The Doctor's Wife

Well, this is nice isn't it? Yes, of course it is: a love-letter to the series and a wonderful re-imagining (or  clarification) of the relationship between the TARDIS and her thief. Suranne Jones is marvellous, the strange little world stuck down the plughole of the Universe is a deliciously weird, and there are plenty of jokes and oddness to make this a rich and rewarding episode. But this is not the best Doctor Who ever that some make it out to be. I like Neil Gaiman's stuff, but I do crease my brow when I see the reverence and rock star status he receives from some quarters. He's a fantastically talented and successful writer and I am delighted that he was able to write for the show, but I can't help it - I automatically distrust the collective fevered enthusiasm of others.

Having had that little grumble, I must admit that, although the attachment of Gaiman's name to this episode did raise expectations very high indeed, and there isn't anyway in which it could be said that The Doctor's Wife disappoints. The arrival of a Time Lord thought cube - last seen in 1969's The War Games - wins the hearts of die-hard fan very early on in any case but throughout the episode we have a series of nostalgia-inducing moments for fans old and new alike: other Time Lords, the TARDIS corridors, the old console room, an Ood, and an elephants' graveyard of roundels and time rotors.

But the cosiness of this is tempered by grimy and sinister elements. Uncle and Aunty are wonderful creations, dishevelled and run down, but carrying on because there's nothing else to do. I love their cobbled-together bodies and costumes, their shiftiness, their dishonest hospitality. It's a shame when they shuffle off, even if it does provide a great joke. Then there's the nasty games House plays with Amy and Rory. House is a great villain, a powerful disembodied voice that consumes the powerful but normally voiceless TARDISes, and the tricks he plays on Amy in particular demonstrate a real gift for malevolence.

It's worth spending a moment considering what's really happening here because there's an obvious (but I don't think unintended) link to future episodes, especially The Girl Who Waited. Rory's reaction to being abandoned by Amy is so ugly, so vitriolic, that it must be impossible that it is really him, or that this is actually how he would behave. After all, he's done his fair share of waiting for Amy without any bitterness, not just while she was inside the Pandorica, but seemingly his entire life. It's Amy, the little girl left behind by the Doctor, who has the issues with abandonment - most recently in Day of the Moon where she admonishes the unseen Rory for not coming to rescue her, and very clearly demonstrated by the contents of her nightmare room in The God Complex. She imagines Rory's worst possible reaction (or maybe House cleverly suggests it to her), because this is how she fears she would react herself. We'll see later that this isn't quite true (she's a better person than she thinks she is), but it still offers a very telling insight.

The core of this episode is though the conversation between the Doctor and the TARDIS. It's beautifully observed and deliciously realised. Smith is extraordinary (as always), Jones is very good indeed as the Type 40 incarnate, and their chat is full of delightful and illuminating insights, not the least of which is the TARDIS's discovery that humans are "bigger on the inside." In some ways she's a mirror for the Doctor - another posho who ran away on a jaunt - but the real relationship is the partnership suggested by the episode's title. The wonderful bickering aside ("Pull to Open!"), I worry that this is too one-sided to make a successful or healthy marriage: this is, remember, the first time she has got a word in edgeways in nine-hundred years. But maybe she doesn't mind, maybe she is completely happy to be the silent conveyance? If, like him, all she wanted to do was explore the Universe, maybe the life she has is more than enough - she's the one that decides where they go next after all. More than anything, the idea that they have stolen each other is truly beautiful one, and during this fiftieth anniversary year it is well worth remembering that the TARDIS has been the only constant thing in the Doctor's live for as long as we have shared his adventures.

AMY: Look at you pair. It's always you and her, isn't it, long after the rest of us have gone. A boy and his box, off to see the universe.
THE DOCTOR: Well, you say that as if it's a bad thing. But honestly, it's the best thing there is.

NEXT TIME...

The Curse of the Black Spot

And so a very long run of very good stories comes to an end. There's no other way to say this, but The Curse of the Black Spot just isn't very interesting. The premise does intrigue, and there is quite a lot of fun had early on with the idea of burly pirates being terrified of pin pricks, and with Amy's rather tasty sword fight - but sadly it seems that the more this episode's central mystery is unravelled, the less interesting it becomes.

Part of the problem is that although there's a richness of spooky piratey-ness available (we've all seen Pirates of the Caribbean), it's barely conjured at all here. There's little sense of being at sea, becalmed or otherwise. There's no swell, no mist in the rigging, no slap of waves against the creaking hull. When we're below decks, we might as well be in a barn. When we're up on top, the Cornwell-obscuring mist smothers everything. There is eventually a storm, but it just happens, as if a switch has been thrown.

To be fair, the initial encounter with the Siren is spooky, and rather good - mainly because of  Rory's intoxication - but as soon as she has appeared once her novelty expires. A guest star of Hugh Bonneville's standing should lift things considerably, and Avery is a nice enough chap, but I can't help but think this story needed a slightly more flamboyant or unpleasant character at its heart. Certainly the addition of his son to proceedings doesn't make things better - of all the strained parent/child relationships we see in Series Six (and there are many) this by far the least interesting.

I did very much enjoy the Doctor's evolving hypothesis, continually revising his explanations in light of new information. He also makes a point of railing against the idea of curses and superstitions. It's a beautifully scientific and rational approach, in line with the cleverer version of the Doctor we've been treated to during Series Five - but it's not the sort of thing that should stand out in an episode.

The idea of two ships stuck in their different dimensions is a good one and makes me think that proceedings would be much improved by some sort of CGI ghost ship outline teasing our time travellers. Goodness knows as it is there seems very little reason for the Doctor to suddenly decide to acquiesce to the Siren's ministrations. It's not so much an intuitive leap as an act of desperate, unwarranted straw-clutching. Sadly when the last vestiges of mystery are removed (only to find that the Siren is all rather too similar to the Chula nanogenes from The Doctor Dances), we hit peak-dullness with a protracted riffing on that old chestnut 'is Rory dead or not?' In order to make it at remotely convincing, the plausible-death-pause has to be milked to an absurd degree before the inevitable vital splutter sounds.

For all that, the final image - the pirates... in SPACE! - is strangely satisfying. The incongruity of it is nice, but really I think the joy of it is that we are left imagining them invading the clean, sterile world of spaceships and orbital stations with their seventeenth century entrepreneurial spirit: all rum and cutlasses and blood. I think I would have enjoyed that more.


NEXT TIME...

The Impossible Astronaut / Day of the Moon

This is a bold, attention-grabbing story that sets up the premise for Series Six and fires a lot of questions up into the air. It also sees Doctor Who properly stake a claim on United States soil, with filming in the inimitable deserts of Utah and the Doctor's infiltration of some of the holiest inner sancta of America including the Oval Office and the Command Module of Apollo 11. Since The End of Time, this programme has undergone an incredible shake-up, having replaced the entire cast, producers, head writer, and now Production Designer. The confidence and ambition of these episodes shows that the programme has not just survived that transition, it has flourished.

What does Moffat pull out of his hat now? Well, first of all he kills the Doctor and then he introduces the best new aliens since the Weeping Angels. That's the first ten minutes sorted. The Silence are a fantastic idea, brilliantly realised. The mask is excellent, as is the weird, almost rubbery, suit they wear. Best of all is the bizarre, almost slow-motion electrical effect with which they prepare their attacks: an odd, balancing stance, oversized fingers splayed, puckered mouth stretching open. It's visually dramatic, distinctive and interesting.

After that the story crackles with lots of tiny little jokes and moments that ensure this is lots of fun indeed. Delaware's dry sense of humour ("I like your wheels."); the invisible TARDIS; the River/Doctor banter ("Mrs Robinson." "I hate you."); Nixon smoothing things over will all and sundry; Rory's "America salutes you."; the Doctor casually ruining Nixon by making him paranoid ("You have to tape everything that happens in this office. Every word... You have to trust me and nobody else."); the Doctor fiddling about with Apollo 11... There are more besides but these are just the ones I can remember.

Although this is a satisfying and entertaining adventure, it is a little modular in construction and not all the pieces connect smoothly. The beginning in 2011 Utah, and the climatic scenes are the best: both very effective and exciting, the former merging nicely (via an introduction to the younger Canton Delaware III) into Nixon's Washington. The Florida orphanage sequence is properly creepy but it draws on influences that haven't before had an obvious effect on Doctor Who: The X-Files, certainly, but it also reminds me of video games like Resident Evil.

Annoyingly, while some of Moffat's excellent stories have had the odd minor bump in the plot, this one suffers from some obvious and irreconcilable problems. The Doctor's ingenious and premeditated plan to use the Moon landing to inspire a revolution against the Silence only works because - much later - one of the aliens happens to say something useful to Canton who happens to be recording it on Amy's phone. It works, but it rather undermines the cleverness of the plan, even if it can't diminish the brilliance of the moment when it comes.

And the two episodes don't fit together. Yes, there is supposed to be a break in the narrative in order to fuel the escape that launches the beginning of Day of the Moon, but it doesn't make enough sense. How do Rory and River escape from a tunnel full of the Silence? Why isn't the Doctor or Amy able to help Melody in the space suit? Why doesn't Melody recognise Amy from the photographs of her in her bedroom? And if she does, why doesn't she say something? Why a three month gap? If it was three weeks, I could just about imagine Rory and Amy surviving and evading the FBI, without money or resources, but three months? Presumably they just hopped forwards in the TARDIS and the whole on-the-run thing was then staged by Delaware for the benefit of the Silence - but this is never stated or explained, and we are invited to believe that this is not what happened.

Throughout all of this there is the niggling question of how much River remembers. In The Wedding of River Song, the Doctor tells her that she won't remember killing him, but River tells Amy that she was "pretending I didn't recognise that space suit in Florida". Of course, she has a vested interest in allowing events to follow their original path, but she goes to extraordinary lengths to avoid giving the game away. The River that witnesses the Doctor's 'death' and returns to the diner knows that the Doctor has survived - yet she slaps the younger Doctor very hard across the face when she sees him anyway. Maybe it was for something else.

Despite all that, River is still the best thing about this story and it's great to navigate some of the choppy temporal waters between her and the Doctor. So far we have seen it all from the Doctor's point of view, experiencing glimmers of River's foreknowledge from the outside. In that diner scene, after Lake Silencio, it becomes clear that we have switched. Suddenly we are with River, we know what will happen to the younger, ignorant Doctor stood before us, asking awkward questions. River replies, "Spoilers!" and for the first time we are inside the loop with her.

She follows this with that heart-breaking conversation with her father, in the tunnels underneath Florida.

RORY: What did you mean? What you said to Amy. There's a worst day coming for you.
RIVER: When I first met the Doctor, a long, long time ago, he knew all about me. Think about that. An impressionable young girl and, suddenly this man just drops out of the sky and he's clever and mad and wonderful, and knows every last thing about her. Imagine what that does to a girl.
RORY: I don't really have to.
RIVER: The trouble is, it's all back to front. My past is his future. We're travelling in opposite directions. Every time we meet, I know him more, he knows me less. I live for the days when I see him, but I know that every time I do, he'll be one step further away. And the day is coming when I'll look into that man's eyes, my Doctor, and he won't have the faintest idea who I am. And I think it's going to kill me.

Such an important exchange that explodes backwards and forwards in time, connecting to all sorts of other moments - most obviously Let's Kill Hitler and Silence in the Library. But by the end of this story it becomes clear that River has more or less resigned herself to this agonising experience by the time she meets the Doctor in the Library. By then she's already dead. The moment that kills her comes at the end of Day of the Moon and, appropriately enough, given their first meeting in Berlin, the Doctor kills her with a kiss; a kiss that turns out to be his first, and her last.


NEXT TIME...

A Christmas Carol

Just how many ways are there to fit the festive season into a Doctor Who story? I became a little worried at one point that we would end up alternating year after year between modern day glitz and Victorian grime. What we needed was a proper alien, Christmas-in-space special and, despite the Dickensian title, this is wonderfully what we got in A Christmas Carol.

How do you do Christmas in space? Well, if you think about it, lots of planets have Christmas, just as lots of them have a North. The yearly revolution of the Earth around the Sun and the tilt of the Earth's axis relative to the plane of revolution is the reason for the season, you might say. Believe whatever you like, but the reason we have mid-winter festivals (and there have been loads: Hanukkah, Yule, Dongzhi, Saturnalia, Kwanzaa, Yalda, Pancha Ganapati, Mōdraniht to name just a few I found on Wikipedia ten seconds ago) is because of the cultural effect upon humans of Earth's passage around the Sun. 

Or, as Moffat puts it with such poetry and economy, for people of all faiths and none, Christmas is the time when we are halfway out of the dark. 

Having freed himself from the shackles of Earthly festivities, Moffat sets about spinning a special that finally manages to conjure up some Christmas magic. In previous years, Christmas has been represented by baubles and shopping and food (or, in The Next Doctor by snow and urchins). It may be true, but it's soulless. A Christmas Carol is soaked, like a pudding in brandy, in a wonderful storybook feeling, from the shadows and firelight of Sardick's sitting room to the thick fog of the town that glitters with fish.

Best of all, Moffat is able to pinch draw upon a recognisable Christmas fable and use time travel to make it into a bona fide Doctor Who story.

The Ghost of Christmas Past

The longest and strongest of Sardick's hauntings is full of wonder but very little can trump the magical moment when the Doctor departs in the TARDIS only to materialise inside the old man's childhood, turning up on the very video he is watching projected on the wall. We've seen a similar trick before in The Beast Below, but whereas that felt like slight of hand, this, enormous and much more powerful, is nothing less than wizardry. It's astonishing to see the Doctor meddling in someone's memories (harking back to Moffat's first piece of Doctor Who writing, the short story Continuity Errors) and Michael Gambon - excellent throughout - effortlessly shows us a man who is changing and being rewritten before our eyes. The relationship between youngest Kasran (played by Laurence Belcher, the latest in a now long line of impressive and not at all annoying Doctor Who child actors) and the Doctor is fun and sincere, and that between Abigail and the middle Kasran scarcely stretches credulity either. Katherine Jenkins, despite misgivings in some quarters, does well as Abigail and I don't even mind her having a sing (it's not opera, which would be a different kettle of fish, and it is Christmas, so why not?). Plus all the business of whizzing from one Christmas Eve to the next is tremendous fun and makes very clear that time travel is an opportunity to experience lost wonders and crash very exclusive parties.

The Ghost of Christmas Present

A very short sequence, but so effective, and one that beautifully illustrates the oh-so-clever way in which a Victorian ghost story can be harnessed for a science-fiction adventure. Amy, thanks to hardlight holography or whatever, appears to Sardick like a phantom and delivers him a message that might as well be from the grave. The mournful singing combines the festive with the ghostly, connects us back to the seasonal setting, and allows Sardick to reject Christmas, humanity and goodwill to all one final time.

The Ghost of Christmas Future

What an ingenious twist. Once again, Moffat and the Doctor do something so clever, so unexpected that we would never have thought of it - and yet (with hindsight) so obvious that we understand it immediately; once again, a conventional narrative is revolutionised and revitalised by the application of transtemporal possibilities.

This show never used to really be about Time, but it has become a major element under Moffat's watch: Amy and Rory both have to wait and wait; River and the Doctor are crossing and missing each other, always out of synch. We've seen how memory is a kind of time travel, how the Angels make time a trap, and we'll see more of these ideas in Series Six. Here, brilliantly, Sardick is miser who hoards time and counts the seconds like pennies, only to realise that the only thing about Time that matters is how you spend it.

NEXT TIME...

The Pandorica Opens / The Big Bang

We've had some marvellous episodes since the show came back, a haul of incontestable classics from different writers and different Doctors. Right now, I think this two-parter is the best of the lot. There isn't much to choose between the truly excellent stories, and I'm nervous about claiming that this is better than, say, The Empty Child, Silence in the Library or The Time of Angels. But as a season finale (and one that doesn't disappoint either), the delights of The Pandorica Opens and The Big Bang have more impact: the jokes are funnier, the frights, scarier, the twists, even more brain-melty. I've suggested once or twice that Doctor Who might have achieved something of the epic during this run, but here for the first time, in these two episodes, it approaches legend.

One of the best pre-credits ever. Vincent van Gogh! Churchill! River Song! Liz 10! With the mystery of the painting threaded through them, these cameos are electrifying and draw the whole season together. By the time the Doctor and Amy find themselves in Cleopatra's tent, there's a palpable sense of doom.

Stonehenge! There's your legend right there. Those mysterious, seemingly impossible stones, alone on that plain for thousands of years. It seems astonishing that Doctor Who hasn't tried to shoehorn them in before, but thank goodness nobody did because this is the perfect moment for them to appear. And what a clever bit of writing:

AMY: How come it's not new?
RIVER: Because it's already old. It's been here thousands of years. No one knows exactly how long.

Ooh well, it almost certainly didn't look like this back in 102AD, but it was already old and that's the important thing. Moffat shows us a Roman and then stretches our sight back even further into unknowable, ancient pre-history. We end up with a perspective that we would never have had if the TARDIS had just arrived in the Bronze Age.

The Underhenge! Aha, there's no such thing of course, but what a great idea. Instantly Stonehenge is even more mysterious than it was already and our time travellers have an underground chamber to investigate. The music and direction here is especially excellent, with both Murray Gold and Toby Haynes consciously channelling Indiana Jones for maximum effect.

"There was a goblin, or a trickster, or a warrior. A nameless, terrible thing, soaked in the blood of a billion galaxies. The most feared being in all the cosmos. And nothing could stop it, or hold it, or reason with it. One day it would just drop out of the sky and tear down your world." Just one of many beautiful bits of dialogue, but ominous and full of (not so) hidden meaning. It's another great Moffat twist hidden in plain sight, but the fascinating thing is that the Doctor, keenly aware of his own inner monster, doesn't recognise himself from this description.

The Best Cyberman Ever. I mentioned before that we never seem to get any good Cybermen stories, but this lone, rusty, partially-dismembered sentry is scary and interesting in a way that we have never seen before. It's a short scene, but the attack is ingenious, relentless and full of images of the sort of body-horror that we should automatically associate with the Cybermen: the skull falling from the head, the arm moving by itself, the headless body marching towards us, unstoppable, murderous. It's excellent and, unfortunately, raised my expectations that a 'proper' Cyberman story would eventually arrive. I'm still waiting.

Rory. I think, looking back, that we all expected Rory to turn up again; we didn't expect him to come back as an Auton Roman centurion. How fantastic is that scene between Darvill and Smith? The Doctor, distracted, oblivious, even calling Rory by name before he realises what has happened. Then the moment of silent realisation, the long stare and that gorgeous exploratory poke in the chest, Rory rocking on his heels and springing back into place. And then, matter-of-fact, they exchange hellos and how've-you-beens, the Roman and the Time Lord, both beautifully British: polite and, understated. "Rory," says the Doctor eventually, "I'm not trying to be rude, but you died." Utter bliss.

The Big Speech. To be honest, of all the marvellous things in this story, this is the one I get excited about least. It seems to be wildly popular but it isn't really the grand oration people remember it as: it's excellent because it's a bluff, because its grandeur is illusory.

The Trap Closes. Having the Auton's turn up - pretty much out of nowhere - is very clever indeed and a lovely chilling moment, especially as the ramifications for Rory become apparent. But the odd collection of aliens that appear to imprison the Doctor, although visually satisfying, is rather too obviously comprised of all the costumes and prosthetics that could be pressed into service. To be honest, a Grand Alliance of Daleks, Cybermen and Sontarans might be better. Still, what an incredible climax to this episode: the Doctor, defeated and dragged inside the Pandorica, Rory and Amy briefly reunited and then cruelly separated once again; River trapped inside the TARDIS doomed to explode. And then the stars start to go out.

"Okay kid, this is where it get's complicated." The best pre-credits, so far at least, and a brilliant opening to The Big Bang as the young Amelia, seemingly escaped from the grand canon of children's literature, part Paddington Bear, part Matilda, follows the clues to the mysterious stone cube in the museum. Only to find a grown-up, supposedly dead, version of herself sat inside.

The Business with the Mop, the Fez, and the Vortex Manipulator. Proper hi-jinks. Dirty time-travel shenanigans. Intoxicating, exhilarating, joy-to-be-alive tomfoolery. Has Doctor Who ever been more fun? From the blistering and bizarre appearance of the Doctor to the despairing Rory, to the moment that River blasts the fez to smithereens over the rooftops of Cardiff  London, this is just one long extraordinary giggle.

Rory's Apotheosis. Glorious, beautiful, and deeply-romantic, Rory's transformation from feeble no-hoper to kick-ass, two-thousand year old, sort-of-Auton and legendary centurion is one of the most satisfying character arcs in Doctor Who, and his quiet and dignified resolution to stay and watch over Amy is a very grand romantic gesture indeed. If he doesn't quite sustain this glory in future episodes (he's fairly ordinary again in The Impossible Astronaut), he continues to have outstanding moments (for example in A Good Man Goes to War, Let's Kill Hitler and The Girl Who Waited.)

"Mercy!" River versus the Dalek is cool, unnerving and completely bad-ass.

The Doctor's Plan. Astonishing writing here that again shows how desperately clever the Doctor is. At every point in this episode, the Doctor knows more than we do, more than his companions do, and he never tells us everything. As a result, we are never sure that he knows what he's doing, until the last moment when it becomes obvious that he planned this all along, or at least since the Dalek turned up. "Okay Doctor," says Amy, very satisfied with herself, "did I surprise you this time." The Doctor appears in the TARDIS door, impeccable in white tie and tails, complete with top hat. Only a little sheepishly, he lies. "Er yeah. Completely astonished. Never expected that. How lucky I happened to be wearing this old thing." Before that, there are hints. The ingenious conversation from Flesh and Stone, replayed and revealed here, implies that he is working on something, chancing his arm at an outside bet. More importantly it is clear evidence of Moffat's own long-term scheming. In the final conversation with Amelia, both Moffat and Doctor contrive an air of resignation, as if this really was the end, all the while carefully and invisibly arranging their eventual triumph.

And that's Series Five, immensely satisfying and surely the best so far. By my reckoning seven of the thirteen episodes are impregnable, incontestable all-time classics and none of the other six are anything less than very good either. The show has never looked or sounded better and Smith, in just these few stories, has laid a good claim on being the best Doctor of them all. I can't wait to see if the next two series can match it.


NEXT TIME...

The Lodger

This is the wonderful strength of Doctor Who, one that no other show has. Straight after Vincent and the Doctor, The Lodger is completely different, almost another programme altogether. But it is just as brilliant. This week Doctor Who does sit-com, and serves up a lovely little flat-share comedy.

In the world of comedy pilots it has become a dreadful cliché for odd characters to find themselves moving in together, but this is obviously where Doctor Who, operating in the sit-com genre, must begin. Luckily for us, what writer Gareth Roberts delivers isn't just a one-off, but a whole six part series in microcosm.

1: The One Where the Doctor Moves In.
2. The One Where the Doctor Takes a Shower.
3. The One With the Football Match.
4. The One Where Craig and Sophie (and The Doctor) have a Date.
5. The One Where the Doctor Goes to Work.
6. The One Where They Go Upstairs.

The key to the success of The Lodger is that even if it was unpacked over six half-hour episodes, even if it wasn't Doctor Who, we would all still watch that sit-com. Why does it work so superbly?

Firstly, casting. I know James Corden isn't for everyone but he is a brilliant comedy actor, and he is perfect for Craig, a character who is perhaps a little more restrained and likeable than some of Corden's other sit-com roles. Daisy Haggard, with various comedy series behind her, is an excellent choice as Sophie and together they convincingly portray friends who both secretly wish their relationship could go further. Excellent as Smith's Doctor has already been this series, it is here that he begins to coruscate: truly alien, charming yet socially awkward, incomparable and mercurial, he sets the screen alight here.

Secondly, it is properly funny, making the most of the 'fish-out-of-water' set-up without ever turning into Mork & Mindy. "I WAS NOT EXPECTING THIS!"; "Pub league: a drinking competition?"; "Where are you strongest?" "My arms." Plus so many more beautiful moments: the Doctor stopping his phone call to eat a biscuit, stealing Craig's free kick, or cooking an omelette. Almost every word Smith says is funny. When Craig suggests the Doctor take a look at his room, Smith rolls the word "room" around his mouth like fine brandy, bemused, amused, delighted, intrigued.

Thirdly, and most impressive of all, The Lodger seamlessly melds the personal/domestic comedy with the requisite SF elements. Very gently, throughout the episode, we and the Doctor are shown how Craig and Sophie's relationship relates to the disturbing events upstairs: "You've got two sets of keys to somebody else's house?" the Doctor says to Sophie. "You must like it here too..." In the final crisis, it is only the conviction of Craig, knowing he has a reason to stay, that saves the day when the Doctor's endless wandering has become a liability.

This really is one of the boys' favourites - they both cried "Craig!" with delight when he appeared on screen - and who can blame them. Funny, lovely, and with an extraordinary performance from Matt Smith, The Lodger is, in it's own way, just as much a triumph as Vincent and the Doctor.


NEXT TIME...

Vincent and the Doctor

Forget Blink. This is the episode you show to people who have never seen Doctor Who before. The name of Richard Curtis, let alone Vincent van Gogh, should be enough to encourage even the most ambivalent to give this one a go, and, within ten seconds Bill Nighy turns up. By the end only the stoniest of hearts, could fail to have become entranced.

Vincent and the Doctor truly deserves to stand alone: an astonishing forty-odd minutes of television that takes the premise of Doctor Who and uses it, TARDIS-like, to travel into new territory. This is the purest piece of time travel tourism in the new series, as we, the Doctor and Amy, simply get to hang out with van Gogh and even see the world through his eyes. There almost doesn't need to be an alien monster hanging around at all. In fact, given that the Krafayis plot is a bit feeble, you'd be forgiven for thinking it might be better to have just got shot of it all together. But, of course, this episode needs those moments of jeopardy to inject some adrenalin into proceedings and to reassure the regular family audience that this still is Doctor Who that they're watching.

Long ongoing series have the right to depart from their normal template for the odd episode, but the results are rarely as wonderful as this. The joy of Vincent and the Doctor is the chance to spend some time with a great artist, seeing the subjects of successive paintings brought to life, or, in the case of Starry Night, watching the world melt into swirling magical brushstrokes. In amongst the beauty we get a brief but serious glimpse of van Gogh's mental illness - a modern taboo discussed compassionately and without judgment in the middle of a Saturday tea-time family adventure serial - and a simply wonderful ending that packs a truly eye-watering emotional punch.

Dr Black's paean to the deeply troubled man he calls "not only world's greatest artist, but also one of the greatest men who ever lived" lays it on a little thick perhaps, but this is surely the point: to hammer home the moment, so that we feel its crushing effects, just as van Gogh does, dizzy with camera work, impossible beautiful words in our mind.

Afterwards William sat still, unusually silent, as something heavy had landed on him. He was obviously deeply moved, struggling to accommodate this cocktail of feelings.

"How do you feel? I asked him.

"Happy I guess?" he said. "And sad. I don't know. It's just so much to take in."

Yes, it is. Being stunned, broken open, by other people, by their joy and suffering, by stories, by great art, that's called being alive. Given the chance to see the light of the sunflowers, or the dancing of the stars - that's amazing. Doctor Who took all that and poured into the heart and mind of a ten year old boy watching primetime Saturday night telly, because Doctor Who is the best television programme ever.


NEXT TIME...