Doctor Who, Series 5, Episode 6: Venetian Vampires Without Bite.

DOCTOR WHO
‘Vampires In Venice’
08/05/2010
BBC One

One truth often overlooked about Doctor Who is that the men are better than the women. No, that's not sexism. What I mean is that the male companions always seem more interesting and fleshed out than most of the female companions as a rule, the only exceptions being Liz (Who III), Leela & Romana (Who IV) and Ace (Who VII) who instead were women who were trying or were able to be part of what was still a men's world, and so had much more going on under the surface.

But the male companions still stand out, because the dynamic was different. With female companions, it was often a fatherly relationship with the Doctor, as opposed to today's non-stop Electra Complex love affairs. But with the men, it was often more complicated and dynamic, the glorious spectacle of two or more difficult blokes travelling through time and space and getting on each other's tits.

Top of the pile has to be Jamie, whose relationship with Who II swung from father-and-son to pissed off married couple to squabbling children, often all in the same scene. Or the Brigadier, whose relationship with the Doc was that of a brother who'd lay his life down for the other and vice versa. Of course it was also the sort of brotherly relationship where they just couldn't fucking stand each other, the frustrated spite of the Doctor and the barely suppressed hurt of the Brig masterfully played out by Pertwee, Baker and Courtney. Or poor put-upon Sergeant Benton, who took all the flak from those angry posh gits with a very British stoicism. The star turn that was Harry Reid. Or the looming Shakespearean Tragedy that was Adric. Going back to the Hartnell days, there was Ian, serving as the angry conscience for what was then an essentially amoral Doctor, and Steven, through which the show began to properly explore the implications and ironies of the Doctor in a way today's angstfests can't even begin to ape.

Even latter day male Who companions are more interesting than the Roses and the Amys. Poor old Mickey, shafted by his woman and overshadowed by a transdimensional prima donna, his reconciliation with the latter coming at the cost of the former who had long since cast him aside. Or Captain Jack, who might have been a poster boy for shagging everything that moves and which can consent, but was still told off and bossed around by the Doctor like a father, for all Jack's romantic overtures. Or Who X's last companion, Wilf, who had the deepest and most intense bonds with the Doc, despite the brief time they spent together.

This brings us neatly onto Rory, whose masculinity is as stiff as lettuce and whose macho credentials are less pronounced than his nursing degree. He's also Amy Pond's great unintended, even forced to dress up as her 'Raggedy Doctor' as the love of his life went ever more loopy. As mentioned in my interview of "The Eleventh Hour", Arthur Darvill brings a real wounded pathos to his poor sod character, right down to the timid, vulnerable body language. And in 'Vampires of Venice', last night's episode, we finally get to see him in action, so to speak.

In this one, the Doc - still reeling after Amy tried to have her wicked way with him on the night before her wedding - decides that only a romantic weekend in 16th Century Venice with Rory will save their marriage before it's even started. Of course, shit magnet that he (or the TARDIS) is, the Doctor beams them in to the middle of an infestation of vampires, or rather, Saturnynians: Blood-drinking fish monsters with mind-camouflage. I'm not making this shit up, you know.

So it's a bit of a shame that this episode was plainly written by Toby 'Being Human' Whithouse for Who X, Rose and Mickey, then dusted off and rewritten for this series. Apart from all the Tennantisms, Amy says and does a lot of Rose Tyler things (i.e., be a brave, gormless arsehole) and Rory is left doing what Mickey would have otherwise done (i.e., mope around a lot and shout at the Doctor.)

Meanwhile, the way Doc XI and Amy Pond jump up and down with joy or look excited whenever something bad happens is actually an old trope from the Doc X/Rose days, where they treated it all like a big laugh despite all the bloodletting. This was how the RTD era tried to justify punishing them for having too good a time (yes, he said this), which is a bit odd when you consider that they came across less as ghouls and more like how the audience itself was feeling. RTD himself seemed to hate the Doctor and delighted in making him miserable, which of course just kept getting in the way of the storytelling.

But when Matt Smith and Karen Gillan do it, the effect is more like two actors trying to play someone else, namely David Tennant and Billy Piper. Or perhaps two happy but delusional mental patients living in a shared dreamworld with Rory the nurse taking them out for a supervised trip to a museum. NOW THAT WOULD HAVE BEEN A PLOT TWIST

Poor old Rory, meanwhile, is reduced to saying Mickey's words, right down to the crybaby denunciation of the Doctor being a threat to everyone he knows, which is a bit like accusing the Fire Brigade of endangering lives every time it leaps into a burning building, or a surgeon being accused of being a potential mass-murderer because he works in a Casualty/ER ward. Isn't it the aliens and assorted baddies who were the killers and threats here, or did that get in the way of all the lazy RTD-era revisionism?

Things do get better as the episode develops though, not least because Whithouse's re-jigged script lets the team dynamic evolve away from its roots. Amy morphs from Who groupie to would-be menage a trois participant, the animus between Rory and the Doc giving way to an understated warmth and a very traditional love-hate relationship. Rory could be another classic male companion in the making here, if it wasn’t for the sinking feeling that they’re going to bugger it up like they always do.

Amy remains awful as usual, annoying and stupid in equal measure, and whereas last episode, you were rooting for the angels, now you're rooting for the vamps, who again fail miserably and let her live. On the other hand, it's not hard to cheer when the Doctor finally gives her a patriarchal bitch-slapping and tells her to fuck off back to the TARDIS. Not that she listens, of course. Oh nooooooo...

The story itself is rather bland. 'Venice', or rather Trogir in Croatia where this episode is filmed, is shot in a lifeless and sterile way, more a film set than a convincing setting, whilst the baddies' fortress is far too well-lit and tidy to bestow any real menace. In the end, it's all so clean and barren that you don't actually care what happens. There is no humanity here, beyond the three leads.

The vampire-fish are a wasted opportunity too. Less Lovecraftian Deep Ones and more crap CGI newts, their menace is badly handled and their human forms seem more like really bad Hammer depictions than the Gothic Horrors they should be. The faintly oedipal relationship between the Saturnynian Queen and her son is bodged too, neither character having much depth. And while the Queen's justifications for her plot to sink Venice below the waves are aimed at giving her a motivation, they only really make her sound like a delusional relativist loon.

Throw in a sub-plot with an expendable Venetian father and his equally expendable daughter (both of whom have even less personality than the Saturnynes), even more plot holes and ideas that are shamelessly and hamfistedly reused from other episodes and you have a bit of a disappointment. It's doubly disappointing coming from Toby Whithouse, who I - as a Being Human obsessive - can honestly say knows how to write when he can be arsed to. (Three words: REAL HUSTLE and HERRICK.)

Perhaps he needs a whole series to play with instead of just one episode? Whithouse does seem to do best when he has lots of episodes to play with, and fittingly it's the ongoing relationship between the Doc, Amy and Rory that's got the most life in it. In that sense it parallels Being Human - both are about two messed up, haunted men and one crazed woman, though Annie the Ghost is more 'needy' and Amy the Scots Racist is more 'hungry', so to speak.

Yet it works for the same reasons, the human drama giving some meaning that the SFX and expensive location doesn't. And who could dare slag off the glorious opening scene, where the Doctor emerges from a cake in place of a diabetic stripper and proceeds to bugger up Rory's stag night beyond all recognition? It's better to think what this episode could have been, then, than what it actually amounted to.

WHOPOINTS 6