As the title suggests, the Doctor and Amy meet Vincent van Gogh.
There's the general run around and alien shenanigans that we are used to but the very heart of this story comes down to the fact that the Doctor meets a monster he cannot defeat, the depression of his new friend Vincent. It's pretty hard hitting having such a terrible mental illness shown at tea time on a Saturday but it's played perfectly.
So the Doctor takes Amy to an art gallery where the works of Van Gogh are held. After noticing an alien creature lurking in the window of a church in one of the paintings the Doctor demands that they travel back to find out what it is. Soon they befriend Vincent who is a struggling artist with no one appreciating his work. There are some great moments of comedy which arise from the fact that the Doctor and Amy know how important his paintings are whilst everyone else, including Vincent himself, puts no value on them. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that there are some great funny moments as this story was written by Richard Curtis.
The alien creature storyline is fairly boring I'm afraid but that almost doesn't matter because it's the relationships that form between Vincent, the Doctor and Amy which make this episode shine. Vincent speaks of many Doctors trying to help him and the Doctor witnesses one his bad moments when Vincent is screaming in bed, clearly deeply troubled.
One of my favourite scenes comes near the end with Amy, the Doctor and Vincent lying down together in a field gazing up at the stars whilst Vincent narrates how he sees the sky with its deep blues and the wind rushing through the sky. The Doctor clearly admires the beautiful way that Vincent views the world.
The most touching scene comes at the very end of the story when the Doctor takes Vincent to the future so that he can see just how famous and popular his works become. For a man who has struggled to be appreciated it all becomes to much and he breaks down in the gallery after kissing the curator who has been so kind about his work. The curator is played by Bill Nighy who for some reason is uncredited in the story. His double take as he walks away, suddenly realising that he may have been speaking to Van Gogh himself is hilarious!
After showing Vincent the future, Amy is convinced that he will now live a happy life and his premature death by suicide will have been averted. Unfortunately upon returning to the present day they discover that nothing has changed and Vincent still took his own life. This really gets to the heart of the matter of what depression is. It's not just a case of "cheering someone up". As the Doctor puts it:
The Doctor: "The way I see it, every life is a pile of good things and bad things. The good things don't always soften the bad things, but vice-versa, the bad things don't necessarily spoil the good things and make them unimportant. And we definitely added to his pile of good things"
Depression a bloody awful illness. As Vincent bid goodbye to the Doctor he admitted that even though they had fought demons together and won that on his own he feared he would not do so well.
The Curator: "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 colour 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."
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