"I'm kind of done with running down corridors." "What do you think, Rory?" "How about somewhere romantic?" "Venezia!" "This week, Confidential packs its bags and goes abroad." "The best place you could possibly go for a romantic weekend would be Venice." "And gets to meet up with a Venetian count." " Looking for vampires in Venice?" " Vampires in Venice." "What was that?" "It's Venice, but not as you know it." "Well, I think it's alliteration, really." "Vampires!" "In fact, a few things aren't what they seem to be." "They find out that they're not actually vampires." "They're something else." "What they are, actually, there is..." "You know, fish from space." "Okay, move!" "What is going on?" "And... action." "Andare the Doctor Who team really in Venice?" "Confidential finds out." "Turnover on B cameras, please." "70, take two, A camera, mark." " That's right, action." " And action." "The Tardis touches down, and the Doctor sort of bounds out and starts describing La Serenissima," " you know, this impossible mad city." " Venice!" "Venezia!" "La Serenissima." "And it really felt like stepping back in time, stepping out of the Tardis into that." "One of the most powerful cities in the world." "Constantly being invaded." "And I think there's a real sense of vibrancy and colour to that scene." "Ah, you've got to love Venice." "And so many people did." "It sets the romp off, as it were." "Byron, Napoleon, Casanova." "Stop there." "Reset, please." "It's the perfect start to a Venetian romp." "But it's shot hundreds of miles across the sea... in Croatia." "We thought from the very beginning we would like a foreign shoot, we'd like somewhere exotic and different to really sort of mix it up a bit." "The trouble with real Venice is that you'd have to spend an awful lot of time covering up the pizza parlours and the shops and all that." "Doubling up as Venice was a small town on the Mediterranean coast called Trogir." "And it looks so beautiful, like Venice." "The Venetians colonised there, so it's a great double." "It has the look, but when it comes to standing in for Venice, size is everything." "We needed, with our kind of trickier skylines, to have some proper Venetian buildings sitting there on the horizon." "So a small crew, including Dave Houghton from the Mill, went over to Venice to get some of our wide shots." "At the moment, I'm looking for angles for our big opening wide of Venice." "So we're trying to match a plate that we've already filmed in Croatia." "What we didn't have in Trogir were some of these painted buildings that go directly into the water, that have no kind of walkway." "So, this side, that will all go, be turned into Venice, and anything this side... of this umbrella will also disappear." "And we'll have gondolas in the foreground and some piles." "Stop there." "Reset, please." "To become the perfect vision of Venice," "Trogirjust needed to be time-travelled back to the 16th century." "It looked really, really amazing." "There was hundreds of extras and loads of chickens running around." "Chickens and goats and a guy selling eels." "And all sorts of props everywhere." "And all the local people were in as people in the market." "Let's see who we'll be getting before Matt turns up." "We were sitting having a coffee on one of the recces and this old lady walked past with a goat," "and I said, "Right, book her." "And the goat. "" " Start from the..." " Hello, hello, hello." "On half of that." "Bless her." "She was from a local village about 10 miles out of Trogir, and she had a wonderful goat, but she didn't have a clue what I was saying." "And then..." "Watch me." "Through here." "Bless her, I was asking her to do things, and saying, "Watch me, watch me. "" "But she kept following me and I'm going, "No, no, stay there, stay there. "" "Just watch, there." "And unfortunately, her little route kept changing, because as the camera shot was changing, that was changing, so we were getting..." "We were getting confused, so she was getting even more confused." "Up there, through there... around..." "We had a very close relationship by the time we finished that shot." "Seventy, take 3, A and B camera both." "And background action!" "And action." "Venice!" "Venezia!" "La Serenissima!" "Confidential took the chance to visit modern-day Venice, to check out the actual events behind thedoctor Who story, particularly the great plague of the 16th century." "So writer Toby Whithouse went to meet a man whose ancestors lived through it all." "Architect, historian and TV personality" "Francesco Da Mosto." " Hello, Toby, how are you?" " Francesco." "Lovely to meet you." " Looking for vampires in Venice?" " Vampires in Venice." "What else?" "Francesco tells me of a Venetian vampire story." "But that's for later." "First, I get a tour of the Da Mosto mansion." "How old is the actual building itself?" "It's from the end of the 15th century, 16th century." " Uh-huh." " Yeah." "The period of your plague." "Around about the time of the plague." "Absolutely perfect." "It's beautiful." "This amazing building has been in the Da Mosto family for over a century." "Oh, my goodness, look at this." "Here I learned to ride a bicycle." "It's a..." "It's a perfect space." " Look at this." " This is incredible." "Yeah, nice shape." " And your Doctor Who..." " Yes." "...during the plague, he was a doctor of plague?" " Or something..." " No, no, no, no." "Our Doctor is not a medical doctor." "He's a time traveller." "But my episode is... is set just after the outbreak of the plague in the late 16th century." "And a race of aliens have arrived in the city and are using the fear of the return of the plague as an excuse to close down the city." "Francesco had something for me which was an absolute goldmine." "A collection of documents relating to the period in which I set my episode." "Yeah, it was quite terrible, and here I found also a lot of the people of my family, like this one," " they died of plague." " Mmm-hmm." "And as you see, "death by plague"." "We say peste." "Obviously, the Venice of today looks very different to the Venice of 1580." " Too many new shops." " Too many new shops." "So we filmed in Trogir, in Croatia." "There is quite a funny coincidence that during the period of the plague, there was one of my family, that he was count in Trogir, that is our Trau." "And it's quite interesting, because this guy called Francesco Da Mosto, like me." "Can you imagine?" "There was always a person of noble family of Venice" " controlling the different town..." " Oh, really?" " Right, all the little principalities." " And just in that moment of the plague that was in Venice, he was count in Trogir." "In Trogir, where we filmed the episode." "Yeah, strange, I found out yesterday." " You found out yesterday?" " Quite strange." "Yeah." "Yeah, because I never look over things." "That was quite funny." "Trogir town square." "The cast and crew are preparing to meet a bunch of bloodsuckers." "Oh, the look of the vampire girls." "Where do I begin?" "It brightened up our day." "The crew, I tell you what," "I've never, ever seen them so occupied and satisfied and work-hungry." "Everyone was happy." "The composer was joking with me, saying, "I bet there was only one vampire girl in the script. "" "And by the time we'd got to the shoot there were like12 vampire girls." "They looked like '80s glam rock stars, I think." "Mad, sort of bonkers hair." "There's something sort of weird and gothic and brilliant about them." "I think they're going to be a real hit, the vampire girls." "Come back." "You're always welcome." "How are you doing that?" "I'm thrilled." "Oh, this is crazy." "Doctor!" "Run, Pond!" "Keep running." "Go, go, go." "We are Venetians!" "I've invited a friend to come and join me in Venice." " Matt." " Toby!" " Hello, mate, how are you?" " Hello!" " Welcome to Venice." " Thank you." "Come and meet my new friend." "Do you get seasick, by the way?" " Uh..." "No." " Good." "Matt, this is Francesco." "Francesco, this is Matt." " How do you do?" " Nice to meet you." "Pleasure to meet you, sir." "Oh, we're going to come along on your boat, aren't we?" " Yeah, hope we survive." " Well, thank you for having us." " Oh." "There we are." " Oh, thank you." "Marvellous." "Grazie." "Let's go." "Venezia!" "La Serenissima." "It's so nice when it's sunny." "We're in luck." "With Matt on board, Francesco gave us his Venetian vampire story, a tale that came to light when archaeologists found the remains of a plague victim whose burial bore all the hallmarks of something even darker." "They found a skull of a woman that had a brick inside the mouth." "Because they said when they died, there was happening that also when they were dead, that they found blood coming out, and the veil a little eaten." " Right." " So..." "The blood comes out as a result of the plague." " Yeah, but after the death." " Yeah, yeah." "So, that was strange." "So they were thinking that this body, this person, could pass this thing to others." "And then the plague was going around more." "And so they were putting this brick so she could not move the mouth." "Strange." "Tales of deadly creatures sucking the blood of the living." "It looks like I was closer to the truth than I suspected." "Perhaps there really were vampires in Venice."