*Spoilers for “Flesh and Stone”*
This episode is a mixed bag for me. I always enjoy when Who puts a sci-fi spin on classic horror characters, and the late Helen McCrory’s guest appearance is worth the price of admission on its own, but anytime Moffat toys with the idea of a Doctor-Amy-Rory love triangle, it tends to get awkward, and this episode is no exception.
After her terrifying near-death experience with the Weeping Angels in the previous episode, Amy decided to seize the day by doing her darndest to jump the Eleventh Doctor’s bones. He was not on board with that, for all kinds of reasons, including the fact that Amy had just admitted to him that she’s getting married in the morning. The Doctor decides the best way to deal with this is to pick up Rory and take him and Amy both on a “wedding present” trip, so they can share in the adventure together. The TARDIS brings them to 16th century Venice, where a mysterious aristocrat named Rosanna runs a school for a select group of girls. The Doctor, Amy, and Rory are enlisted to help a man who worries for his daughter’s safety after she was accepted to the school.
The episode’s take on vampires is a lot of fun. I enjoy the alien explanations it gives for the various bits of vampire mythology: the fangs, the aversion to sunlight, not appearing in mirrors. Also, I adore the Doctor and Amy’s giddy excitement to be facing off against vampires, while Rory is standing here going, “Okay, but dangerous, though?!?” And Rosanna is simply a splendid baddie—intelligent, otherworldly, and elegant. Helen McCrory gives excellent vampire in the role, and I love the scene where she and the Doctor get a measure of one another. My first time watching series 5, I remember being struck by how Matt Smith really made you feel the weight of the Doctor’s years in their interactions.
There’s all kinds of other good stuff here too. I get a kick out of the Doctor crashing Rory’s stag night—in the most Doctor way possible—to take Rory away in the TARDIS. I’m tickled by the Doctor accidentally flashing his library card (with One’s picture on it!) to the vampires. And Rory has a terrific speech where he lays out why he thinks the Doctor is so dangerous. “It's not that you make people take risks, it's that you make them want to impress you,” he says. “You make it so they don't want to let you down.”
However, the climax is pretty goofy, and while the show is capable of doing the Doctor-Amy-Rory stuff well, they can also belabor it way too much. This is from the end of “Flesh and Stone,” but it’s never clear why a near-death experience makes Amy so determined to cheat on her fiancee the night before her wedding. The Doctor is firmly of the opinion that he doesn’t want anything to do with any love triangle business—when Amy inevitably suggests she infiltrates Rosanna’s school, the Doctor suggests he come along and pose as her father, with Amy reminding him, “You look about nine.” But unfortunately, Rory just can’t seem to get that part. To be fair, it’s the night before his wedding and he found out his fiancee was kissing her childhood “imaginary friend,” but by and large, he’s the one making it into a competition with the Doctor, who’s not trying to do any of that. Rory gets squirrelly at the thought of Amy and the Doctor fighting alien vampires together, and there’s a dick-measuring metaphor using flashlights. And personally, I don’t like having dick-measuring metaphors in Doctor Who.
So boo for that. Still, it’s a pretty enjoyable episode overall, and while the aggravating elements bring it down for me, they’re not enough to spoil it.
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