What did you think of this episode?
Sonic!
Good!
Bumpy-wumpy!
Exterminate!
Series 5 always ranks highly when people look back, I on the other hand thought it was slightly inconsistent. I mean The Eleventh Hour is peak, but The Beast Below and Victory of the Daleks were underwhelming. Then we have Amy's Choice followed by the Silurian two parter followed by this, the ultimate in peaks and troughs.
This show has a habit of catching you off guard, hitting you with the feels, throwing important issues at you when you aren't thinking. I think people may have been going into this thinking romp, I don't think you'd have expected a look into depression and the like.
"Well I’ve come to accept the only person who’s going to love my paintings is me."
Vincent and the Doctor is often celebrated as one of the most heartfelt and poignant episodes in the show’s history. It was written by Richard Curtis, and a big deal of it was made at the time, I personally didn't hold out much hope for the episode with this news, I am not a fan of films like Four Weddings and Love Actually. I went on a bit of a rant about them in my previous review as it so happens.
Needless to say, I was pleasantly surprised by this episode, and it holds up to this day on a rewatch.
The episode begins with the Doctor (Matt Smith) and Amy Pond (Karen Gillan) noticing an eerie creature in Vincent van Gogh’s painting and off they go to find Vincent . Van Gogh is played brilliantly by Tony Curran, who captures the artists vulnerability, brilliance and struggles with grace.
"I remember watching Michelangelo painting the Sistine Chapel. Wow. What a whinger. I kept saying to him, “Look, if you’re scared of heights, you shouldn’t have taken the job, mate.” And Picasso, what a ghastly old goat."
Matt Smith continues to sparkle, and it is nice to see a bit of vulnerability in Amy as well. In previous episodes she seemed a bit too cocksure - here you can see the pain she has, but doesn't know, after losing Rory, and we also get to see the helplessness she feels in not being able to change Vincent's struggles which ultimately finished with him ending his own life.
We have an invisible alien in the Krafayis, but this plays a back seat and is more of a symbol of the lonliness Vincent feels.
You cannot really talk about this episode without going on about the ending, and yep, it is still a delight! Everything works, the music, Matt Smith's Doctor being Matt Smith's Doctor, the excitement Bill Nighy portrays when explaining why he loves Van Gogh, and of course the reaction of Vincent himself. It is still utterly heartbreaking and brilliant at the same time.
Matt Smith gets to deliver a line that his Doctor will be remembered for and all in all we have a bloody good episode of Doctor Who. Last episode we were under the surface of the Earth with lizard like creatures, next week we get to see the Doctor living the life of an ordinary bloke - God, I love this show!!!
RATING: Sonic!
BEST LINE: "The way I see it, every life is a pile of good things and… bad things. The good things don’t always soften the bad things, but vice versa, the bad things don’t necessarily spoil the good things or make them unimportant. And we definitely added to his pile of good things."
#DoctorWho #VincentAndTheDoctor #MattSmith #Eleven #TheDoctor #KarenGillan #AmyPond #AmeliaPond #RoryWilliams #ArthurDarvill #RoryPond #VincentVanGogh #TonyCurran #MentalHealth #TimeLord #TARDIS #BlueBox #Sonic #RichardCurtis #Geronimo #StevenMoffat
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