Well, that’s a relief, after that last wonky story (sorry, I’ll stop going on about it now), this episode saw Doctor Who getting back on form. In fact it wasn’t just a return to form for the series but also for writer Richard Curtis, as it was the best thing he’s put his name to in a very long time. After the increasingly bloated stuff he’s been churning out like Love Actually and The Boat That Rocked, it might be a good idea for him to go back to the restraints of TV for a while.

Anyway, what we had this week was one of those stories that Doctor Who is so good at (possibly because this type of episode goes all the way back to the very early days of the show, when it was meant to be an educational programme), in which the Doctor and companion go back in time to meet up with a famous historical figure, in this case it was Vincent Van Gogh who was having problems with a giant space chicken (well that’s what it looked like… at least it did when you could actually see it, which wasn’t too often what with it being invisible). Although I don’t think I can agree with the claim made by art historian Professor Black (played by Bill Nighy, in an uncredited appearance) that Van Gogh was the greatest artist who ever lived, the mix of art history and sci-fi adventure did appeal to my love of both high culture and ridiculous TV shows that I probably am a bit too old to be watching.

The plot-line for the episode was rather straight forward and fairly predictable (points to the editor of the trailer at the end of last week’s episode which implied that Van Gogh would meet his end during this adventure – of course his eventual suicide did hang over the drama, but he survived his scrape with the space chicken, it was an unnamed village girl in the coffin that was spotted in last week’s trailer) – with only a few named roles in the episode I suppose there’s only so many places it could have gone, and the main plot twists – the monster only attacking as it had been left alone and was blind, its accidental death and Vincent falling for Amy (and the inevitable ginger jokes that followed as well as her setting out to inspire his most famous painting) – were all pretty much to be expected.

What Vincent and the Doctor was was an episode made up of minor mysteries and pleasures – pleasingly Curtis didn’t feel the need to do the usual explanation as to what the creature was and why only Vincent could see it (the Doctor clearly knew but he didn’t go into his usual explanatory speech about it – I was just happy to assume that Vincent could see the monster as being an artist he was more perceptive than most people and leave it at that). Another abiding mystery was, why as a special treat did the Doctor initially take Amy to a present day Van Gogh exhibition and not take her back to his time straight away, surely that’s what having a time machine is for?

A big part of the episode’s success was down to Tony Curran’s performance as Van Gogh as he captured the artist’s troubled, unpredictable nature but also managed to keep him very likeable, in fact he was so good for once I finally stopped thinking of him as Lenny, the character he played in This Life. Also, it’s as if Curtis could sense my accent criticism coming, as with this being yet another character the Tardis translated with a Scottish accent (you’d think with the series’ production office being based in Wales there would be more Welsh accents around, but the production team seem to prefer casting Scots), he managed to amusingly draw attention to this by having Vincent notice Amy’s similar accent causing him to ask her if she was also Dutch like him (which does make me wonder if Neve McIntosh’s characters from the previous story were actually visiting from another Silurian colony located underneath Holland). I also particularly liked the period detail of the Tardis being covered in advertising posters when the Doctor and Amy returned to it at the end of the episode.

And it would be remiss of me to not mention both the sensitive way in which Rory’s loss was acknowledged, with Amy finding herself crying and not even knowing why, and the episode’s magnificent ending, in which Vincent was taken on a trip forward in time to his exhibition in Paris – his disbelief at the sight of his worked, ridiculed in his lifetime now being seen as great masterworks was incredibly moving, and the return of Professor Black, who for a minute started to suspect that he was in the company of the actual Van Gogh ensured things didn’t get too maudlin by undercutting the scene with a little bit of humour. It’s interesting that the experience is revealed to have not changed Vincent’s final days too dramatically, you would have thought that being told you were one of the greatest human beings that ever lived would have had something of a lasting effect, although the episode’s claim that Vincent’s suicide was something fairly inevitable was part of, what I thought, was a rather sensitive and well rounded view of depression and mental illness in the episode’s script.

It looks like next week’s episode is one of the mandatory filler episodes where due to filming issues the main cast can’t feature too heavily, with current love-him-or-hate-him comedy figure James Cordon being drafted in to keep people’s interest. I’m not sure which way it’s going to go (as after all Blink was one of these filler episodes and that was arguably the best episode so far of new Who), but I’m looking forward to finding out.

So, before I leave it there for another week, there’s just enough time for me to ask what you all thought of the episode?