"This week the Doctor and Amy take in a bit of culture and team up with the artist" "Vincent van Gogh to take on an invisible monster." "It's not going to be an easy collaboration between the universe's biggest optimist and humanities biggest depressive." "Come on!" "Capture my mystery!" "Maybe you've had enough coffee now." "And we canvas Richard Curtis about his latest work." "I think if you're going to write something about an artist van Gogh's the most accessible artist." "The cast and crew go forth to Croatia, with a cunning plan to reproduce a van Gogh painting." "We brush up on our art history in L.A. with actor Tony Curran." "If you stare at this long enough, you do lose yourself in it." "Episode ten tackles a problem, and a situation more heartbreaking, than probably we've ever encountered before." "THEME MUSIC PLAYS" "At the National Museum of Wales in Cardiff, the Doctor Who crew are setting the scene for for a very unusual art class." "Background action." "And Action!" "So this is one of the last paintings van Gogh ever painted." "Those final months of his life were probably the most astonishing artistic outpouring in history." "It was like Shakespeare knocking off Othello, Macbeth and King Lear over the summer hols." "At the beginning of episode ten, there's a scene set in the Musee D'Orsay" "Where Amy and the Doctor go to have a look at some of the paintings of Vincent van Gogh." "Each of these pictures now is worth tens of millions of pounds." "Yet in his lifetime, he was a commercial disaster, but when he died, you could sold his entire body of work and got about enough money to buy a sofa and a couple of chairs." "The Doctor travels to the Musee D'Orsay and sees, in a van Gogh painting a monster peering out, and realises he has to go and talk to Vincent van Gogh." "Wait a minute." "What?" "Well, just look at that." "What?" "Something not very good indeed." "What something not very good?" "Look there, in the window of the church." "Is it a face?" "Yes." "And not a nice face at all." "We were very lucky to get Bill Nighy to play the part of Dr Black, because he's someone who you pay attention to." "And that's what we needed, we needed people to listen to what he was saying about Vincent van Gogh, pick up some of the relevant facts that were going to be important in the story." "And also he and Matt together made a brilliant kind of double act." "Sorry, everyone." "Routine inspection, Ministry of Art and..." "Artiness." "So, um..." "Dr Black." "Yes, that's right." "Do you know when that picture of the church was painted?" "Ah, what an interesting question." "Most people..." "Going to have to hurry, when was it?" "Exactly?" "As exactly as you can." "Without a long speech, if poss." "I'm in a hurry." "Well, in that case, probably somewhere between the 1st and 3rd of June." "What year?" "1890." "Less than a year before he killed himself." "Thank you sir." "Nice bow tie!" "Bow ties are cool." "Yours is very..." "Oh, thank you." "Keep telling them stuff." "We need to go." "What about the other pictures?" "Art can wait." "This is life and death." "We need to talk to Vincent van Gogh." "We have Richard Curtis writing episode ten, which is so exciting!" "He's written a fantastic episode about van Gogh, and it's actually really quite different." "I kept bumping into Richard at various things." "I think once drunkenly I said" ""Please come and write a Doctor Who."" "And he never really exhibited the slightest interest in it." "And then, when I was in Kew Gardens, near Christmas one day, he sent me a text with a proposal for, he said, a story about depression and van Gogh and I thought "Really?" "Saturday night, 7 O'clock?" "Depression?"" ""Couldn't it be happy van Gogh?" "The days before the ear?"" "But no, he had a very very, particular vision." "So he came and pitched to me that brilliant story and how he wanted to handle it." "I loved it and here we are." "It's always been an idea I loved, just sitting there in the back of my mind," "So, the moment I started thinking about Doctor Who I thought "Oh, I have got this... story I'd like to tell, because van Gogh is pretty well the only really, really famous artist," "almost in any medium, who had no acknowledgement whatsoever during his lifetime." "I adore his paintings." "I've been to the Musee D'Orsay a lot and seen those paintings." "I'm also, interested in, sort of depression and the price you pay for that." "So I'm interested in him as a human being, as an artist and then I have this idea where I'd love the thought of making him happy." "What a morning." "Come on!" "And Amy's got a little surprise for you." "I thought I'd brighten things up to thank you for saving me last night." "Ah!" "I thought you might like, you know, possibly to perhaps paint them or something?" "Might be a thought." "Yes." "Well, they're not my favourite flower." "YOU don't like sunflowers?" "No, it's not that I don't like them." "I find them complex." "Always somewhere between living and dying." "Half-human as they turn to the sun." "A little disgusting." "But, you know, they are a challenge." "And one I'm pretty sure you will rise to." "It was in fact a sort of family project before I started to write it me and my kids went to the Musee D'Orsay and we looked at all the paintings and I said "I want..."" ""...a monster to appear in one of these paintings."" "And it was my daughter Scarlet who said "Can it be in the window of that particular painting?"" "The real Vincent van Gogh didn't paint monsters in churches." "But fortunately for the Doctor Who team, he did paint self portraits." "Which were a great help when it came to casting." "We sort of know what Vincent van Gogh looked like." "So we gotta get it right." "I think in this case we got it so right we had the audacity to have Tony Curran standing there with the Vincent van Gogh self portrait" "And it looks like him." "It could be a portrait of him." "I'm so excited about Tony coz he's a very good actor." "The fact that he really looks... so like van Gogh without wearing a horrible fake orange beard is exciting." "My reaction when I was first asked to play Vincent was one of..." "I was pleasantly surprised, and I was a little scared to be perfectly honest." "It was quite a..." "I mean he's an incredible, iconic figure, historical artistic figure, loved and revered by many people." "But it definitely was something I wanted to be a part of, especially with Richard writing the episode." "That accent of yours." "You from Holland like me?" "Yes." "No." "She means yes." "We did discuss this." "Does he do it in a Scottish accent?" "And somehow it just worked, him doing it in his Scottish accent." "With Amy also being Scottish." "He elegantly gets past the fact that we've got a Scottish Vincent." "But a Scottish Vincent van Gogh wasn't the only line that the team had to paint over." "Along with a flat-packed TARDIS the cast and crew travel to Croatia to recreate the French region of Provence." "The job of manning the TARDIS during this 1400 mile long journey was given to Facilities Co-ordinator Bob Gurney." "How many miles left Bob?" "409." "It's a long, long way." "Here we are in Croatia filming episode ten, Vincent and the Doctor." "This is a really cool scene set in the scene of one of van Gogh's paintings" ""The Cafe Terrace"" "So they made up this cafe to look like the painting." "And it just looked incredible." "It really did look like the painting." "Coz in the scene I have a little book of all van Gogh's paintings and I was just holding it up to the scene and it was exactly the same." "It was really cool!" "He'll probably be in the local cafe - sort of orangey light, chairs and tables outside." "Like this?" "That's the one." "Or indeed like that." "Yeah." "Creating van Gogh's night cafe for the Doctor and Amy's first encounter with Vincent took more than just Orange-y light and a few chairs and tables outside." "Searching for the right location and transforming it into the famous 19th century painting for this scene proved to be a complicated assignment for the Art Department." "Creating the cafe was quite a long winded process." "We actually went 'round locations about four or five times around Croatia with a postcard book and a laptop, with the image of "The Cafe Terrace"." "And we eventually found it and we're very pleased how it ended up." "We, obviously had to put a big awning up, we had to change the windows, we had to do in-fills for the windows and the door." "And also make a platform to put the chairs and tables on." "And the theme, there's another blue doorway which we married in as well," "And obviously a bit of foliage, We just mashed up the painting as best we could." "I come from Trogir, and the last couple of days the whole of Trogir has been dramatically changed, it's beautiful." "This cafe is actually quite modern, but now it's just, brought it back to van Gogh's times to his paintings and it's amazing what you guys can do, you just came in and just transformed the whole city." "The kids love it, the whole town is talking about it." "And it's really, really nice." "It wasn't just the town of Trogir that was transformed." "Doctor Who used local residents as supporting artists." "but needed help to make sure nothing was lost in translation." "We had a local guy who was an Assistant Director, who spoke very good English, so he could pass on what we needed." "To add the final touches to the piece period costumes were needed for all of the cast." "For most of the supporting artists, and especially for Vincent" "I looked at all the colours in the Vincent van Gogh paintings and I looked at all the kind of collars that he wore coz he did quite a lot of self portraits" "Umm, the style of hats, it's all taken from his paintings," "When I was choosing the clothes" "I chose original French clothes, as many as I could possibly find, so when they were together the just looked perfect." "Take 'A', camera one." "Action!" "Like this?" "That's the one." "Or indeed like that." "Yes, exactly like that." "Good evening." "Does the name Vincent van Gogh ring a bell?" "Excuse me." "Do you know Vincent van Gogh?" "Unfortunately." "Unfortunately?" "Yes." "He's drunk, he's mad and he never pays his bills." "Good painter, though, eh?" "THEY ALL LAUGH" "So, so, so, he may not turn out to be the easiest fellow in town." "Come on!" "Come on!" "One painting for one drink." "That's not a bad deal." "It wouldn't be a bad deal if it were any good." "I can't put that up on my wall." "It'd scare the customers half to death." "It's bad enough you being in here in person, let alone looming over the customers day and night with that stupid hat." "You pay money or you get out." "I'll pay." "What?" "Well, if you like." "I'll pay for the drink." "Exactly who are you?" "Well I'm... new in town." "Well, in that case, you don't know three things." "One, I pay for my own drinks, thank you." "LAUGHTER" "Two, no-one ever buys any of my paintings or they would be laughed out of town, so if you want to stay in town, I suggest you keep your cash to yourself." "And three, your friend's cute, but you should keep your big nose out of other people's business." "Now come on, just one more drink." "I'll pay tomorrow." "No!" "Or, on the other hand, slightly more compassionately, yes." "Or, on the other hand, to protect my business from madmen, no." "Or?" "Oh, look, just shut up the pair of you!" "I would like a bottle of wine, please, which I will then share with whomever I choose." "Cut there." "Reset" "While shooting on location, the job of ensuring that all the filming runs smoothly falls on the shoulders of the team of Assistant Directors." "The roll of a First Assistant Director is working very closely with the Director." "Basically the Director is given a script, he has to tell the story." "The First Assistant Director has to take that script, and break it down, and turn it into a viable shooting schedule." "I work very closely with the Director on the floor," "I stay with him, we're always talking about things with the Director of Photography the Camera Department, the Art Department," "You all right guys?" "To keep the crew and the program on schedule as far as I'm concerned, is the most important thing." "Let's shoot this, time for dinner." "And everything that needs to be done filters down through my assistants." "My second A.D., James," "He works back at the unit base." "He's the link basically between the production and the shoot." "It's sort of a co-ordinating role" "I get in every day about half six if we're on camera at eight I get in at half six." "Meet the artists, get them through cossie and make-up." "Right Confidential!" "And I'm sort of a liaison between if we're out on location and the office letting them know any schedule changes" "It's like the eye of the storm." "The third assistant, Heddy she works with me on the floor all the time." "She's spreading the word out to people that are perhaps not directly on the set." "I work with James the second, and whoever the first A.D. is on set, and we all co-ordinate the smooth running of things on set." "Normally Heddy and I are on radios and we can hear each other because of where we are and because of the distance" "I'm ringing up Heddy quite a bit, so I'd love to know what my phone bill is." "It's probably really big." "She's on set all day, I stay in the office and I sometimes go to set." "And we just talk to each other, so when she says we need to travel artists she'll ring me up." "If I've got to pass on a message to any of the crew or the first A.D." "I'll call her." "So we speak to each other probably about 50 times a day on the phone." "In Trogir, everything was a walk away, so in the mornings, the second A.D. and I would wait in the artists hotel for them to have breakfast and then we'd walk them to costume, or to make-up" "and then walk them to set." "So it was quite an unusual set-up." "It was very nice, everything was a lovely stroll away." "It was very much a sense of togetherness for all the cast and crew because we were all there, in one place at that one time." "All in circumstances that were completely different to what we were used to and we just had to make it work." "And we all did make it work, and we all enjoyed ourselves while we were at it." "OK, background action!" "Communication is a very big part of our job." "Communication and motivating." "And at the end of the day, I love to have a big smile on my face knowing that we finished the day." "The Director's happy, the crew are happy and we all go home, waiting for the next day's shoot." "When bringing the complex historical figure of Vincent van Gogh back to life the team had to exercise their artistic licence very carefully." "When we go into real lives, it's a curious thing you know, we have to be very respectful and mindful, this is a real person we're meeting." "At the same time, this is Doctor Who!" "And it's also got to be, partly, the icon." "The iconic version of them." "It's got to be positive, we can't just go and trash Vincent van Gogh" "You've got to be respectful, but at the same time you've got to slightly primp the legend." "When I spoke to Richard Curtis on the telephone about the mental aspects, I wanted obviously it's Doctor Who and a lot of children watch it, but there's also the mental aspects of Vincent van Gogh's life" "which are inseparable from his artistic achievements that you have to deal with, and it was something that I said to Richard and Jonny and they were like "Yeah, absolutely it's something we will deal on."" "Not majorly, but just touching on it, coz it is a very sensitive subject." "You know." "While I may be mad, I'm not stupid." "No, quite." "And, to be honest... .. not sure about mad either." "It seems to me depression is a very complex..." "Shh." "I'm working." "Well, yes." "I was very keen that van Gogh should be 3-dimensional in this, that we shouldn't be saying... here's the crazy guy with, you know, one ear, but that actually even though we've tried to show sides of his" "mental illness and all of that, that you should come to love him." "I guess, like a lot of people I've always admired and liked his work," "And... knew a small amount about the man" "and about his medical condition or his genius through his madness or... vice-versa." "Oh, dear." "It was only when I started researching it, and reading a lot of his letters that I began to admire him even more as a man for the struggles that he went through." "He had epilepsy and a bi-polar sort of a mental condition." "There was no-one at the time that was basically helping him." "Vincent, can I help?" "So yeah, there's nothing but empathy towards what he was going through." "Sort of the ultimate martyr if you like." "It's so clear you cannot help." "I will be left once more with an empty heart and no hope." "For me it was a great thing to be a part of, coz it definitely informs you more about a man who was... who wasn't just a great artist, but I think an incredible humanitarian as well." "I did a bit of research, I read a long book it seemed to me, 280 pages." "Although my girlfriend points out about 160 of them were, in fact pictures." "LAUGHS" "And, uhhh, I went and saw the paintings a lot, and I read some of the letters, and I watched "Lust For Life"" "So I did a fair amount, without being an expert, and I think if I'd really made myself an expert that would have made it harder to write because I wanted to be as true as I can to the spirit of the man" "but if you become obsessed by details then you're likely not to want to write the monster bit." "I don't think the genius of his art could have been so compelling if he hadn't have been slightly insane." "It's colour." "Colour that holds the key." "I can hear the colours." "Listen to them." "Every time I step outside, I feel nature is shouting at me." ""Come on." "Come and get me." "Come on."" ""Come on!" "Capture my mystery!"" "Maybe you've had enough coffee now." "How about some nice calming tea?" "Let's get you a cup of camomile or something, shall we?" "To paint a better portrait of the real Vincent van Gogh" "Doctor Who Confidential joined Tony Curran at the Getty Museum in L.A." "To meet up with curator Scott Allan, and take a look at one of van Gogh's most famous masterpieces." "I've lived in Los Angeles for 5 or 6 years and as the entertainment capital which is fine and all that, but California itself is an incredible state and just to come up to the Getty here" "I come up here quite often just to look at the art work but it's an incredible place just to be, just to just to relax." "Situated in the hills of Santa Monica, the Jean-Paul Getty Museum owns and exhibits important major art works and is home to one of the most valued van Gogh paintings" ""The Irises"" "Architecturally the museum complements the garden quite beautifully." "Absolutely, and they were designed very much in concert with one another." "Over the space of many years in fact." "It's an incredible place, but it's an amazing view of the whole of Los Angeles as well." "This was painted maybe a year and a few months before he died." "That's right." "1888 you were saying." "May of 1889, and then it was the following summer that he shot himself." "Coz it is one of the many paintings that he painted while he was in the asylum." "This painting was done at a particularly..." "Low point." "Critical and poignant time in his life, in December of 1888, about 6 months before he painted this there was that infamous episode in Arles in the south of France where he cut his ear." "He was hospitalised" "He had a few more bad episodes in the coming months, and eventually just out of his own fear of his encroaching mental illness he checked himself in." "In many ways part of his therapy, was his painting." "Absolutely." "And the garden was a little corner of nature that was readily available to him in the asylum." "For the first month or so he wasn't going outside the walls so you can just imagine him encountering this little patch of flowers." "I read somewhere that Paul Gauguin said that... van Gogh would maybe paint 3 or 4 or 5 paintings in the time it took Gauguin to paint one." "If you think about it, he was in the asylum for one year and he painted 130 canvases." "That is a lot, so that averages a picture every 2, 3 days." "So he's painting fast." "And a picture like this he called a study of nature, which would suggest that is was a fairly spontaneous and impromptu thing and at some level I think it was, but it's also a carefully composed picture" "and it's at a scale this is a standard sized canvas for the time but it's a size that he normally reserved for more sort of, panoramic landscapes so he was according a kind of importance to this close-up study of nature" "that suggests that he may have looked on it as a more of a composed picture." "There's a quote that Camille Pissarro said that" ""He'd either go mad, or artistically he'll leave us all behind."" "Maybe his artwork was ahead of its time." "I think that's part of it, and also because he was so far away from Paris." "And that's where the centre of the Avant-garde was." "That's where all the dealers working with those artists" "The alternative exhibitions that's where all of that was happening and he very purposefully left that behind." "And so part of it is just... you know really wishes that he you know obviously didn't kill himself but had at least lived a few extra years because he would have seen the fruits of his efforts." "Because, already in the last 6 months of his life there were some important critical articles about him in Paris" "Artists were showing real interest in his work which this picture, and the famous "Starry Night"" "which is in the Museum Of Modern Art in New York." "Those were both shown at the big independent art salon, the Salon des Indepandants in 1889 and all the other avant-garde artists were like 'this is incredible stuff'." "If you stare at this long enough, it's wonderful, you do lose yourself in it." "I find anyway, I think it's..." "Well you look at it in the context of the gallery and the painting immediately pops off the wall compared with everything else just with the intensity of the colours and also the really sharp graphic quality that everything is drawn with." "Thank you." "A pleasure." "Similar to van Gogh's love of nature the Getty central garden considered a living art work in itself, combines art and nature together and provides an area of natural beauty for visitors to relax and reflect on the museum's pieces." "The garden, which is really the central feature of the whole Getty site, is very much an integral part of that experience, and viewers go in for the art, and then they come, they can meander down the garden path," "and certainly that would be something that van Gogh himself would have appreciated." "We get that sense of the life and vitality of nature in his art." "Absolutely." "Scott was saying that the painting of "The Irises" at the time went for 250 Francs, whereas he showed me a Monet which was across the across the hall, and at the time that was going for 15,000 Francs." "And he says that was the difference because van Gogh being down in south of France as opposed to living close to Paris, to the salons and also, the" "You can have the talent, which of course van Gogh had, but he didn't have the marketing... wherewithal, as it were." "And that's something that..." "That Scott said Monet and many other artists had." "And, umm" "I found that quite compelling." "Down in a wood in Croatia, the crew get ready for a face-to-face encounter with the invisible monster, and set up to perform their own set of aerial gymnastics." "Cue the Krafayis." "Matt got quite a few bruises on this particular episode, coz he had to be... jerked and pulled and thrown over various things." "Needless to say, we have to be very careful with the star." "Take 2, camera 1." "We did have a stunt double to fill in certain gaps." "Set." "And, action!" "So, in the first time the monster hits the Doctor, that's Matt being jerked to one side." "Vincent... oof!" "Cut there." "A lot of my job is sitting down with our latest brilliant writer and say," ""Maybe the monster could be invisible."" ""Or really, really small, or mist."" ""Or look like a table."" "When we finally get to that hideous budget meeting." "The irony in Richard Curtis's case is his monster was already invisible." "I had nowhere to go!" "It's not easy to fight an invisible monster obviously." "Coz you can't see it." "And it's tricky to, ha-ha.." "It's tricky to act it as well." "What, you can see him too?" "Yes." " Ish!" "Well." "No!" "Not really." "The Krafayis, is attacking them." "Let me help you." "Vincent is very wary of the Doctor." "But he actually has an admiration for this somewhat eccentric individual who seems to have a sort of joy for many things, that Vincent has." "I believe there are more wonders in this universe, than you could ever have dreamed of." "You don't have to tell me." "The Doctor tries to help Vincent." "He's at the window!" "I'm going in!" "Well, I'm coming too!" "No!" "You're Vincent van Gogh!" "No!" "It's almost like Butch and Sundance." "Or like a buddy movie." "Duck!" "Left!" "AMY SCREAMS" "Your right, sorry!" "Where he realises that this guy is actually on my side." "Your right, my left." "This is no good at all!" "For once the Doctor is confronted with a... a monster he can't identify, and he can't even see." "It's a great super power to be invisible, then you discover the monster's blind." "Can't see, it's blind." "And we're invisible to it." "Yes, and that explains why it has such perfect hearing!" "Which unfortunately also explains why it is now turning around and heading straight for us." "Duck!" "Left!" "What did he look like?" "I told you, I couldn't see him!" "BOTH SCREAM" "Never do that!" "You can see him, too?" "Yes." "Ish." "Where do you think he is, you idiot?" "Use your head." "You couldn't see him?" "No." "The Krafayis in a sense is a metaphor for" "Vincent's mental state." "The first time the monster hits the Doctor that's Matt being jerked to one side." "And the second time, when he gets, basically thrown over a table, that's a combination of shots between Matt and the stunt double." "We had a stunt co-ordinator, Crispin and a stunt double, Gordon Seed there to do the hits from the monster on the Doctor." "At one point, the Krafayis smacks the Doctor, and we get Matt doing the first part of the move then we put Gordon, he basically jumps backward onto a trampette and flies backward landing on safety mats." "Obviously not." "And then we pick the Doctor falling into the shot literally sliding into the shot, carrying on." "It's always nice to get it all in-camera, rather than be reliant solely on CG." "The 2nd camera operator, Matt said we should shoot this at 50 frames-per-second." "And he was absolutely right." "He kind of ends up gliding over the top, before we cut back to Matt, falling on the ground, which he obviously did himself." "You can see him, too?" "Yes." "Ish." "Well, no." "Not really." "CREATURE ROARS" "You couldn't see him?" "It's time to retreat from sunny Croatia." "To a not so sunny Neath Abbey in Wales." "For the final encounter with the Krafayis." "It is NOT warm here!" "It's the coldest December in 15 years." "He's from L.A." "[FAKES AMERICAN ACCENT]" "Yeah, I'm from Los Angeles." "Obviously." "Well here we are in sunny or rather snowy, Neath Abbey" "Considering it's supposed to be the summer in the south of France, but as you can see, it's a little bit different." "What I had to do this morning was sort of the end sequence where van Gogh actually kills the monster." "Get back!" "Obviously we're gonna have to CGI the monster, but we have to create... create it so that Tony, who plays van Gogh has to be pulled backwards, up in the air." "Leaving his easel stuck inside the monster as if he's killed the monster with his easel." "So we had to achieve all that inside the Abbey." "Before Tony Curran is strapped to the ceiling, stunt man Gordon Seed has to make sure that the wire effect will go safely." "Well we had to so some line-ups, we rigged and rehearsed it yesterday and we had rehearsal with Gordon." "And 3 - 2 - 1, action!" "GRUNTS" "And we had a broom handle, underneath the easel long enough so that we could physically push Tony against his stomach, but when we rehearsed it he swings quite a lot so we had to stop the swinging motion" "hence we're using the broom handle." "Action!" "Are you OK?" "Yeah, I'm fine." "And, action!" "As you're pushing in..." "you're flipping over." "We're getting the same height aren't we?" "We're actually a bit higher." "Action." "Have a little go." "OK, Bob." "Slightly slower, yeah?" "Action." "With the safety checks completed it's Tony Curran's turn to step into the harness." "But he has obstacles of his own to jump over." "I had a combination that morning of food poisoning, and jet-lag, because I'd actually come back to America for Christmas and New Year so I flew back for the last few scenes." "And I was like "I'm fine, I'm fine."" "Jonny Campbell came in, he said "Are you OK?" "Shall we do some other scenes first?"" "I said, "No, can we please just get this out of the way?"" "He showed me what we were about to do, and I was like," ""Are you serious?"" "Coz I had a harness on under my costume." "And I'd stick the fork in the Krafayis, not meaning to kill it, just to wound it, as it were." "and he ends up pushing me 20 feet up into the air." "And, action!" "Vincent, what's happening?" "It's charging." "Get back." "Get back!" "AMY SCREAMS" "VINCENT GROANS" "Oh no!" "I didn't mean that." "I did some wire work before, but I hadn't done wire work while I've been that ill." "I think we got the shot, which was the most important thing." "LAUGHS" "With the alien's defeat, all that remains for the Doctor and Amy to do is to show Vincent what becomes of his art in the future." "Where are we?" "Paris. 2010 AD." "And this is the mighty Musee D'Orsay." "Home to many of the greatest paintings in history." "Because it was such an emotional high point of the story it was important to find a way of conveying exactly how this would impact on Vincent van Gogh" "The idea came up of using a turntable." "I think everyone thought I was a bit bonkers, and they probably felt a bit silly on this." "The complicated thing was co-ordinating everybody and getting the cameras to move." "So we had shots where the actors were on the turntable going around." "The actors would be static, and the camera would be going around." "One way and then the other way, so we get the impression of us going around the actors." "It was a good sequence." "It works very well in suggesting that the room is spinning for Vincent." "And how would you take on-board this immense news about your art being loved, and seeing it framed in this gallery?" "The notion of bringing van Gogh into that environment and showing it to him, is quite an overpowering one." "And it in fact, is in my opinion a really good use of the TARDIS to explore the 'What if?" "'" "It was a huge emotional scene, very tricky one for Tony Curran to play, and to pitch correctly." "Because how would you react, if you thought yourself almost a failure, that you were actually liked by that many people?" "Where do you think van Gogh rates in the history of art?" "Well, to me, van Gogh is the finest painter of them all." "Certainly, the most popular, great painter of all time, the most beloved." "The question that I thought, was "Why?"" "Why?" "Why did I become this great artist?" "When, when I was alive I was..." "You know it's incredible, nobody thought anything of me." "No-one had ever done it before." "Perhaps no-one ever will again." "To my mind, that strange, wild man who roamed the fields of Provence was not only the world's greatest artist, but also one of the greatest men who ever lived." "I think he definitely would have been overjoyed to see that people appreciated his work." "Most definitely." "Thank you, sir." "Thank you." "You're welcome." "You're welcome." "Sorry about the beard." "I think in those moments where Doctor Who can, does discuss the real world, it doesn't always, but when it does we have to be incredibly careful, coz we do have a hero who is an absolute paradigm of wisdom" "and gentleness, and kindness so we have to be right." "The truth is, if you make something accessible and appealing and interesting to children, you simply have to write it better." "That's all, you have to make it better." "And clearer, and simpler." "I think if you're going to write something about an artist van Gogh's the most accessible artist." "That's one of the things that makes him loved." "So I think it is a brilliant depiction of depression." "But it's at the heart of a wonderful, glorious, life affirming" "Doctor Who fable." "The only thing which might slightly seem complicated or oblique, to a younger viewer would be the question of having a thought about mental illness, but you know it's such a big subject in our society." "One in four people suffering from depression at some point in their lives." "Maybe it's not a bad idea to try and introduce it young." "We have here the last work of Vincent van Gogh, who committed suicide at only 37." "If anybody who's watched it has gone away with that understanding that they have to be considerate and patient and interested in people about mental complexities, then that would be great to me." "The real meat of this story is the Doctor meeting someone he can't save." "Because he can't save people from themselves, he can't do that, that's beyond his power." "And even though he can at times, rewrite time as Amy wants him to at the end, he can't do it, this time." "Because simply the demons that assail Vincent, are far far beyond the Doctor's reach." "That is very much what Richard wanted to write about, and I think daringly, and beautifully that's what's realised in those absolutely heart breaking final scenes."