New Who 5.6: Vampires of Venice

[strange_complex]

Basically, I loved this episode, except for some reservations about the way the black characters were handled. Because unfortunately both of them died to save the white characters. That would be OK if it were really just about individual characters making individual choices. But two of them within one episode is already a trope, and examples like Midnight show that it's widespread in Doctor Who generally. This really does need to be addressed.

Other than that quite serious flaw, though, it was a really good story. I loved Rosanna Calvieri - what a great villain! I loved the sets and costumes and location footage and general Hammer horror atmosphere. I loved that the Calvieri family crest showed what I think was either a leech or a lamprey or similar, fitting neatly with the blood-sucking fish motif. And I see that it did link in, at least thematically, with The Stones of Venice, insofar as it had strange creatures lurking in the water and someone trying to sink the city.

It's the second historical of the season (after Victory of the Daleks), and I felt made slightly better use of its period setting. At least it was a plausible context in which a corrupt aristocratic family might feed on a fearful population, and successfully hoodwink them into isolation by playing on fear of the plague. I know a Renaissance historian in our University who'll have been thrilled to see the way they used antique-looking maps at one point to evoke the character of the city and figure out how to make its topography work to their advantage. And how interesting to see the Doctor providing the necessary historical orientation at the beginning - Barbara's old job, of course.

Talking of Barbara - OMG William Hartnell on the Doctor's out-of-date library card! a_d_medievalist obviously noticed this right in the trailer after the first episode, but it passed me by in all the barrage of images at the time. Great to see though. I liked Smith generally a lot in this episode, to the extent that for the first time I found myself thinking - do I actually like him more than Tennant now? I don't necessarily mean I prefer one or the other as an actor, but I think I mean I like the way that the Eleventh is generally being portrayed - scripted, acted, directed, filmed. I like the lines he is getting (like asking someone to give Rory's strippergram a jumper!), the way he is delivering them, the way he's generally quite sweet and self-deprecating but can lose his temper when he thinks people are being idiotic around him, and the way he doesn't seem to look for huge adulation when he has saved everyone's lives - just gets the job done and then smiles to himself in a satisfied manner.

His final choice in this episode, to kill off the Saturnine(?) race entirely in order to save one human city was interesting, and I felt had resonances with what Ten did in The Fires of Pompeii. It's not quite the opposite case, because there he destroyed one alien race plus one human city in order to save the whole human race, whereas here he destroyed one alien race to save one human city. There were reasons given for this. First of all the Doctor refuses to help Rosanna and her family because she did not know Isabella (the black girl)'s name - a regular theme with the Doctor, which follows particularly well from him being careful to establish cleric Bob's name in the previous two-parter. And then they just generally prove themselves to be evil, ruthless killers anyway. But it's still questionable ethical position for him to take, rather like what he was planning to do to the Star Whale in The Beast Below, and one which Rosanna Calvieri draws explicit attention to at the end of the story. I wonder if this is something which will come back and bite him (*boom-tish*) at the end of the season?

It's also interesting that there was no reference at all to the effects which allowing the Calvieri family to sink 16th-century Venice might have on the development of the human race or the course of history, which could have been another perfectly plausible reason for getting rid of them. Slightly worrying, actually, as I'm pretty wedded to the idea that Doctor Who treats Earth history as something which can't be altered and needs to be protected. This is the second time this season that the conflict between the events of a historical story and what we as viewers know of real history just hasn't really been addressed - and I'd like to see that being dealt with more directly.

Meanwhile we get some interesting development of Amy, Rory and the relationship between them. I liked the Doctor's explicit statement that Amy's experiences of time-travel would drive a wedge between her and Rory if he hadn't shared them too - a common concern for former companions. Mind you if I'm right about Rory being the person River Song will kill in the final story, that's also obviously going to throw a bit of a damper on their future together... :-/ Anyway, for now I liked how he had been learning about other dimensions on the internet since the events of The Eleventh Hour, and his slightly ham-fisted attempts at sword-fighting, and his agitation about Amy's attempt to kiss the Doctor - right up until she rescues him and snogs him madly and he understands and realises that she really does love him after all.

And there's a bit more development of the plot-arc too. The vampire fish people have seen silence through some cracks in time, and travelled through another one... and now at the end silence has fallen in Venice too. We're only half-way through the season, but there is a definite sense of gathering momentum and rising tension here. Can't wait to see where it goes!

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Comments

[ms-siobhan.livejournal.com]

I really like the new Doctor - I much prefer him to the face pulling school of acting Tennant descended into but I thought this episode promised lots but ultimately failed to deliver. Both me and Mr Pops groaned at the name of Guido and his stockpiling of gunpowder and I can do without the kissing and sexual innuendo as well and some of the CGI just looked plain shonky. To me the trailer for this week's episode was better than the actual episode and I'm worried that the trailer for next week's looks excellent which looks really good will also be the same.

[huskyteer.livejournal.com]

Now I saw the black characters die and thought "Oh, black characters have to be good and can do no wrong". Which was silly, because they did very wrong indeed at Christmas. I suspect I'm racist for making anything of it at all. (I liked both characters very much, especially when the dad was wearing Rory's stag do top.)

Oh, it was a library card! It was so fast I didn't have time to clock more than 'hey, that's William Hartnell!'

I get the feeling I'm missing a lot this series (and indeed in Life) by not knowing much about Hammer horror.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Another way of looking at it is that this was colour-blind casting. These were characters who didn't need to be black- and could easily have been white. Their blackness was never an issue- and their self-identification- at the moment of death- was as Venetians.

I'm thinking the script was written before these particular actors were cast.

[rhube.livejournal.com]

I pretty much agree. I took it as read that destroying Venice would have a massive impact on Earth's history, and that that was a large part of why the Doctor didn't allow it (that, and he's real attached to Earth, generally), but I guess it could be more explicit. Generally I felt like they were trying to squeeze a lot into the episode, and masking teh places where stuff didn't quite flow fairly well. I had the impression of shots being cut in the sequence at the end where the Doctor traces the location of the generator back from the chair, for instance.

I really hope you're not right about Rory being the one River Song has to kill, although the more I think about it, the more that fits with my theory that Rory's an alien (who quite probably doesn't know that he's an alien). If the trouble started in Amy's town (as seems not unlikely - why did the TARDIS crash land there anyway?) maybe something else got through when Prisoner Zero did. Maybe he'll need to be killed to set things right.

[weepingcross.livejournal.com]

As always I do like your reviews! I almost wept with delight when I saw the trailer for this but in the end, though I loved the visual feel, the clever details and the whole concept, it was a pretty light bit of work, largely I think because it had to move so fast and cover so much ground. Stories which spread over two episodes do allow a bit more character development, or at least should. I have fast become a great partisan of this Dr, largely because he and the writers are making the whole thing fun. It may start to grate after a bit, but after all the angst-ridden self-examination of Ten it's hugely refreshing. And as for the idea that much of the last four years may have been bollocks, sorry, a deleted timeline, well, that would in some ways be a great relief.

[steer.livejournal.com]

Because unfortunately both of them died to save the white characters.

Huh? She died trying to escape and he died because he wanted to kill his daughter's murderers. I don't recall any motivation to save any white characters in any of their actions. In the daughter's case they all seemed to be safe anyway but she could not join them and in the father's case they were all safe anyway but he went back for revenge surely? In the case of the father you could argue that inadvertently as a result other people were eventually saved but it was an essentially selfish motive. In the case of the daughter I couldn't see anything but her wanting to escape and failing to do so.

What am I not seeing that you did?