Doctor Who blog: The Vampires of Venice

Now, this is where we really see if this new series of Doctor Who is as promising as it seems. You see, once we’ve got the first episode out of the way, there’s a couple more establishing the characters – then they hit us with a big two-parter, designed to impress. This hasn’t always worked, it’s true, but that’s always clearly been the intention.

But then you near the halfway mark, and it gets tricky, because now they have to do something that’s more difficult than it looks – a funny, light romp that leaves the audience feeling entertained but not short-changed. For me, it’s the silly, fun episodes in between the big, impressive ones that give a series its real colour and life.

‘The Vampires of Venice’ managed to fill that void beautifully. In many ways it reminded me of ‘The Unicorn and the Wasp’, which is my ultimate example of this kind of episode – people are being murdered like it’s an Agatha Christie novel, but Agatha Christie is there. What’s not to love? The pre-credits sequence alone is hilarious, with the Doctor’s alienness being emphasised by his complete inability to say the right thing to Rory.

Here, the Doctor and Amy are relishing the joys of time travel in a way that hasn’t really been seen yet this series. Their delight at discovering the vampires, particularly when contrasted with Rory’s bemusement and worry at the whole thing, is lovely to watch. Glee sits very well on Matt Smith’s face, it has to be said, and he’s looking more assured in the role with every passing episode. Arthur Darvill makes a good addition to the companion team, and the awkward re-defining of the roles amongst the TARDIS team is magnificently written and played, with just the right balance of humour and real emotion. Of course, I wouldn’t expect anything less from Toby Whithouse (who created Being Human).

Some people have complained that the vampires weren’t actually vampires. Of course they weren’t. Anyone who was surprised that the main villains of the week in Doctor Who actually turned out to be aliens has clearly never paid much attention before. The explanations for why they had the traits of vampires avoided being too clunky by being spread out, while the sight of the 1980s style vampires in 16th Century Venice worked beautifully. I was particularly impressed by Helen McCrory, who was absolutely wonderful in all her scenes, but who really matched Matt Smith in her scene alone with him.

It’s episodes like this that show just how well this series of Doctor Who is working. Most shows can do the really key episodes (like the Weeping Angels two parter) to an extremely high standard. But if the in-between episodes are as good and fun as ‘The Vampires of Venice’, you know something is going right.

Next week, the production team’s apparent quest to cast all of my favourite British actors in the series continues when Toby Jones stars as the Dream Lord in an episode that looks like it could be rather marvellous.

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