I found this to be an enjoyable episode even though the monster of the week was rather poor, this was because the monster was only there to give The Doctor and Amy an excuse to visit Vincent van Gogh. During a visit to a exhibition of van Gogh's work The Doctor sees that there is a monster in the window of a church in one of the paintings. He immediately sets off with Amy to see Vincent and investigate the monster. When they find him Amy is somewhat starstruck, a reaction he didn't expect as everybody who knows him thinks he is a talentless lunatic. It turns out that Vincent is the only person who can see the monster although since it was a CGI parrot-dinosaur it was probably a good thing that it was invisible and we could only see it when we were shown Vincent's point of view or the Doctor's when he used a device that let him see it... till it broke. Surprisingly the monster was defeated with over ten minutes left to go. This gave the Doctor time to take Vincent to the future and see the exhibition of his work and hear the curator describe him as the greatest artist of all time. While this is a happy scene it serves to make the final scene all the sadder; after taking Vincent home they return once again to the museum where Amy hopes to see lots of new paintings but history has not been changed greatly by Vincent learning he will be considered great, he still committed suicide soon after the events shown. There are two small changes though; the monster is no longer in the church window and one of his sunflower paintings is dedicated "to Amy"
Given the rather unconvincing monster which we learnt little about one might expect this to be a less than impressive episode but I really liked it. Tony Curran was great as Vincent and the always excellent Bill Nighy put in a nice cameo performance as the museum curator. The real strength of the episode was the strength of the characters and the way they interacted, this meant the final was far more moving than it would have been if more time had been spent on the monster and less on the characters. Last week Rory was erased from time but in a tense scene The Doctor accidentally called Vincent Rory suggesting some slight memories of him exist so there is still some hope that he could still be saved.
Given the rather unconvincing monster which we learnt little about one might expect this to be a less than impressive episode but I really liked it. Tony Curran was great as Vincent and the always excellent Bill Nighy put in a nice cameo performance as the museum curator. The real strength of the episode was the strength of the characters and the way they interacted, this meant the final was far more moving than it would have been if more time had been spent on the monster and less on the characters. Last week Rory was erased from time but in a tense scene The Doctor accidentally called Vincent Rory suggesting some slight memories of him exist so there is still some hope that he could still be saved.