VINCENT AND THE
DOCTOR
A very simple idea lies at the heart of Vincent and the Doctor. Anyone who has ever lost someone in tragic
circumstances, particularly where they have taken their own life, or gone
suddenly and too soon, will find themselves feeling that a terrible injustice
has been perpetrated. It just seems so monstrously unfair that they should die
without knowing how much they were loved. And in that situation, you can’t
helping thinking that if only they had known then maybe things would have been
different.
That’s why Vincent and
the Doctor is so powerful and moving. It’s about that desire to put things
right. It’s a blatant piece of wish-fulfilment from its writer Richard Curtis,
who has made a whole career based on wish-fulfilment of one kind or another. With
Vincent Van Gogh he chose the perfect subject, because of the immense gulf
between how lowly he was regarded when he lived, how much he suffered, and how
highly he is now regarded. It’s all beautifully expressed the scene where Vincent
hears that he is regarded not only as the greatest artist who ever lived but also
as one of the greatest men.
Yet it doesn’t change anything. He still kills himself. The story gives us the wish-fulfilment of ‘If only they had known’ and shows us that it wouldn’t have solved Vincent’s mental illness, that it is, sadly, not so easily overcome. But it’s a story anyone can relate to; just as Amy wants to see all the paintings Vincent would have gone on to paint, fans of John Lennon and Kurt Cobain, for example, want to hear all the songs they would have written. And anyone who has lost someone will regret that that person will now miss out on so much; they will never get to meet new-born nephews or grandchildren, they will never share another Christmas, they will never get to watch new episodes of Doctor Who that they would have loved. They will never know how much they were loved.
But this article is supposed to be about Steven Moffat.
Because he didn’t write it, because parts of it are so Richard Curtis-y that
you can imagine somebody going on to say “...because love actually is all around”, you could perhaps be
forgiven for underestimating Steven’s contribution. But even when his name
isn’t in the title sequence of an episode, Steven’s ideas and sensibilities will
have shaped that episode every step of the way; from deciding which writer to
hire, maybe giving them an idea for a story or deciding which of their ideas to
take forward; giving notes on every outline and draft; sometimes even writing the
final draft. Vincent and the Doctor
is pretty much all Richard Curtis, but even then, there are odd moments – the
scenes addressing the ongoing ‘arc’ of Amy forgetting Rory – that sound like Steven
Moffat. Maybe they were, maybe they weren’t, maybe we will never know. And even
once the script is finished, Steven’s influence doesn’t end there, in fact his
influence is greater, as he gives notes on every edit of the story. In collaboration
with the writer, the director, the producers and executive producers, yes, but
as show-runner he has the ultimate responsibility.
And Vincent and the
Doctor is a case in point, because there was so much material shot for it
and the first assembly of the episode was so over-length, that the story was
effectively given an extra rewrite (or at least heavily script-edited) in the
edit suite. Somebody took the decision to excise a subplot about the Krafayis
being a monster from the Doctor’s childhood and a subplot about the dead girl’s
mother and instead to focus on Vincent’s mental illness, and that somebody
would have been Steven Moffat.
In short; great stories don’t just happen by accident. They
happen because the guy in charge knows a great story when he sees one.