Reviews Series / Doctor Who

The Vampires of Venice

In a desperate effort to help Amy recall her feelings for her fiancé Rory Williams, the Doctor takes the couple to Venice for a romantic outing. Unfortunately, as the title implies, the city is currently the haunt of some extremely hostile vampires...

I absolutely loved this episode. Even from the pre-title sequence, in which the Doctor crashes Rory's stag do, it was clear that the script for this episode was going to be absolutely brilliant, and the rest of the episode did not disappoint.

This is an episode packed with smart, witty dialogue and self-aware humour (watch out for the Doctor's library card). The plot is creative and entertaining, and while it's a fairly standard good-versus-evil conflict, there are some nice shades of grey morality in the mix here. There's also some nice action scenes, including a rather comical swordfight.

Rory is a welcome addition to the team, bringing with him a degree of conflict as he is none too pleased with the Doctor. However, the real stars of this episode are villains Rosanna and Francesco, who manage to be both deliciously silly and menacing all at once.

The episode does suffer from some very Conspicuous CG. However, this does not detract greatly from what is arguably the most entertaining episode so far this season.