The Vampires of Venice

[torkell]

"You have no idea how dangerous you make people to themselves when you're around!"

The quote above is from the lecture Roy gives the Doctor, just after Guido has blown himself (and a bunch of invading vampire fish aliens) to smithereens. It's got echoes of Davros' speech from Journey's End, where he points out how the Doctor's companions don't return to a normal life, but continue fighting. Amusingly inverted a short while later when Roy refuses to leave the Doctor.

One thing that bugs me - the perception filter. Amy damages it, which causes it to occasionally fail. But why would that prevent her turning the filter off? And why does she even need to turn it off? It's a perception filter, not an actual shape-changer like the Slitheen suits. The in-universe explanation for perception filters is that they're not invisibility cloaks, they're not shape-shifters, they just make you not get noticed. They don't work on alert people who are expecting to see the real thing, and they don't work if the cloaked person tries to get noticed. So surely, the fish-aliens would see the real Rosanna and not eat her?

I don't recall seeing a crack in this episode, but the silence at the end cannot be a good sign. Didn't Rosanna say something about running away from the silence?

Comments

[dragons-way.livejournal.com]

Yea that really bugged me about the perception filter as well, as usually damaging something does not leave it on as was shown it was flickering off and besides can't you just take it off (which she did do)?

Another thing that bugged me was the whole Amy infiltration thing, there was no real justifiable reason for her to do it. I know it was to open the trap door to let them in, but it wasn't locked and they could have just opened the lock through the grates, or used the sonic screwdriver.

I thought there was a crack at the end but rewatching it I might have been mistaken (though it was in the keyhole of the tardis. But the entire episode was to do with the crack in a way as that's how the aliens got there.

I thought it was an ok episode but those two things did break my immersion quite a bit which spoilt it. I realise that it needed to happen that way but they could have done a better job in explaining it or come up with a better reason then what they gave, it just felt a bit like bad writing not up to the usual standard. So far I feel this series is slightly hit and miss, there have been good episodes and great episodes though the actors have been great. Still not too sure of what to make of the new Power Ranger Darleks.

[torkell]

...you're right, why didn't the Doctor just sonic it open? Unless of course it was "deadlock sealed", which feels a bit overused as a anti-deus ex machina.

Power Ranger Daleks - not heard that one before, but it does make sense. The descriptions I've seen have generally been "Ikea Daleks". Apparently part of why they redesigned the Daleks was to make them physically taller - the original Daleks were designed so that the eye stalk lined up with Rose. Amy is taller, so they had to make them bigger to avoid having them looking up at her.