Vincent and the Doctor

[teyla]

I . . . don't really know what to say about this one. It was a bizarre episode. Because the Doctor was just completely incompetent. I mean, so was Amy, but sadly, I am by now used to the companion being nothing more than a screaming damsel--Amy started out not completely useless, but really, the last few episodes she hasn't been a very strong character. But the Doctor usually manages to pull together some basic plan to at least try and get himself and Amy out of trouble. This episode he just kind of went "I shall point my screwdriver at the monster and hope for the best!". Bad plan, Doctor. A lot worse than usual.

And since when is trying to communicate with the monster a last resort? I really try to avoid comparing Ten and Eleven, usually, but I will do it now--because Ten always tried talking to his adversaries first. And not just Ten did. Nine did, too; the Doctor does. Which is why I felt it to be really OOC when it took Eleven most of the episode to come up with the idea of trying to talk to the monster.

And then they killed it. Great going there. I don't know. I don't mind seeing the Doctor failing to live up to his standards, but when he does, it should be done in an IC way. The Doctor--and the companions, usually--are too clever to make the sort of mistakes they made in this episode. Which is why it didn't feel like he made an honest mistake. It simply felt like he was being an incompetent idiot.

I liked how they treated the depression issue. Depression is depression, and a trip to the future won't magically fix it. I liked Eleven bowtie-flirting with Nighy's character. Generally--BILL NIGHY. God, I love Bill Nighy. Shame that he ended up in what I thought was overall a very weak DW episode.


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Comments

[wihluta.livejournal.com]

I agree, it was one of those really-rather-useless-Doctor episodes. We've had them before, although I can't remember an example.

I enjoyed the episode because I just went with my squee over BILL BIGHY and ART and VAN GOGH and that was enough to keep me happy.

The space turkey was a bit silly. How cool would it have been to discover it's not actually a monster, just van Gogh being mad. Or, they could have not done the alien at all and just focused on how van Gogh saw the world differently. Like in that scene in the grass at the end. More of that would have been so cool.

[teyla]

We've had them before
I don't know, I never felt it this strongly before. There have been episodes where the Doctor was being pretty stupid, but it was always done in a way that felt as if he actually thought he knew what he was doing. In this episode, I just couldn't see that in what was going on. It didn't feel as if the Doctor had any clue what he was doing, which is just completely atypical for the character.

How cool would it have been to discover it's not actually a monster, just van Gogh being mad.
I actually thought that was going to be it--the monster being some sort of manifestation of van Gogh's madness. They could have done it so his suicide was actually what killed the monster and protected the people from the village. That would have been awesome, and it would have been a lot less sappy than what they did end up doing.

[wihluta.livejournal.com]

They could have done it so his suicide was actually what killed the monster and protected the people from the village.

That would have been a much better episode. You should start writing for DW. *nods*