It seems that all the fuss before this screened about Doctor Who getting a bit too sexy for kids was rather misplaced (as tabloid-created TV-related complaints generally are). Admittedly there were several young women wandering around in their nighties, but they were never sexy, not unless you have a thing for ugly fake fangs or, as it later turned out, Alien Fish Monsters.

After all the complications in the last episode, it’s quite nice that we were just given a straightforward romp (or at least it is for me, as it makes this week’s episode much easier to write about) and that it offered pretty much what it said on the tin (for the first half of the episode at least). Toby Whithouse was a good choice for a writer on this episode, what with him now being best-known as the creator of supernatural flat-share series Being Human,  and he managed to bring much of the humour from that series, while leaving behind the angst and ‘adult situations’ to a more sci-fi infused look at the vampire legend.

Starting off with a bit of cheeky humour (which to be fair might have been a bit too racy for younger audiences, although it was all still pretty innocent fun), with the Doctor bursting out of a cake at the stag-do of Amy’s fiancé Rory, before he put a dampener on proceedings by announcing that not only had Amy just kissed him, but the stripper that was originally in the cake was unfortunately a diabetic, Vampires of Venice fitted fairly neatly into a pattern of what we’ve seen in earlier series of ‘New Who’, in that following tense dramatic episodes for the companions, the writers tend to have a light-hearted one off, often featuring the reintroduction of the companions’ family or partners as more prominent characters (I’m sure this formula could be applied to Mickey’s appearances in the first series and Martha’s family and Donna’s granddad). Here the Doctor decided to rekindle the romantic spark between Amy and Rory by sending them to some romantic place, Venice in the 1500s (I’m not sure how romantic Venice at that time would have really been, I expect the city would have had an incredibly disgusting odour and a lot of disease). Although, in true Doctor Who tradition, what was meant to be a fun little holiday in fact found them in the middle of yet another thrilling adventure – here based around a sinister school for poor girls in the city, all run by a supposedly benevolent aristocrat, but quite likely to be a front for a group of Vampires (is there a collective noun for Vampires? I was tempted to describe it as a Coven but I think that just applies to Witches).

Of course everything from there ran pretty predictably, Amy was bound to imperil herself by volunteering to go undercover in the organisation, Rory was bound to make a fool of himself but ultimately save the day, the noble background character – in this case Gondolier Guido who had sent his daughter to the school in hope of giving her a better life – would both sacrifice himself nobly, and not have his character developed that much thanks to timing issues, and the Vampires themselves were bound to be revealed to be something else (in this case the aforementioned alien fish monsters). What made the episode worthwhile was its sense of humour – in particular the scenes between the reunited Amy and Rory were a lot of fun – and the interesting details peppered throughout the episode. For example, the crack in Amy’s wall made another reappearance with the Alien Fish Monster Queen explaining that they had left their own planet as they were escaping from the encroaching ‘silence’, and the sci-fi attempts to explain the properties of Vampirism were interesting – the ‘Vampires’ weren’t visible in a mirror as they used an electronic device that altered the brain waves of the people looking at them, which didn’t work when reflected in a mirror, they couldn’t hide their fangs due to the observer’s over-riding survival instincts, and they disliked the sunlight as it dried them out (I’m not sure how this was later adapted into them exploding when exposed to Ultra-violet light, but I suppose every Doctor Who needs at least one spectacular monster death sequence). And I also very much enjoyed Helen McRory’s performance as the Alien Fish Monster Queen, she managed to bring to the part a lot of the creepy unpleasantness from her time in the Harry Potter Films, and of course her performance as Cherie Blair in The Queen.

And that’s pretty much all I have to say about this week’s episode, apart from that the trailer for next week’s episode looks very intriguing, and quite possibly something quite different for Doctor Who (although there does seem to be a slight similarity to Turn Left in there). Anyway, the comments section is there for you to discuss the episode and anything that I might have missed in this review.