The Vampires of Venice

Dear Gary—

The Vampires of Venice is a bit of harmless, lightweight fun; slightly sophomoric with unexpected flashes of feeling. This story fits in nicely with the spirit of Rory’s bachelor party as well as with some Classic Who camp, like Warriors of the Deep for instance. You can’t take it too seriously, but you can sit back and enjoy the show.

Let’s look at just one example—the fresh young vampire fish slinking around in their long flowing white nighties, even in broad daylight (which sometimes they can handle and sometimes they can’t). These model types were chosen for their complementary long flowing hair rather than their acting skills; it is amateur theatrics at best and conjures up images of Manos: The Handsof Fate. Oh what Joely and the bots could do with this.

Not much thought is put into the construction of the plot. It opens with Guido desperately begging Rosanna to take his daughter into her posh prep school and immediately looking concerned when Isabella is accepted. Next thing we know he is trying to break her out. There is little evidence that Rosanna is doing anything for these girls or for the city, and yet the whole of Venice falls all over itself to please her. This commercial city whose lifeblood is trade even goes so far as to put itself under strict quarantine at her command. Something is definitely fishy in Venice.

The Saturnynians didn’t think through their plan either. Ten thousand brothers are waiting for a handful of fish wives. That’s some serious sibling rivalry in the making. While the husbands swim patiently in the canals (apparently Venetians know enough to stay out of the water) the prep school girls maintain a low profile by parading through the streets in not-suspicious-at-all-looking attire to endure the whispers of wary citizens and are only occasionally accosted by concerned family members. Somehow this desperate race on the verge of extinction has built a massive weather manipulating machine in 1580 Italy. Rather than simply swimming away into the vast oceans available to them, they want to sink the city once the marriage ceremony is complete. I guess it is the ideal honeymoon spot for these Venetian-converted fish girls.

A word about this weather machine. “Right. To begin, let’s fill the sky with fire,” Rosanna declares as she puts her grand scheme into action. Except there is no fire. There are dark clouds, thunder, lightening, and rain. Cue the Doctor Who extras running around and screaming. “We are Venetians!” Venetians afraid of a thunderstorm; who would have thought. And then the whole thing is turned off by the flick of a switch. Sun comes out. Cue Disney songbirds; cue Doctor Who extras applauding. Blue skies take a bow.

“Funny how you can say something in your head and it sounds fine.”

The Doctor’s use of this trope sums up The Vampires of Venice. The script is riddled with similar high school caliber clichés. (“Yours is bigger than mine.”) However, interspersed amongst such things as, “Did you just say something about Mummy?” are some genuine moments like, “You know what’s dangerous about you? It’s not that you make people take risks, it’s that you make them want to impress you.”

Helping the script along are some fine actors. It has long been said of Doctor Who that no matter how outrageous or silly the material it is critical that the cast treats it in all seriousness. That is a key to its success and Helen McCrory as Signora Rosanna Calvierri takes it to heart. Her face offs with the Doctor are fascinating to witness. (I do question, though, how Rosanna knows all about the Doctor. From the simple information that the Doctor is from Gallifrey she infers quite a lot to be able to taunt him with dead races. And to continue this aside—how is it that so many alien races in New Who know of the Time War and the Time Lord’s fate? They must all be on the same linear path as the Doctor, regardless of time period. If the First Doctor had landed in 1580 Venice you can be sure that the Saturnynians would never have heard of the Time War, but since it is the Eleventh who meets up with them, they must have traveled back in time to 1580 themselves and are therefore on the same Doctorian calendar.) But back to our actors . . . Arthur Daville as Rory is also excellent and a welcome addition to the TARDIS crew.

Good acting can’t always help however.

Isabella: “Something touched my leg! They’re all around me. They bite!”

I’m not sure who Isabella is directing this play by play to as she treads water in the canal. I think the audience gets it between the gurgling water, the references to lost children, and Rosanna’s touching concern for her ten thousand hungry sons beneath the surface. When Isabella is pulled below, though—now that’s a dead giveaway.

Now about those ten thousand hungry bachelors. Are we to believe that now that Mummy and the brides are dead they will harmlessly live out their lives in the canals of Venice (as long as no one goes swimming) and die out? After a while wouldn’t you think one or two of the thousands would get the bright idea to go in search of some brides for themselves? And none of this waiting around for the good peoples of Venice to willingly offer up their daughters. These vampire fish people would work like the good old fashioned vampires of yore—in the dark of night and in back alleys stalking their prey.

I’m not too sure about Rosanna sacrificing herself, either. So her converts are dead and her weather machine switched off—can’t she find new brides for her sons? Start again? And then go swimming out to the oceans rather than sinking Venice? Maybe look up those lost fish people of Atlantis from The Underwater Menace. I also have to wonder how it is that she stays in human form when she has taken off her perception filter. That’s one powerful device that continues to function (faulty though it is) after being discarded.

Finally we have more ominous crack warnings and the dreaded Silence. Rosanna speaks of many cracks existing—I wonder if they are all the same shape as that which continues to follow the Doctor and Amy about. We do know that there is some variety in the cracks: “Some were tiny. Some were as big as the sky. Through some we saw worlds and people, and through others we saw Silence and the end of all things.” Apparently you can pick and choose which crack to jump through too, like Prisoner Zero. I wonder if they all end up on Earth. Or perhaps wherever the TARDIS happens to land, which 99% of the time will be Earth.

Sometimes, Gary, I want to jump through one of those cracks back to a simpler time, a simpler Doctor Who; maybe look up those lost fish people from Atlantis . . .