| abstract
| - The Cold Open starts in 1580, with a man named Guido presenting his daughter to be trained at a certain school run by the House of Calvierri, since there's no future for the daughter of a boat builder and the Calvierri house is considered a safehold from plague. She is accepted by Rosanna Calvierri and her son, Francesco, who wear dark clothes and smile a lot and are therefore already suspicious in the eyes of the audience. Guido leaves, assured of his daughter's future, but we're not quite so assured, since as soon as the door closes on her father Francesco displays an impressive pair of teeth in front of Isabella. And as she begins to scream... Extreme fast forward to Rory's stag night. A giant cake is wheeled in, and out bursts not the woman they were expecting, but the Doctor! He then proceeds to tell the assembled guests that Amy tried to kiss him, and tries to reassure Rory by explaining that Rory's very lucky to be engaged to such a great kisser. After one hugely awkward silence ensues, the titles start. The Doctor offers Rory and Amy a wedding gift of a trip in the TARDIS to a romantic getaway, and they end up in Venice... in the year 1580. This should be fun. However, just as they're about to set out and explore, they get stopped. Apparently you need papers to travel around Venice at the moment, because of the fears of plague and such. The Doctor solves the problem with the psychic paper and they enter the city, just in time to see Guido get blocked from talking to Isabella by members of the House Of Calvierri. And the Doctor is on the case! Meanwhile, Amy and Rory have a bit of a bicker, but then decided to bask in the fact that they're in Venice! In 1580! While they're basking, Francesco gets approached by a flower seller. He isn't interested in her wares, but he does want something else... Cue the teeth, and cue the screams. Amy and Rory rush to find Francesco making a meal out of the poor girl, though thankfully he doesn't get the chance to finish as he flees... apparently into the canal. What was that about vampires not being able to cross running water again? Guido causes a ruckus outside the Calvierri house, giving the Doctor a chance to sneak in through a back entrance. He ends up in a cellar, where he gets distracted by a mirror, before realising that there are in fact five girls standing behind him, and none of them have a reflection. Ominous. They, quite understandably, demand to know who he is, only they do it in synchronization. More ominous. The Doctor tries to bluff his way out by using the psychic paper, but accidentally gets his extremely old library card instead. (As in, it's got his first face and his 1960's London address on it.) The girls display some rather impressive teeth - oh, now that's not right - and don't even have the decency to tell him the whole plan, so he decides to get out of there sharpish. Meeting up with Amy, Rory and Guido again, the four try to think of a way to get inside information on the Calvierri. Guido already knows of a tunnel leading under the house; now they just need someone on the inside, and Amy suggests being that someone. The Doctor and Rory are not too happy about this, and then they manage to get into an argument about who'd make a more convincing dad, brother or fiancee for her. Oh, and it turns out that the vampires? They're not actually vampires. They're something worse. In the end, Rory ends up posing as Amy's brother. In Guido's borrowed clothes, meaning Guido is poling a gondola around Venice wearing a shirt with the immortal phrase 'Rory's Stag' on the back (And a picture of the two lovebirds in a heart on the front). The cover story leaves something to be desired, but the Calvierri seem to buy it. A little too well; Francesco is showing decidedly more interest in Amy than she, Rory or the audience would like. In the girls' sleeping rooms Amy comes across a near catatonic Isabella, and learns that the Calvierri are bringing about some sort of change in her that makes the sunlight burn her. And there are some nasty bite marks on her neck... As the Doctor and Rory make their way through the secret tunnel (and have a little bicker about Amy's kissing) Amy goes to the entrance of the tunnel to let them in. This show being what it is, she ends up getting captured instead, and strapped into a chair so that she can be bitten by Rosanna. The process works thus; they drain her of all her blood and then fill her with theirs instead, making her into one of them. What with that and all that lusting over Amy's blood and being so thirsty, they must be vampires, right? The answer turns out to be a surprising no, for Amy kicks some technological item at Rosanna's waist; the image she's sustaining fails and she turns into... a giant fish-shrimp alien. Just then, the Doctor and Rory's arrival creates a distraction, and with Isabella helping to free Amy they all make a break for it, warding off the Calvierri with a portable sunlight as they go. Our trio manage to escape, but poor Isabella gets dragged back inside the house and the Doctor, in trying to save her, gets an electric shock from the door and gets knocked out. Isabella is later forced to jump into an evil bubbling canal, with something living below the water that drags her beneath. Satisfied at a job well done, Rosanna returns to her audience chamber - only to find the Doctor, quite recovered from his shock and sitting on her throne. He identifies her as a Sister of the Water and from Saturnyne. There follows a question and answer session where they both learn things about each other and also answers some of the questions we've had about these not-vampires, such as why they don't show up in mirrors (the perception filter around them means that the brain that's being manipulated doesn't know what to fill the gap with, so leaves it blank). It also emerges that Rosanna and her people have had some encounters with the cracks, through which they saw silence and the end of all things. Can you tell what the running theme is yet? Those of Saturnyne fled to our world through such a crack, which closed behind them and supposedly destroyed their world. Rosanna intends to rebuild her race by any means necessary, and asks the Doctor to join her in her efforts. Unsurprisingly the Doctor says no, and is disgusted not just by the fact that Rosanna had Isabella executed, but that she didn't even know her name. That clinches the deal. But Rosanna isn't content to sit and wait. The final preparations have been made, after all, and so she summons the girls. She has a job for them. Our intrepid four have a brainstorming -- or rather a storming of the Doctor's brain, since he doesn't allow anyone else to chip in. They, so to speak, figure out from Rosanna's cryptic words that Rosanna plans to sink Venice and repopulate it with the girls she's transformed, as wives for her 10,000 male children that even now populate the canals and snack on anyone who displease her. Um, ick. Even the Doctor's grossed out. You know it's bad when the Doctor's grossed out. And the people upstairs are rather noisy, aren't they? What people upst-- Even the Doctor was expecting that. So now our heroes are under attack by buxom fish girls from space. Levitating buxom fish girls from space, since they're on the second floor and all. In order to save the others and avenge Isabella, Guido chooses to blow himself and the fish girls up with barrels of gunpowder he'd kept stored in his chambers. Unaware of the demise of her protegées, Rosanna begins the process that will drown Venice. The Doctor rushes to stop her, after telling Amy and Rory to go back to the TARDIS, because he doesn't want any more deaths today. Guido's sacrifice seems to have touched a nervy nerve that Rory's already rubbed before: "You have no idea how dangerous you make people to themselves when you're around!" As the people panic around them on their way back to the TARDIS, Rory and Amy encounter Francesco, who decides to take the opportunity to fulfill his ambition make a meal out of Amy. Still labouring under the impression that he's a vampire, Rory tries to ward him off with a makeshift cross, which Francesco responds to with no little contempt. Rory's attempts to distract him are unsuccessful until an ill-chosen crack about Francesco's mother, which Francesco does not appreciate; Rory's feeble attempts at defending himself with Broom Fu pale in comparison to Francesco's expert swordsmanship, and Rory looks like he's about to become a Saturnynian feast until Amy distracts Francesco with a hint of sunlight catching her pocket mirror. This has the added bonus of blowing Francesco up. Amy takes the opportunity to critique Rory's technique and to kiss him passionately, and both make tracks to help the Doctor. The Doctor storms into Rosanna's palace, cutting off her gloating by bluntly pointing out that the women she hoped to have mate with her children are dead; her plan has failed. Shocked, Rosanna flees, leaving the Doctor to dismantle the device which is reshaping Venice's environment, creating a storm and earthquakes which will in turn create a tidal wave which will swamp the city. Rory and Amy return; Rory's pledge not to leave the Doctor causes a certain amount of ire in light of his earlier declaration, but there's little time for an argument; the Doctor sets Rory and Amy the task of dismantling Rosanna's throne, which contains the controls for the device, while he climbs the tower and sets to work on the generator as the rain and thunder lash around him. It's a tricky, confusing clockwork device, and it's hard to figure out how to dismantle it -- -- Oh. Hang on a second. Turns out there's a simple switch which, once flicked, switches off the device. The rains stop, the sun comes out, and the Doctor takes in the cheers of Venetians. Distraught and broken, Rosanna walks to the pool containing her children. While in human form, they will not distinguish her from any other human and will devour her, which is clearly what she intends. The Doctor, arriving just as she strips down and walks the plank, tries to persuade her not to jump, arguing that it is possible to live as the last of your species (offering himself as Exhibit A); Rosanna merely reminds him coldly that he now has two extinct species to his name , and jumps in. Her children go "Om nom nom nom". As they head back to the TARDIS, the Doctor (in full Stepford Smiler mode) muses that maybe it's time to head off to Leadworth Registry Office for a certain happy event. Rory, a bit glumly, just suggests dropping him off back where they picked him up, but Amy, clearly wanting to make him feel better, gives him a kiss and suggests that he stays on for just a bit longer. The Doctor has no objection, and Rory -- clearly thrilled -- agrees. Happily, Amy disappears into the TARDIS to put the kettle on -- and in doing so, misses the entire city suddenly fall deathly, unnaturally silent. Rory doesn't appear to notice anything amiss, but the Doctor, recalling Rosanna's words about the silence at the other side of the cracks, is freaked out, and the episode ends with a sinister zoom-in to the TARDIS keyhole as he shuts the door behind him.
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