Life lessons learned from Doctor Who

you definitely need a hand to hold

The best part of a new series of Doctor Who is the never-ending deluge of NewWho episodes in the days and nights leading up to the premiere. (Well, at any rate, it’s better than seeing a never-ending list of ST:TNG episodes in the TiVo menu.)

Tonight, we watched “Vincent and the Doctor”. (I’ve blogged about my love of this episode before.)

It’s kind of timely… for me at least. And here’s why:

Robin Wiliams committed suicide. It was all over the news. It sparked discussions about depression. Both good and bad.

Maybe you have to be clinically depressed/suicidal to understand why someone who seemingly had it all would kill themselves… but if you don’t, take a lesson from Eleven’s time with Van Gogh:

At the end of the episode, the Doctor brings Vincent to Paris in 2010 so that he can see the exhibit about his art. In front of Vincent, Eleven asks the curator his opinion on Van Gogh. The curator says, “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.”

Think about that for a minute.

One hundred and twenty years after he kills himself, Van Gogh is brought to Paris to see a celebration of his art, hears that he is the world’s greatest artist, and it isn’t enough for him. He still kills himself when he is returned to his own time. He still kills himself, fully aware of what people think of his art, of HIM, a century later.

Did you catch that, internet?

All the love and admiration in the world, and it wasn’t enough to free Van Gogh of his demons.

So why should Robin Williams be any different, huh?

(And yes, I know the difference between fiction and real life, but in this case? Not such a big stretch.)