Doctor Who: Vampires of Venice Review

Aliens wish to take over and it’s not the United Kingdom. For a change.
The second episode not written by series head writer/runner Moffat and it’s nowhere near as bad as Victory of the Darleks since the setting more than makes up for any sort of missteps.
Vampires in Venice!
No, it’s not a love letter to Vampires or Twilight.
Instead it is Doctor Who’s own skewed version of Vampires and it works out pretty well when it’s revealed who the villain(s) of the week are since they move the whole Cracks in the Wall subplot along.
It mixes the historical episodes that Doctor Who has done before like Tooth and Claw with the standard aliens wish to take over. Similar to The Fires of Pompeii the backdrop of Torgir, Croatia proves to be a lovely change of pace from Cardiff.
Parts of the episode even feels like a throw back to the Russell T. Davies Era of “everyone around the doctor dies!” so much so it ups the ante a bit.
The special effects takes a hit but I can ignore that since the ambience is nice.
The addition of Amy’s fiance, not seen since The Eleventh Hour is welcome addition I think. First it puts the kibosh on the whole Amy/Doctor kissing plot from last week and adds a fresh perspective on the running around through time and space. I glad the writers decided to not make him dumb about what been happening. His reading up on things alien so he’s slightly caught up to speed on the weirdness that is outer space.
Overall, good episode. Since I’ve been trying to leave myself out of the spoiler loop looks like it’s a psychological episode next week i.e. the episode of Amy being pregnant that made the rounds a few months ago…