Some of the creepiest and most thought-provoking episodes of Doctor Who revolve around creatures that we never actually see.

Here we take a look back at some of the best…

‘Vincent and the Doctor’ (2010)

Hankies at the ready – it’s time to talk ‘Vincent and the Doctor’ – Richard Curtis’ melancholy masterpiece.

At the Musée D’Orsay in 2012, Amy and The Doctor spot an alien face in one of Van Gogh’s paintings, and, worried for the artist’s safety, they travel back to 19th century Provence to rid him of the monster. When, on arrival, they learn that it can only be seen by Vincent, it soon becomes clear that the beast they’re dealing with, may not be an easy one to placate.

The alien, we learn, is a Krafayis – a hunter, abandoned by its pack, whose violence is brought on by extreme loneliness. More importantly though, the Krafayis is a metaphor for something much more terrifying – depression: the worst invisible monster of all. We know from history that Vincent Van Gogh was a troubled man – often in the care of doctors, he was prone to self-harm and eventually resorted to suicide.

Though many people at the time attributed his behaviour to madness, here, the Doctor is quick to recognise it as mental illness and the story sensitively deals with the everyday struggle that Vincent would have faced. The Krafayis is a symbol of his illness, it stalks him, torments him and touches everything around him, all the while unseen by everyone else. When eventually, he overpowers it, it’s a hollow victory and, we learn later, a temporary one, doing nothing to prevent his eventual spiral into darkness.

The Doctor shares an interesting theory about why the Krafayis is invisible to everyone but Vincent – it’s down to his unique way of looking at the world, the same vision that makes his paintings so multi-dimensional. What this episode does so well, is remind us that a life lived with a mental illness, is not defined by it – as Vincent and the Doctor know, though there are monsters, we live in a Universe of infinite beauty.

Continued on next page…