Vincent A-Go Go ; Doctor Who Chat

Vincent Van Go-Go ; Doctor Who Chat

Yesterdays Doctor Who episode was... in a word, amazing. And no, I'm not just saying this because Vincent Van Gogh has a firm place as my favorite impressionist. Considering the last two parter was beyond boring, it was a welcome change. To their credit, it was still not as bad as most of RTD's lame two parters.

Speaking of the devil. If this had been an RTD episode, Rose would have probably kept asking about Vincent's ear and then it would get cut off by the monster and they'd make up a prostitute story about it because Timey-Wimey and all that bullshit. Can you tell that I don't miss ol' Rusty one bit? I applaud Moffat and Curtis for not even mentioning it at all.

I suppose we should get the big question out of the way.. Why the fuck where they saying his name like that? We should turn to the experts on how you exactly say Van Gogh



Now that we got that out of the way, what was up with the BBC running an ad at the end suggesting that if the episode was too much for you, you should call their counseling hot lines? What do you mean 'If I've been effected by this episode, call your BBC counseling help line'? To me, I guess I took the meaning to be a little different;

If any of you have been stalked by invisible alien reptiles, please call the BBC for counselling.

Though somehow I think calling a mental illness helpline and mentioning something like this may only expedite your inevitable sectioning. Why else would you need counsel? Oooh, I know.

If any of you are ginger, please call the BBC for counseling.

No wait. I like gingers. Red heads are my favorite kind of women. Then what could the helpline be open and waiting for calls from?

If you've been kissed by a man with a scraggly beard and it hurt, our operators are standing by to take your call.

In short, it made me laugh really loud the moment the commentator talked about it. I guess it was a good way to 'end' a sad-ish episode, with a laugh.

I'm still curious about one thing.. did I miss the part where it's explained why only Van Gogh could see the monster? I assumed it was because "he saw the world differently than everyone else" or something, but maybe I missed the real explanation. Oh yes, that's right - Low CGI budget.



Then again, there's a theory that Vincent Van Gogh had a form of synesthesia, which caused him to perceive sounds and colors as basically the same thing. In the episode, Vincent even makes mention of it himself when he's talking about the sounds of colors early in the episode. I kept expecting this was going to come up as the explanation in some round-about way, letting him see a creature that could only be heard. But again, it never actually came up. So either I was completely wrong or they decided not to be heavy handed about the explanation.

I mean, it was really clever that they made the monster invisible. At least from a production standpoint. Less budget spent on CGI, less time the audience has to think about how fake it may look, and an additional element of terror besides the initial savings from production cost. The episode wasn't really about the monster any way. Which is one of the reason why I liked it, because it almost seemed like we were heading for another misunderstood creature episode and we just had the Silurians in the boring ass two parter last week.

Then my favorite part was when the Doctor had to wait around for the monster.

"Is this how time passes for everyone else? Really slowly? In the right order?"

I loved how disgusted he sounded at the idea of doing things in the right order as well. This isn't new to Doctor Who. The second doctor also kept mentioning life as a time traveler;

"Think about me when you're living your life one day after another, all in a neat pattern. Think about the homeless traveller in his old police box, his days like crazy paving..."

Okay, so maybe Matt Smith isn't quite so eloquent about it, but the gravitas is still there. Not to mention meeting Gogh. That was some classy stuff. I'm actually not annoyed that they visited a historic character unlike how they handled it in the past. At the very least, this was one of the warranted jerk offs who deserve the praise, like Shakespeare.

I'm no English major and I didn't really focus all that much on English lit, but enthusiasm for Dickens and Agatha Christie in past Doctor Who was extremely comical... and sad. I have to say, I always thought the Doctor meeting Shakespeare should've gone a little more like this;


I leave you with yet another reason why this Doctor Who was extremely entertaining and tugged at my heart strings.

"The way I see it, life is a pile of good things and bad things. The good things don't always soften the badness, but vice versa the bad things don't always spoil the good things and make them unimportant."