A Starry Starry Night …

*Spoilers*

You know, I think — think — I’m quietly impressed with Vincent and The Doctor, tonight’s episode of Dr Who.

Seriously.

It’s …

Well …

Where on earth do I start … ?

Vincent and The Doctor — by Four Weddings and A Funeral and Blackadder writer, Richard Curtis — sees the Dr and Amy seeing something unexpected in Vincent van Gogh’s The Church at Auvers.

Something they don’t expect …

Something that they decide have to travel back in time — to meet Vincent, himself — to ask about …

Something that, as it turns out, only Vincent can see.

•••••

Now, here’s where I’ve got to admit, I’m impressed, tonight.

Well …

Impressed is maybe the wrong word …

Maybe stirred’s the word …

Yes.

In part, because Vincent and The Doctor doesn’t fill part of the series 5 story arc. Sometimes an episode doesn’t have to, I think.

Which was a nice change of pace.

What Richard Curtis has done with Vincent and the Doctor is to come up with an episode that changes the pace of the series, by showing us Amy and the Doctor worrying not about changing the world, not about saving the universe, but simply trying to solve a puzzle.

And offer some help.

And trying to work out what to do about the invisible creature that’s plaguing a person who’s already badly tortured.

Know anything about Vincent Van Gogh … ?

I’ve got to confess, I don’t.

Or much, at any rate.

Beyond the basics that I think everyone’s aware of: that he wasn’t much appreciated, whilst alive, and that he struggled for many years with (still undiagnosed) mental illness.

Was — from the impression I picked up, over the years — the almost archetypal tortured artist.

And here’s where I think I’ve got stirred.

Firstly, simply by being stirred enough to actually want to look up Van Gogh’s work and life on the ’net, while I’ve been writing this post.

And secondly, honest enough to admit that I was very taken with Tony Curran’s work as Vincent, himself.

There’s an old saying that an actor’s only as good as his or her script.

Not a problem with Vincent and The Doctor, I think. Not with a Richard Curtis script, at any rate …

Then you’ve got to factor in direction, set building, what have you …

But there’s times when you’ve got to give an actor credit, and I’ve got to give it to Tony Curran, tonight.

There’s a scene, towards the end of Vincent and The Doctor, where the Dr and Amy take Vincent forward in time, to see his own work — work he feels compelled to do, and yet feels is totally worthless — in Paris.

I think if anyone has given us a lesson, tonight, in how a person that tortured, that suicidal, that anguished, can be given a brief moment of joy …

Then it’s Tony Curran, in Vincent and The Doctor.

That puts Vincent and The Doctor somewhere near the top of the classics of the new series list.