appropriately cheesy, with the Doctor scaling a tower to reach the device that\’s causing the storm over Venice. He literally flips a switch to make it stop, and I love it when the solutions are that ridiculous and simple. Also, Rosanna makes a reference to the oncoming storm, which could be both the literal storm she\’s creating and the Doctor, who was referred to as The Oncoming Storm back in season 1. Points for possible continuity!

With her plan completely foiled and her perception filter broken, Rosanna is stuck alone in her human form. The Doctor finds her perched on the edge of the canal. “Can your conscience carry the weight of another dead race? Remember us. Dream of us,\” she tells him, as she throws herself in the water to be eaten by her children.

With the danger over, Rory expects to be dropped off at home alone, fully rejected by Amy. Instead, she asks him to stay a bit longer, an offer that\’s enthusiastically approved of by both the Doctor and Rory.

Amy: \”Hey, look at this—got my spaceship, got my boys. My work here is done.\” (She enters the TARDIS.)
Rory: \”Uh…we are not her boys.\”
The Doctor: \”Yeah we are.\”
Rory: \”Yeah we are.\”

Just as Rory and the Doctor are following Amy into the TARDIS, quiet falls over Venice and we hear Rosanna\’s ominous words about The Silence. We end on this interesting shot of the TARDIS lock:

As a side note, I highly recommend the Doctor Who Confidential for this week. Script writer Toby Whithouse visits Venice to get some background information on the plague and vampire stories from historian Francesco Da Mosto, who is delightful. Not knowing the premise of Doctor Who, he asks, \”So your Doctor…he is a doctor of plague?\”

JUNE 5: The show returns after a week off with \”Amy\’s Choice,\” in which the Doctor, Amy, and Rory face a Dream Lord. I\’ve heard wonderful things about this episode, so I\’m quite excited.

Screencaps from Sonic Biro.