The adventure continues.
March 11, 2011, 10.44 pm. After the intense excitement of the Angels’ two parter, it’s time for a little light relief. Well, light insofar as alien fish people pretending to be vampires in 16th century Venice can be. This one’s so much fun that I barely posted anything on Facebook, so this’ll be a short entry.
NB – as before, if your name or image is on these screenshots and you’d rather it wasn’t, PM me on Facebook and I’ll edit the image. Thanks!
After a Moffat-heavy first half of the season, it’s over to writer of Being Human Toby Whithouse for a gripping little standalone effort that reintroduces the magnificent Rory Williams:
Season 5, Episode 6: The Vampires of Venice
I love Toby Whithouse, so this one I can go into with confidence, despite the title’s resemblance to Klaus Kinski Nosferatu faux-sequel Vampire in Venice:
Straight away we’re at the stag party of one Rory Williams, Amy’s intended, and the Doctor’s bursting out of a cake in place of the expected stripper. Eleanor, Arnold and I all love him, though I suspect for different reasons:
The Doctor attempts to bluff his way around using that old faithful standby, the psychic paper. Yes, it’s a narrative shortcut, but heck, it’s even worse than the sonic screwdriver for “in one bound they were free” plot contrivance. And it’s been a little overused in the last six years:
Having sneaked into the Calvieri Academy for the betterment of young ladies, the Doctor appears to have wandered into a scene from a 1960s Hammer film by mistake:
Rory’s attempts at blending in are (comically) less successful than seasoned time travellers like the Doctor and Amy, making him automatically more realistic and less of a smug git:
And that’s all that came up in the Facebook discussion. Alcohol-influenced I may have been by this point, but I recall I was enjoying watching the story too much to spend much time gabbing about it online. Time for the verdict:
Yes, in a trend that seems to be the norm since Matt Smith took the helm of the TARDIS, I was finding that the standalone episodes were more satisfying to watch than the big ‘arc’ ones, even though those still kept me interested. Still, kudos to Mr Moffat with his showrunner’s hat on for giving a good mix of the two, at least in this season. Next up would be another one, and the first in a series of episodes written by top notch writers who’d never written Who before…
Simon’s Incoherent Blog 