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

Comments

[ms_siobhan]

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.

[strange_complex]

Some people on doctorwho have been complaining that the pacing was 'off', too, although I didn't really get that feeling myself. It seemed pretty smooth to me.

[venta]

I don't read that community (indeed, I'm not really much one for reading analysis and debating plots - yours are usually the only write-ups I read), but...

Most of the time this season I've felt that the endings have happened all in a rush without quite enough explanation. Obviously you want a sense of momentum and climax, but when people are even speaking fast to the extent that I can't quite understand them, I'm not sure that's ideal.

Dunno if that's what the pacing complaints were about, but that'd be my complaint :)

[strange_complex]

Yes, that makes a lot of sense, actually. I tend not to pay that much attention to how plots are finished off, thinking of it as a necessary coda to the tensions and developments of the story itself, so that I don't always notice if the resolution is actually a bit crap. But, looking back, you're probably right about them tending to be a bit rushed this season.

[huskyteer]

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.

[strange_complex]

I think the problem for me is that portraying black characters as Noble and Self-Sacrificing carries inevitable echoes of Boys' Own-ish stories featuring native trackers who lead white explorers to safety. Things like Walkabout, where the Aboriginal boy saves the two white children from dying in the desert, but then dies himself. Too much of it makes it look an awful lot like this is being conceived of as the only really important function of characters of colour, who don't seem to get much personal characterisation of their own. I could be wrong, but I don't remember Isabella's father getting much chance to respond to or show grief about her death - which would have made him much more real as a character, and added plausibility to his decision to blow himself up if that still had to happen

[vectorious]

Except that in both this story and the last one all speaking characters bar the "core" died - sacrificing themselves so that the stars might live. Indeed it was much more explicit last time - this time the daughter who died expected to save herself as well and needed help, and the father was not saving the core, but rather revenging himself on his daughter's killers. I would say that you cannot call this trope here, as the soldiers in the previous one more explicitly were putting themselves on the line for the stars, whereas here it was an unexpected moment(the aversion to sunlight) and a deliberate choice for revenge.

I would say on the contrary that this is progress as being killed so that the Doctor can live is now an equal opportunities death trap.

[strange_complex]

I do take your point about a lot of people of all kinds dying to save the core characters in this season. But I also think the script-writers have more control than you're implying over how and why characters are killed off

[poliphilo]

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.

[swisstone]

I think this is on the mark. The roles were not written as specifically black, but when casting took place, black actors were cast, because the casting director was being colourblind. This sounds very noble, and in a way it is. The problem is, if you act entriely colourblind, you are blind to the way your own prejudices form your opinions, and as a result, end up consistently casting blacks as victims. Which can make you part of the problem, when you were trying to be part of the solution.

[xipuloxx]

Exactly this is exactly what I was exactly going to say exactly! :)

(Or: IAWTC!)

I'd say that's been the problem with the casting of non-white people in DW for some time, actually (e.g. the Hostess in Midnight; I suspect that was a case of the casting director's unconscious prejudices informing their decisions rather than a character being specified as black in the script).

[strange_complex]

I understand your point, but I also have problems with colour-blind casting. It acts as though the experiences of ethnic minorities are exactly the same as those of white westerners, but that isn't true today, and was still less true in 16th-century Venice. I understand that it is an ideal that one day casting really can be colour-blind, at least in drama set in the present day, because skin colour genuinely is no longer an issue. But at the moment, casting characters as black without acknowledging that that makes a fundamental difference to how they experience the world around them, and especially how white characters are likely to perceive and treat them, seems to me to be in itself dismissive of non-white people's experiences.

[rhube]

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.

[strange_complex]

There's definitely more we need to know about Rory, although I don't think I'm convinced he is an alien! And yes, this story could have benefited from a bit more screen-time to really work out the full implications of what was going on. Still, not a bad story for the time it had available.

[weepingcross]

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.

[strange_complex]

Yes, fun is definitely firmly on the table again. Some people on doctorwho have even been saying that the Eleventh Doctor is reminding them strongly of the Fourth. Mind you, the same was true of the Tenth sometimes, too - but I think it feels less forced with the Eleventh.