The Vampires of Venice, aside from being a very fun story with some excellent location filming, introduces one of my favourite companions in the series in the form of Rory. Rory, Amy's fiancé (and later husband) is a very interesting character to have as a companion because of how he refuses to fit the traditional companion mould.
Normal companions for Doctor Who all generally follow the trend of going off and adventuring with the Doctor, having a lot of fun along the way. Rory bucks this trend by seeing that this entire lifestyle is actually incredibly dangerous. He spends much of this episode running around and being slightly nervous and afraid of what is happening because the entire process of travelling with the Doctor is not a safe experience, and sometimes we need to be reminded of that fact. But more than that, what Rory does with these feelings is channel them at the Doctor. In one of the story's best scenes, he openly says that the Doctor is dangerous because he makes people want to impress him, rather than because they want to go head-first into danger. It's a strong character beat for Rory, and marks the point where he goes from being just a comic relief love interest for Amy to an interesting character in his own right. He sees the Doctor for what he represents, and he's not afraid to tell the Doctor this fact.
And whilst the character obviously moves on in terms of his original characterisation - it would be fairly annoying if we had a companion travelling on the TARDIS who didn't enjoy the process of adventuring at all - Rory still keeps that wariness and that ability to speak his mind to the Doctor. And that forms part of what will be some of the best stories yet to come in the Eleventh Doctor's tenure. But that's all in the future, and we've still got work to do!
No comments:
Post a Comment