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The Doctor and Amy use their magnificent time-traveling device to... Go to a museum across the Channel from Amy's home time/space, although one presumes before her wedding day, and no explanation is given as to why this particular adventure is so banal, or why the brilliant/adorable Bill Nighy is given such a small part to completely rock. Also, everybody in every scene including the Doctor constantly talks about how van Gogh was the greatest artist who ever lived in the history of humanity, which is just sort of weird and annoying, but makes more sense -- higher emotional stakes -- when you think about how this was written by the guy who wrote Love, Actually and Four Weddings & A Funeral and just about every other manipulative brainless thing that fooled you with British accents.
They see something scary in a van Gogh painting, so they head over to Provence in the year before he killed himself to save him from the monster so that he can kill himself. The artist is just wonderful, beyond or including his intense manic-depression, and instantly falls for Amy, because "girls with zero qualities other than bitchiness" is apparently most boys' dating algorithm regardless of century. The monster is invisible, but not really a metaphor for van Gogh's craziness, because his craziness is already an offensive metaphor for his actual craziness. At one point, the villagers in Provence actually throw rocks at him because he's such an outcast. We join him at his cute little house and put up with his bipolar bullshit for awhile, but eventually chase the invisible monster to a church, where van Gogh kills it, like, with an easel.
Then they all realize that the monster, which the Doctor identified as this brutal beast with nothing but viciousness in its heart, was actually blind and just wanted to give them hugs and bake them cookies, so van Gogh cries. Then they all hold hands in the field and hallucinate and bake each other a bunch of cookies and giggle and roll around in the grass and who knows what else, but it's super queer. Then they leave van Gogh so he can kill himself, except at the last second they decide they haven't put him through enough already and so, just to be condescending, they take him to the aforementioned museum thing so he can hear Bill Nighy talk about how amazing he is. (This whole time there is a very loud song playing and a bunch of people weeping, just like in both Bridget Jones's Diary and Bridget Jones's Diary II: Edge Of Reason.) Then Vincent cries, goes home, and kills himself.
Amy sort of takes this as a personal affront, because of futility and mental illness and how Rory died but she still doesn't remember him, and because van Gogh shouldn't have killed himself after meeting her and Bill Nighy, but before she can really get upset about that she sees van Gogh wrote her name into a painting, so then everything's cool.
Yeah, it's up there with "Amy's Choice" as one of the best of the season, and definitely it's one of the most distinct and enjoyable episodes I've seen on this beat, but if you're not in the mood to be relentlessly dicked around and fucked with and tearjerked, I think you should wait to watch it until you're in a better or more forgiving mood, because you could end up having a very negative experience. But if you're in the mood, probably you'll really love it. I know I did.
week: James Corden -- aka (in ascending order) Smithy from Gavin & Stacey, aka Fletch from Lesbian Vampire Killers, aka roommate of wildly hot Dominic "Hop On My Motorcycle Anytime" Cooper -- does something totally adorable, I'm guessing, and there's a lot of low-budget running about, but everything turns out okay in the end. Or maybe -- given the way this season is going -- he suddenly and without warning commits grisly suicide. Either way, though.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!It's a sunny day in Auvers and Something's moving through the corn, but we don't know what it is yet. Vincent sits in his funny French straw hat and paints the crows as they take flight.
2010, Musée d'Orsay, and Bill Nighy the Art History Gighy is explaining in his patrician accent about how the thing with the crows is one of van Gogh's last paintings. "Those final months of his life were probably the most astonishing artistic outpouring in history. It was like Shakespeare knocking off Othello, Macbeth and King Lear over the summer hols." Pause, wait for laughter. The docent reminds us that he did all of this without "hope of praise or reward," because he was an ignored genius in his time. Also crazy, which carries a stigma generally.
Just ask Amy and the Doctor, two individuals who could give Vince a run for his money in the crazy department. The Doctor, we're stipulating and for once we haven't determined this for ourselves, is feeling bad about getting her fiancé vanished from all time and space, so he decided to give her something special, a hop across the Channel in her own time, to see art. I mean, if Amy had any sort of actual personality we could say she was an artist, or at least crafty. "You're being so nice to me. Why are you being so nice to me?" she asks. It's very sad. This business of Amy is very sad.
She says it's suspicious: He's taken her to Arcadia and to the Trojan Gardens, and now this: Home, or something like it, to see beautiful earthly familiar things. I mean, she's never been to the Musee d'Orsay so it's sort of special, but it's not time-and-space special, which is exactly what the Doctor should be doing for her right now. He promises there's nothing to be suspicious about, and his tone is so intense that she realizes they're not joking. But then why he's being so nice to her?
Bill Nighy discusses van Gogh as "possibly the greatest artist of all time," which seems to be the line this episode is taking, which seems like a silly claim to make about anybody, ever, but if you look at this episode as the "Unicorn & The Wasp" of this season I suppose it makes more sense. It's called "Vincent & The Doctor" but only because this is a story by men, for men: It's really a story about Amy, just like Agatha was a story about Donna we didn't know yet. Why are you being so nice to me?
The Doctor is a mad old wizard who takes the sine waves of Vincent's existence and instead of riding them, like we do, or evening them out with drugs, like Vincent could have, does both at once. Two hearts, one for sorrow and one for joy. We've only got the one. Amy's only got one:
Vincent is haunted by realities he can't access, has a mind of untrammeled majesty that nobody else quite understands; his mind is affected by time and space in a way nobody else -- even people with his same problems -- can ever directly access. He is a good man, with a place in his life for love, but with so many integral struts and balances missing inside that only genius and sorrow can really make it up. He's got a hole in himself that he doesn't know the name of.
Some little kids call out about "the doctor," but they're talking about the one who cared for Vincent when he went mad. The Doctor smiles at himself, and Amy drags him to another one, a church in Auvers. They look closer, thrilled -- "You can almost feel his hand... Carving the colors into shapes..." -- but notice a very scary animal in the window of the church. It's a big scary rooster-type animal, apparently also evil. "I know evil when I see it," the Doctor says, "And I see it in that window."
The Doctor flirts Bill Nighy into within an inch of his life, they giggle at each other about their bowties and Bill confirms that the church painting was done "probably somewhere between the first and third of June, 1890." Less than a year before his suicide. So the Doctor drags Amy off to just before Vincent's suicide. To save his life.
At one of those adorable patio'd bistros I'm given to understand are all that really goes on in France, the people are so not into helping them find Vincent, because Vincent is crazy and annoying and a drunk. The Doctor immediately offers to buy drunk poor Vincent a drink, and Vincent is mean to him because of the total gayness of that, but then Amy gets all feisty and yells at everybody and buys a bottle of wine and flirts with Vincent while the Doctor grins at them and thinks about Rory.
Hilariously, they get around the (wonderful) actor's brogue with some really cute TARDIS-translatory joke about how since they're all speaking French, and Amy's Scottish, the assumption is that they're both from Holland, which is how the real Vincent would talk. I like that. Vincent is suspicious of the Doctor, because his brother's always sending him doctors, but they change the subject to how much Amy likes Vincent's art. Which she's never seen. Awkward. Imagine if somebody loved you and you didn't understand why. It would sound like a lie.
They change the subject again to how Amy must not know much of art if she likes his art, because he doesn't believe in himself and that sort of thing. Then they change the subject one last time, to flirting with each other in a very sexy way while the Doctor gets more and more uncomfortable. Finally we talk about the churches and whatever, Vincent's been thinking about painting it, and but then one of the rude bistro lady's daughters gets gored by an invisible rooster creature, which causes the first of this episode's few false notes, which is somehow this situation results in the three of them having to run this gauntlet of mean townspeople from central casting who yell and spit and I don't know, throw rocks. Mental illness, you see, there is a stigma.
While the character and the actor are spot on, there's a negative space around the character that is very show-don't-telly, like, I don't think very many village drunks engage in conversation about how they're the village drunk, okay, but Vincent can't wait to talk about how this is the case, with anybody who will listen. Anyway, Vincent asks where Amy and the Doctor are staying, which the Doctor adorably turns into an invitation, and then we're at Vincent's house.
"Dark night, very starry," the Doctor mugs, which is something they always do on this show to make us feel smart and hilarious, so I'm not going to whine about it. Amy talks a great deal about how much she loves his art, which is scattered all around the place and of which he is not taking very good care. The Doctor also. He thanks them for their kindness but he doesn't really hear it. The Doctor keeps pressing him about the church, but I think he just honestly isn't that interested because he's not there yet. The invisible rooster creature is not a part of that particular moment in his life, it's his life all the time, and he's got a million plans and schemes burning all the time, so why this one thing? (Also, dear This Season: What is it with you and churches?)
Vincent begins ramping up to a serious manic episode at this point. I think if I was a little kid, or I guess if I were a little kid with a very different childhood, I would find this all very funny or deep or something, but honestly it just scared the shit out of me. This is totally the scariest part of the entire episode, not only because mania is automatically upsetting, but also because you know what's going to happen . There's a double-dutch jump, sort of revolving-door moment, in this cycle where you see beauty and hope through the spinning, and then it goes away again.
I think probably hope is the worst part of this particular kind of story. There are readings of the myth of Pandora that say Hope is left not because of the grace of the Gods, but because it's the cruelest thing. The worst of the horrors inside. Without dreams there wouldn't be despair, right? If you didn't have hope, nothing could touch you.
"It seems to me there's so much more to the world than the average eye is allowed to see. I believe, if you look hard, there are more wonders in this universe than you could ever have dreamed of," Vincent rattles, and the Doctor woggles his eyebrows at Amy. Not so cute hours later, with the fires burning down and Vincent tossing his arms and legs around as he whirls across the room, talking faster and higher and louder: "It's color! Color, that holds the key! I can hear the colors! Listen to them. [The Doctor, adorably, attempts to listen to them. The Doctor, unsurprisingly, has a high tolerance for this shit.] Every time I step outside, I feel nature is shouting at me. Come on. Come and get me. Come on. Come on! Capture my mystery!"
The Doctor peels Vincent off himself and decides maybe Vincent needs some chamomile; outside, Amy is attacked by something and goes screaming. The Doctor, very scared, runs out and finds her having been hit from behind by something or another. Just as they're getting her set to rights, Vincent starts fighting something invisible. The Doctor and Amy -- which is odd, because they totally know there's an invisible monster roaming the streets, and they are here to find a giant rooster monster, and they know it's connected to Vincent -- are very social-workery about Vincent's invisible-monster fighting, like, "He's having some kind of fit" and "I'll try to calm him down" are some things they say. Rather than, say, "Guess there's an invisible monster. How intriguing."
The invisible monster smacks the Doctor with its giant tail, and then the Doctor helps Vincent fight the monster, which means generally that the Doctor gets knocked around several times while cutely swinging a stick at nothing in particular. Vincent chases the monster away, and the Doctor continues fighting windmills for a bit, and then back inside Vincent paints over a very famous canvas of some kind -- Amy nearly hurls with horror -- so he can sketch out exactly what an invisible rooster monster looks like. It's quite detailed. The Doctor's like, "Well, hell."
The Doctor heads over to the TARDIS to find some kind of technology, after distracting Amy and Vincent with a variety of cute facial expressions and his particular brand of sexy silliness turned up to about a hundred. The thing invisibly chases him inside and he finally finds the device, which is like an iPad made of bicycle parts that identifies things you put in front of it. Like he sticks out his tongue at it, and it starts throwing up pics of him from One to Two and Three. He shows the device -- "an embarrassing present from a dull Godmother with two heads and bad breath" -- Vincent's sketch, but it doesn't work. "This is the problem with the Impressionists! Not accurate enough."
Outside the TARDIS, heading back through town, the creature looms behind the Doctor, showing up on the mirror-screen, and it identifies the monster for him. Of course he doesn't know it's behind him, because huge invisible roosters are super stealthy, especially when -- spoiler -- they are blind. "You poor thing," he says, "You brutal, murderous, abandoned thing. I hope we meet again soon, so I can take you home." Short chase, of course, immediately follows.
Amy scares the Doctor around a corner, explaining that van Gogh's snoring is driving her crazy. They buy him a courtyard full of sunflowers, to inspire him or something, and feed him breakfast. Vincent on sunflowers, and this is awesome: "It's not that I don't like them. I find them complex. Always somewhere between living and dying. Half-human, as they turn to the sun. A little disgusting. But, you know, they are a challenge." You could build a whole episode around that little speech. Maybe at some point they did. Inside, the Doctor shows him the creature -- "...The eyes, without mercy" Vincent nods -- which is called a Krafayis.
Their deal is that they travel in packs, through space, scavenging. When one gets left behind, they don't come back, because they are a brutal race. There is a stigma. So all around the universe there are these merciless, utterly abandoned Krafayis singletons, who kill and kill until they are killed, which doesn't happen because they are invisible. Which is all quite interesting because that's so one-sided -- like the one-dimensional Silurian assholes -- that you wonder how on earth they're going to make any kind of point at all when they finally meet with it. Well, I'll tell you: They won't. There are so many awesome things about this episode, but one of them is not this. So just forget everything I just told you about the Krafayis, because none of it matters any more than the rules from "Blink" could have helped at the Byzantium.
The Doctor and Amy drag Vincent to the church, applying a little Bill & Ted logic to the situation, all about how since he painted the creature in the window of the church, let's go to the church. The Doctor is one Nervous Nellie today, and for once he'll tell you why: "The result of our trip could be the brutal murder of the greatest artist who ever lived. Half the pictures on the wall of the Musée d'Orsay will disappear. And it will be our fault."
But first, let's check in with Vincent's manic depression. Well, he's buried face-down in the bedclothes, so probably he's in a bad way. And yes, he is. And a very good actor is playing him, which means it's absolutely terrible. The Doctor offers to help, and he assures the Doctor that he cannot. "And when you leave -- and everyone always leaves -- I will be left once more with an empty heart, and no hope." The Doctor tells him there's always hope. "Your experience is incomplete," Vincent says darkly, before he begins to scream. "I know how it will end. And it will not end well."
The Doctor, this Eleven, he's capable of asking himself about things that the Doctor isn't usually capable of asking himself. Like, is this a good idea. He thinks not, and goes to fetch Amy. After all, Vincent asked him to leave. Everyone knows he's a delicate man. Just months from now he'll take his own life." Amy's not even trying to hear that, but the Doctor just says they're leaving van Gogh to take care of it. To get, note the wording, "to the church on time."
Of course, in the time it's taken the Doctor to get even more maudlin than his own self, Vincent has crested another wave, and he's ready to go. On the walk Amy expresses her sympathy for his sadness, but he's mature and self-aware about it in a way people on TV rarely are and people in real life invariably are: "Sometimes these moods torture me for weeks, for months. But I'm good now." Besides, if the tragic Amy Pond can soldier on, how can he not? He means it as flirtation, but since she doesn't know she's crying -- can't feel the tears pouring down her face -- she's just confused. "Oh, Amy. I hear the song of your sadness. You've lost someone, I think." There's a hole in her that she can't name. He understands. The monster you can't look at, brighter than the sun.
The Doctor explains, about the Perseus device that will help him help Vincent with the rooster, but before he can show it off -- "I had an excellent, if smelly, godmother" -- the dead girl's casket is carried by, on the way to the church's graveyard. They stand silently, in respect. Atop the box is a bouquet of sunflowers. He can't take his eyes off them.
Outside the church, Vincent sets up and they discuss the plan, or lack of plan. "It's a Thing. It's like a plan, but with more greatness." He tries to explain depression to Vincent, and the stigma of mental illness, but Vincent's not interested, because he is doing art. The Doctor is chill for about five seconds and then starts babbling about Michelangelo -- "What a whinger! ...If you're scared of heights, you shouldn't have taken the job" -- and Picasso -- "Ghastly old goat. I kept telling him Concentrate, Pablo, it's one eye, either side of the face" -- and they keep shushing him. Needless to say, cuteness award goes to this scene, with Eleven's monumental ADD actually causing your screen to vibrate.
"Is this how time normally passes? Really slowly," he moans. "In the right order." Something, finally, happens, and the Doctor gets ready to head inside, armed with "overconfidence, [the iPerseus], and a small screwdriver. I'm sorted." He orders Amy to stay outside while he's working, Amy promises, she is lying, Vincent loves her because she is so sassy. Vincent keeps painting, and eventually they run into the church to save him from the rooster.
"Right. Okay. Here's the plan. Amy? Rory?" Not Rory. Vincent. Stupid mistake. Behind a door, the Doctor wonders if the creature -- the unstoppably brutal, unthinking, terrible monster -- might not just want a little chat. "I... Know that no one's talked to you for a pretty long stretch, but please, listen. I also don't belong on this planet. I also am alone. If you trust me, I'm sure we can come to some kind of, you know, understanding." Much more running around, and then they are in the room with it. But it's not coming for them, it's feeling with its snout along the wall. It is blind.
The Doctor's embarrassed: "I'm growing old. Why does it attack, but never eat its victims? And why was it abandoned by its pack and left here to die? Why is it feeling its way helplessly around the walls of the room? That explains why it has such perfect hearing!" It attacks some more, and there's much running around, and then Vincent van Gogh -- tortured by something only he could see, hounded mercilessly by it for no reason at all, unlucky Vincent whose special and secret sight confer on him vast responsibilities and even vaster sorrows -- kills that invisible monster with an artist's easel.
Not judging. Just saying.
"He wasn't without mercy at all," Vincent says, suddenly mourning the beast. "He was without sight. I didn't mean that to happen. I only meant to wound it, I never meant to..." The beast speaks, as it dies -- I'm afraid. I'm afraid. -- and Vincent nods, mourning for the monster. "Like humans, who lash out when they're frightened. Like the villagers who scream at me. Like the children who throw stones at me." Everybody suddenly feels sorry for the creature, nobody questions the fact that apparently the iPerseus was incorrect, and the Doctor mourns as well: "Sometimes... Winning is no fun at all."
The three of them lay out, under the starry night, and Vincent reaches for their hands. Somehow, some magical thing tonight, he shows them what he sees: The way he sees the beautiful world: "Look at the sky. It's not dark and black and without character. The black is in fact deep blue. And over there, lighter blue. And blowing through the blueness and the blackness, the wind swirling through the air and then, shining, burning, bursting through... The stars! Can you see how they roar their light? Everywhere we look, the complex magic of nature blazes before our eyes." They see it. They are strong, the three of them, and brave.
morning they say their goodbyes. He tries to give them his famous self-portrait, but of course they do not take it. He calls Amy blessed, and beautiful, and kisses her goodbye. He asks her to marry him, to have "children by the dozen" with him, and she giggles. He throws his arms around the Doctor. "We have fought monsters together, and we have won. On my own, I fear I may not do as well." Hope isn't a blessing. He looks at Amy, and she's a little bit older now. A little bit more of a time traveler, as she begins to wonder if anything can save him.
("It's not that I don't like them. I find them complex. Always somewhere between living and dying. Half-human, as they turn to the sun. A little disgusting.")
On their way to the TARDIS, the Doctor can't stop thinking there's something else, some loving thing that he can do, to mark this place in time. They turn around, as two, as one, and head back to his villa. He takes the TARDIS pretty much in stride -- "How come I'm the crazy one, and you two have stayed sane?" -- and they do a little song and dance for him. Literally, it's brilliant: He shows Vincent one lever, which plays soothing music, and Amy dances about, hopping from foot to foot, as they take him in.
They take him to the mighty Musée d'Orsay. He loves it, every step of every staircase, past Perseus holding Medusa's head aloft: The monster you can't look at, brighter than the sun.
The Doctor comes again to Bill Nighy, just far enough away that Vincent can hear him ask about Vincent. "Big question. But to me, Van Gogh is the finest painter of them all. Certainly the most popular great painter of all time, the most beloved. His command of color the most magnificent. He transformed the pain of his tormented life into ecstatic beauty. Pain is easy to portray, but to use your passion and pain to portray the ecstasy and joy and magnificence of our world... No one had ever done it before. Perhaps no one ever will again. To my mind, that strange, wild man who roamed the fields of Provence was not only the world's greatest artist, but also one of the greatest men who ever lived."
Vincent van Gogh is crying.
Somewhere between living and dying. The Doctor takes him in his arms, apologizing, wiping at the tears. "Vincent, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Is it too much?" He holds onto the artist like they're holding each other up. Vincent throws his arms around the Doctor, squeezing him tightly, smiling brighter than anything. He stumbles to the docent, kissing him soundly, and he thanks the Doctor. He promises to change. He promises things will be better, from now on. The Doctor looked into the box and found the Hope still clinging there. It wasn't cruelty, it was love.
Brighter than suns. "You've turned out to be the first doctor ever actually to make a difference to my life." He asks Amy to marry him, and she just grins. Not really the marrying kind, she says. She never was.
They leave him to his death. And to his life. Amy pulls her Doctor by the hand, promising they've saved him. They must have, he said they did. The invisible monster was slain. He smiled, and wept, and kissed them goodbye. Hundreds of new paintings, she says, dragging the Doctor past Perseus once again. "Oh, the long life of Vincent Van Gogh!"
There are no new paintings. The church, the man, the haystacks. A bit brighter now that they've met him. Held his hands in a field, under the brightest starry night. Watched him weep, brought him back to life. Fought beside him in a war that never ended.
"Every life is a pile of good things and bad things. Hey. 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."
Her heart is breaking, but he holds tight to her. He's talking to Amy; he's talking to Amelia. The church windows are empty, shining in the sun. Nothing evil, nothing torn behind the glass. Off, across the way, a vase of sunflowers calls to her; the warm light touches her face before she gets any closer: "For Amy, From Vincent." A pile of good things.
If they'd married, their children would be the ultimate ginger. Brighter than sunflowers. But she's not the marrying kind.
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