N.B. there might (or might not) be spoilers in this article!
Let’s start with the important stuff: nobody in Vincent and the Doctor pronounces van Gogh correctly. Bill Nighy comes closest; he rhymes it with ‘loch’; Matt Smith goes with ‘trough’. Thankfully, nobody opts for ‘go’.
There’s a nice in-joke when Vincent assumes Amy is Dutch because of their shared Scottish accent – although the TARDIS must be mistranslating as van Gogh wasn’t actually from the provinces of Holland; he was from North Brabant. (Yes, I was in full-on stickler mode for this episode.)
“I hear the song of your sadness.”
Vincent, Vincent and the Doctor
There are no quick fixes for the mental health challenges a person faces. To its credit, the episode doesn’t ultimately suggest that. Indeed, the “good things / bad things” is, as we’ve already come to expect, beautifully delivered by Matt Smith.
But …
But something does not sit right with me in the Doctor and Amy taking Vincent van Gogh to the gallery to see what becomes of his work. It never has. Not even Bill Nighy can save it.
Telling us van Gogh is the “greatest artist who ever lived” then showing us a slightly wild version of him doesn’t make it less “telling” than “showing”. As good as Tony Curran is, this still needed more subtlety than just a ‘there goes mad Vincent’ attitude.
But I do wish they’d gone with Richard Curtis’s original title. Doctor Who and the Eyes that See the Darkness would have made for a wonderful enigmatic-sounding Target novelisation.