vilakins | Vincent and the Doctor

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Vincent and the Doctor

I've been commenting, but I should actually post as well. I think this one's my favourite so far.

This was a beautiful and strong story about the nature of art, time, and mental illness, and Curran's performance as Vincent was stunning. I loved the bedroom. I want it. At uni I had that picture on my own bedroom wall (plus another of a bridge) and a chair very like his which I called my van Gogh chair. Looking at them made me very happy back then, and this episode did too. They did a lovely job on the cafe too.

However I think the story was flawed by the monster which felt tacked on as if it was the token science fiction bit whereas time travel is SF enough. I think the story would have been even better had the monster been something van Gogh painted to represent the villagers' hostility or his loneliness, and then painted out after he met Amy and the Doctor and found how much his art was appreciated and loved after his death. Its presence weakened a beautiful and strong story that didn't need it.

The monster was inconsistent anyway: at first described as being from a brutal race, then seen as a pitiful blind frightened creature. And I wasn't impressed that it killed a young woman; far too many victims are young women.

I'm not sure how the Doctor could see it in his mirror (though I liked the steampunk look of his device) but I assume van Gogh could see it due to synaesthesia he showed when he talked about hearing the colours. And the colours were wonderful. This is one I'm definitively watching again.

Van Gogh painted lots of sunflowers BTW, and most before he met Amy. :-) But I can forgive that because it was such a lovely scene. The "greatest artist who ever lived" stuff was OTT too (and wrong) but hey, I like his work.

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The "greatest artist who ever lived" stuff was OTT too (and wrong) but hey, I like his work.
I didn't mind that as much as I thought I would - the episode had such a celebratory tone that it fitted nicely. Plus I think the Doctor probably proclaims people "the greatest artist ever!" on a regular basis and means it every time!

And I wasn't impressed that it killed a young woman; far too many victims are young women.
True: that was disappointing. Poor form, show.

Ahaha, yes, he could well do that. He's prone to a little exaggeration.

Very poor form, far too many shows. I don't watch whole series because of that.

I loved the episode too and also felt the monster was tacked on and unnecessary and inconsisent. But even so, it was a marvelous episode and definitely my favorite so far this season. I really would love to see a film now about van Gogh's life, featuring Curran in the role.

I thought that about the sunflowers too. It was a marvelous touch, but they came too close to the end of his life for her sunflowers to be his inspiration to paint them. Still was very neat.

I loved him talking about the sunflowers even though he obviously did like them in RL, and the sky and the stars and swirly wind too. :-) Someone didn't like the sky changing into his starry night because they thought it was insulting to the viewer's intelligence, but I loved it, being so visual--and was indeed expecting it. :-)

And yay, Bill Nighy, even though he was hardly in it.

A biographical film with Curran in it would be wonderful! I heard there was one, possibly a UK TV play, with someone else in the role.

I don't mind the way that they took the starry sky and CGed it, but I do think they didn't need to superimpose the Starry Night painting over it. Just showing the stars glowing and swirling would've been enough. So I understand where (I believe it was)

kindkit was coming from, but also liked part of that too.

I honestly don't know Bill Nighy from anything else, as far as I can tell, so everyone flailing over him has made me chuckle. He was fun, though, definitely.

He's more well known in the UK. Some people thought he'd make a great Doctor, so they enjoyed the bow tie scene. :-) He gives good dry humour.

The weird thing was that he didn't seem to be in the closing credits. I was so puzzled I went back and replayed them, and though it didn't help that they shrank them so they could advertise some other programme I'm sure I couldn't see his name. Which was weird, because he had to be the fourth biggest role in the episode, and it wasn't as if everyone wasn't going to recognise him. I've still got it recorded so maybe I should check them a third time.

I think your suggestion about the monster would have been much better, but they are imprisoned by the idea that one can't do historical episodes without added aliens. Boring, boring. I also thought it was a bit of a shame that Amy's enthusiasm for Van Gogh came out of nowhere; it wasn't that it was improbable as such, but it would have been nice if she'd had a throwaway line about art in an earlier episode (or maybe she did and I didn't notice?) I started wondering whether she'd studied art history, and then couldn't find a job, and that was why she'd had to fall back on kissagramming. Then it would have been nice if she'd had to do some more explaining of Van Gogh to the Doctor, since his knowledge does tend to be personal and he clearly hadn't met the man before.

Perhaps Bill Nighy's name was at the front. I've noticed that if they come after the opening credits, they don't usually get one at the end.

I don't think some of the early classic episodes needed anything but time travel. They put the first Doctor on after the B7 reruns here and I remember the stone age, Aztecs, Romans etc, but without any aliens or monsters. Maybe I'm wrong; it was years ago. I still think time travel is enough though, if you have a good story.

Maybe Amy just liked his work, and had a print of one of the sunflower paintings on her wall.

I'll look at the front when I rewatch it later. Tony Curran got a credit at the end, and I'd have thought Bill Nighy would get the same treatment...

The last straight historical episode was The Highlanders (which introduced Jamie) in December 1966-January 1967, unless you count Black Orchid in 1982 (the two-episode 1920s country house story).

I realised after typing it out that my complaints re Amy were classic B7 ones. Dayna's sudden interest in music, Blake explaining the history of space travel to Jenna rather than vice versa! There's no reason why Amy shouldn't just be a fan (has anyone noticed whether she had any Van Gogh prints in her bedroom? I know there have been detailed analyses of what's on her wall), but it just seemed like a missed opportunity to flesh out her character a little. But maybe that's the point, in that there's supposed to be a mystery about Amy and therefore her personal back-story is deliberately suppressed?

I'm pretty sure I saw his name up front now I think of it, then was surprised his role was so small.

Sorry, I'm not enough of a Doctor Who fan to know what was on her wall or in her house. I only remember the Doctor stuff she made herself. You'd think though that Moffat as chief writer would have specified something like that in an earlier script, but as you say, they could be deliberately keeping her a mystery. Van Gogh is an extremely well known artists though, so it's not unlikely she'd like his work and have some prints.

As for Jenna, I know it's not playing the game, but apparently Sally Knyvette said she couldn't handle the technobabble. Pity, as she said it with some cool conviction. I explain that one away by her having no interest in history, even of space flight. Dayna's music I ignore as I try to forget most of that episode. Maybe she likes the primitive instruments.

Different people tell different stories about Sally and technobabble; I remember one of the male actors (and I've forgotten which) claiming she kept volunteering for it, but always delivered it so slowly that it got reassigned to the men, who could gabble away whether they knew what it meant or not.

Dayna having an interest in music would have been fine if it had ever come up before or after; what was annoying was the sense that someone had to fulfil that role in that episode and she was the only character who didn't have something else to do already. (Come to think of it, Dayna seemed to suffer from this; cf being reassigned Cally's role in Animals.) That's probably why I'm a bit suspicious about Amy suddenly having an enthusiasm which hasn't been mentioned before. I'm also thinking of Shaz suddenly mentioning she had Gypsy roots in Ashes to Ashes; again, no reason why she shouldn't, but it's a one-off attribute for the convenience of a single episode. It's not an issue exclusive to female characters or UK shows, though; I remember

cdybedahl once complaining that Sheridan revealed a convenient-but-never-before-or-after-mentioned interest in something or other for one episode of Babylon 5.

You haven't watched Underworld then?

Of course I have. What are you referring to?

Bill Nighy played the Vampire, Vincent.

Oh, I thought you said Ultraworld, ha. I was wondering what vampire you meant! I've never seen Underworld.

LOL! Now that would be a fun crossover.

I too thought it was an excellent episode. I imagine that they thought that they couldn't get away without having a monster. Sadly, I suspect that they were right.

Yes, the "greatest artist who ever lived" was a bit OTT, but I didn't mind it as I could accept it as being the personal opinion of the individuals who said it.

I don't know what it is about France, but Who stories set there always seem to be outstanding. There was "City of Death" in the Tom Baker era, "Girl in the Fireplace", and now this.

I found the monster scenes the weakest, and I don't think I'm alone.

I could accept the "greatest artist" from Bill Nighy's character, obviously an admirer, but the Doctor thought so too, and he has millennia of artists to choose from.

I haven't seen "City of Death", but I did enjoy "Girl in the Fireplace". OK, this one was earth yet again, but it wasn't London (or Cardiff). :-)

Oh you must - if you find it - see City of Death, it's wonderful, one of the best of the Tom Baker era :)

I confess I didn't like it all that much (but then I'm not a great fan of the Baker era). My recollection is that it was the first time they were allowed to film abroad, and that there seemed to be an awful lot of scenes of the Doctor and Romana just walking along Parisian streets because they could. (I expect there was only one of these scenes really, but when something annoys you it seems to expand.) And there's a cameo from Eleanor Bron and John Cleese which fails to amuse me. (I think the Nighy cameo was very close to the line between amusing and irritating, but just about fell on the right side.)

It was close to being OTT, but then his character was that sort of person. I enjoyed it, but he might have become annoying in a larger role.

[eyes ironic icon]

Completely unnecessary alien stomping all over the plot apart, it was indeed a very beautiful episode. It made me a little teary-eyed, more than once. (Beauty does that to me, far more easily than tragedy.) And to me, those lines about the Good and Bad things in life were, in all their simplicity, probably among the most poignant things that the Doctor's ever said.

Funny, somehow I've never thought about synaesthesia in relation to art before, though it seems an obvious connection to make now. Maybe a lot of the art out there is in fact far more "realistic" (well, to the artist, anyway) than we think... :-)

"The greatest artist who ever lived" seems an impossible concept anyway. How would one even define that, and how decide, with so many different styles and moods and subjects?

A lot of people I know have been moved by the episode and the depiction of van Gogh's illness. I think it was extremely well done.

It could be! I love the colours he used and I could imagine them shouting at him.

I could accept that as being the the art expert's opinion, but not the Doctor's as he has so much history and alien art to choose from. Hell, he probably knows artists who play with nebulae and solar winds. Certainly there's no objective answer to that one. (And I can't even pick a favourite book or film.)

I wasn't impressed by the actual monster itself.
However it was the "hook" that drew the Doctor in to visit.
It also was an important point of the show. It went from classic "monster" (evil, bad, nasty) to a poor blind thing that was abandoned by its fellows. At the end I felt sorry for it, Vincent felt guilty for killing it (in fact one wonders whether that guilt contributed to Vincent's final demise)

Van Gogh painting it was the hook that drew him, and he could have painted an allegorical one. That would have given more time to the interesting parts of the story. The monster dragged it down from the sublime, and bloody hell, why didn't it kill a man? Shame on the writer.

The monster being pitiful didn't make sense. It was abandoned by its fellows because they just don't give a stuff, so why should that individual be any different? It might have felt sorry for itself, but like a psychopath, it wouldn't feel anything outside that.

Whether the monster felt sorry for itself we'll never know. However Vincent did and so did I.

I like your thought that the monster could have been more integral to the psychological story. I did enjoy all the seeing vs. blindness imagery though. I also really liked this episode. I went into it feeling rather bored with Who and not expecting much, and was very pleasantly surprised.

(I find I prefer Amy without Rory. I like Rory as a character--probably more than Amy, but her rather dismissive attitude toward him doesn't show her in the best light. Here she was lovely!)

It was a real change from the usual fare!

Perhaps Amy won't take Rory for granted when he gets him back (as I'm sure she will) though the dream episode should have taught her not to.

Hmmm, yes, thinking further, the monster was a weak part of the episode, and I agree that it was inconsistent to paint it as vicious and brutal and then a "poor thing". Mind you, in one sense, the Doctor wasn't being inconsistent, because his plan had been all along not to kill it, but to stun it, so it makes sense for the Doctor to be saddened at its death. After all, this is the same person who thought those metal stingray things in "Planet of the Dead" were magnificent.

The "greatest artist who ever lived" stuff was OTT too (and wrong) but hey, I like his work.
Agreed, but I took that as the personal opinions of the people who said it. Just like I don't think Dickens was the best novelist who ever wrote, but the Doctor is perfectly within his rights to be a huge fan of Dickens (and of J.K. Rowling for that matter).

I was fortunate enough that, when I was 14, we went on a trip to Europe, and one of the places we visited was the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. It was amazing to see so much of his work laid out in chronological order; the thing that stood out to me the most was his earliest work was all in browns and blacks and ochres, which was the contemporary convention, stuff that he did as an art student etc. The utter contrast with the brightness of his later work - that was what made him so radical and innovative (and completely unappreciated by the people around him). That bit in the episode where he's ranting about colours - that fit so well.

No, I don't think Van Gogh is the greatest artist who ever lived; he isn't even my favourite artist, but I can understand how some people might feel that way.

It sounds though as if those things weren't really open to reason. And he hasn't exactly succeeded in reasoning with aliens lately except for the Silurians.

I was happy to accept that judgement from the art guy who was obviously a fan, but from the Doctor, who has been to so many eras? If he'd said van Gogh was his favourite, I'd certainly go with that.

I've been to that museum too, and I do love his work. The colours are so vibrant and alive, and he paints movement and passion and life so well. Oddly enough, I find a lot of his work hugely cheering.

I'm hopeless at picking favourites, but van Gogh has to be one of mine. I don't like everything he did, but I love a lot of it.

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Vincent and the Doctor

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