Episode 08: Vincent and The Doctor

Vincent and The Doctor is discussed and Martyn reviews the Big Finish audio ‘The Boy That Time Forgot’.

Vincent and the Doctor” is the tenth episode of the fifth series of British science fiction television series Doctor Who, first broadcast on BBC One on 5 June 2010. It was written by Richard Curtis and directed by Jonny Campbell and featured an uncredited guest appearance from actor Bill Nighy.

Intrigued by an ominous figure in Vincent van Gogh’s painting The Church at Auvers, alien time traveller the Doctor (Matt Smith) and his companion Amy Pond (Karen Gillan) go back in time to meet Van Gogh (Tony Curran) and discover that Auvers-sur-Oise has been plagued by an invisible creature, known as the Krafayis, which only Van Gogh can see. The Doctor and Amy work with Van Gogh to defeat the Krafayis, but in their attempt to have Van Gogh realise his legacy through bringing him to the future they ultimately realise that not all of the time can be rewritten and there are some evils which are out of the Doctor’s reach.

Curtis, inspired by the fact that Van Gogh never knew he would be famous, had the idea for an episode centred on him. He left the script open to criticism from the crew and made many revisions as a result. Curtis wanted to portray Van Gogh truthfully, rather than being cruel by writing jokes about his mental illness. Most of the episode was filmed in Trogir, Croatia, and many of the sets were modelled after Van Gogh paintings. The episode was watched by 6.76 million viewers on BBC One and BBC HD. Reception to the episode was mainly positive. While the amount of emotion in the episode was debated, many reviewers praised Curran’s performance as Van Gogh, but that the Krafayis was not a sufficiently threatening “monster”.

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