Sunday 6 June 2010

Vincent and the Doctor

Fuck me, there's a helpline for people being stalked by invisible aliens? The announcement at the end of the Richard Curtis foray into Who-dom was the only thing that stuck in mind from what proved, after all, to be utter Tee-deeum. Potentially one of the best new aliens yet? Kill it with a chair leg. So now you've made the script redundant, what to do with the rest of the advenure? Take van Gogh to 2010 and have him accept it as if he were taking a hay-ride. Throw in a totally inappropriate musical overlay and a lovey cameo from Bill Nighy and what do you have? Richard Curtis indulging himself. Gods, he couldn't even take the time to think up a proper title. Should I ever end up doing a DW - an unlikely scenario, I admit - I think it might call it 'The Doctor and Amy go for a Ride in a Big Blue Box'.

5 comments:

  1. And why did Van Gogh talk like a Scot? This was a twee story - very twee - the sort of mush you expect from a Curtis story, but it was NOT Dr Who.
    I have to agree with you Mike, this was a twee Van Gogh story which just happened to feature the Doctor and Amy.

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  2. Hey, Mike! For me Dr Who became Dr WTF shortly after Tom Baker shapeshifted into Peter Davison and the subsequent transformations to Colin Baker and Vision On dude, Sylvester McCoy. Davison was too familiar a face and more at home with his hand up a cow’s arse than manipulating a sonic screwdriver! The programme seemed to have lost something and, as a consequence, it lost me as an ardent viewer. The gimmicky casting technique was none more evident than when Bonnie Langford came on board (cringe). The apparent lure of recognizable faces such as Eccleston, Tennant, Billie Piper, Catherine Tate and guest celebrities like Kylie Minogue does more to keep me away from the series than make me want to watch.

    Maybe I’m being unfair and haven’t given it a proper chance since the Pertwee/Baker days and perhaps grumpiness and age have a lot to answer for, too! Still, I am happy to slip a dvd of Carnival of Monsters or Horror of Fang Rock into the player and relive Who’s Golden Era (for me, at least) and your comments on the Richard Curtis episode confirm that I’m not missing too much!

    Did they really have a helpline number for people who may have been affected by the show? Was it to help deter viewers from cutting an ear off?

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  3. With you there, David. The moment John Nathan Turner decided to stick a ? on the doc's outfit was when it became pantomime.

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  4. ...and now we continue the BBC's Van Gogh week with a Doctor Who story specially written...

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  5. And while I’m at it, why would a working class Scottish lass like Amy Pond team up with a ponce like Matt Smith? Does he always talk like that? Or does he believe that the Doctor should be played as a terribly well-spoken South-of-England public school prefect with a posh mum? Irritates the hell out of me, and I’m only from Manchester.

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