Following on from events in the last episode (how did I manage to not mention that hysterical and important scene when talking about that two-parter?), the action picks up at Rory’s stag do, where a giant cake is wheeled in, and out pops…the Doctor.

Its a great scene.  Well played for laughs, as the Doctor, bumbling through social interaction in a way his 10th incarnation never would have, decides that he’s going to try and fix Amy and Rory’s relationship, following her pouncing on him.  The Doctor’s confused reactions after telling Rory that she’d kissed him and that he should be happy because she’s a good kisser were brilliant, and helped underline that this incarnation seems more of a return to the “classic” Doctors.  I certainly could not have seen Tennant’s Doctor doing this.

And so they’re whisked off to Venice, where they quickly find the city in lockdown, and under the thumb of the House of Calvierri which holds an academy full of beautiful girls who have an aversion to sunlight and long pointy teeth.

But there’s a twist here.  Of course, long-term fans will know that vampires are longtime enemies of the Time Lords, with the Doctor himself killing the last great Vampire back in State of Decay.  However these aren’t actual Vampires.  Instead they’re a race of fish, hiding in human form thanks to perception filters, having had to escape their homeworld as the crack appeared on it, bringing the Silence.

This is us presumably seeing a shift from just the crack having focus, to the idea of a menace beyond it.  The Silence did get name checked in the first episode, but here its given the attention.  Was the Silence what was rewriting time and causing the Angels and Clerics to be erased from history?  I guess the suggestion is that its not the crack itself that was doing that, since various people, Prisoner Zero and the Saturnynians here, have been able to use the crack to move from one space and time to another.  I quite like this shift in focus though, as it progresses the arc along slightly, but its still not a major thing that might confuse casual viewers.  Its a subtle shift, but it prevents the arc plot from getting stale.

The episode itself was a bit of a mixed bag.  Still enjoyable, but it undoubtedly suffered from following on from the awesome Angels 2-parter.  It wasn’t helped by the ropey effects of the Doctor climbing the roof at the end (a resolution that brought to mind Evolution of the Daleks from three years ago), and the strangeness of the perception filter.  If the Countess is hiding her true form with one, how can she take off her clothes at the end?  And would the other Saturnynians in the water really not recognise her and eat her because of it?  Minor nitpicks I grant you, but they did jump out.

Most interestingly, aside from the arc plot, we see a smaller subplot stretching out across several episodes.  Amy’s run off from her wedding day, and jumped the Doctor, and so he’s trying to fix their relationship.  Its a nice little mini-arc, and its good to see their relationship being directly addressed, whereas Rose just took off and dumped Mickey, leaving him to be suspected of killing her for a year, and then leaving him hanging on even after that.  I was never much of a fan of Rose for that reason (although that selfish aspect of her character was obviously deliberate), so its good to see Amy’s relationship being directly addressed early on.

Following on from the Angels episodes was always going to be tricky, and I think this episode did a good job.  While it didn’t feel as solid as the Toby Whithouse’s previous episode (School Reunion) it was still an enjoyable episode with some great gags.  The Hammer Horror nod with the girls at the school was nicely done, and the location was nice and atmospheric.