Smith Rewatch: Vincent and the Doctor

The previous two episodes were an update of the a classic story, while this one is a new story but one that follows an established template. Pick a famous figure from history, cast an interesting actor to play them, add some alien/time-traveller/quasi-supernatural complication and have The Doctor solve it while the companion gets excited about meeting a figure from history. You can sketch one of these out mad-libs style: The Doctor meets (roll dice) Benjamin Franklin played by (roll dice) Stephen Fry who has to deal with a (roll dice) alien meme virus carried by electricity. Roll the dice again and you’d get Rowan Atkinson playing Napoleon.

Let’s make it potentially worse by adding in a writer against which Moffat’s attraction to twee Britishisms and romcoms looks positively restrained. Richard Curtis getting to write floppy haired Matt Smith as a surrogate Hugh Grant sounds like a recipe for disaster.

And yet, this is one of the most beloved episodes of Doctor Who — perhaps more with its general normy audience rather than die-hard Who fans but still one that is often pointed at. I think I went into this episode feeling cynical, I’ll concede the ending touched me but it felt messy to me at the time. On rewatch? I’ll confess that I started tearing up much earlier than the plot demanded. It is very sentimental but a good rule for Who is to always go a little bit extra with whatever direction the story is heading.

This episode gets so many things right. Some obvious ones to me even at the time were how gorgeous it looked. Shot on location it is full of warm colours. Secondly, Tony Curran is extraordinarily well-cast. He looks exactly like van Gogh’s own self-portraits, he communicates the sense of a troubled genius beautifully and nothing about him comes across as hagiographic (that aspect is saved for others).

The monster of the week plot is thin stuff but that’s fine as the episode has plenty of other stuff to do. Karen Gillan not only has to play up Amy’s excitement about meeting van Gogh but also communicate that she is in deep grief about events she cannot remember. That she bonds with Vincent over a deep hidden trauma that she can’t make sense of is really quite powerful.

No, it isn’t a great depiction of mental illness but there is an overwhelming sense of caring for the characters.

The episode then just hammers the viewers emotionally. The scene with Bill Nighy in the Musée d’Orsay unwittingly explaining why van Gogh became one of the most critically and popularly acclaimed painters to an audience that includes van Gogh himself is magical. Amy believing that by doing so she will have “saved” Vincent only to discover that he still killed himself makes the tragedy of his death hit home. That this all ties right back into the theme of grief and Rory’s absence? It really is all very well done.

The Nighy section also enables the more didactic and hagiographic summation of van Gogh to be delivered by somebody other than The Doctor. It isn’t that The Doctor is uninterested in van Gogh as an artist but the seperation reduces that cliche of The Doctor gushing about how amazing historical-character-of-the-week is.

Art and grief are not typical Doctor Who themes but somehow this episode works well with them.