Doctor Who: 11 Cool Details We Just Learned About Vincent And The Doctor

3. The "Tears Of Joy" Line Came From A French Documentary

Doctor Who Vincent and the Doctor Matt Smith Karen Gillan
BBC/Twitter: @emmafreud

Unsurprisingly, Vincent gets very teary-eyed when the Doctor takes him to modern-day Paris and shows him around the Van Gogh section of the Musée d'Orsay.

But, as the character himself states, they aren't tears of sadness - they're "tears of joy."

According to Curtis, this particular line was taken from a French documentary film called Elle S’Appelle Sabine - or, translating to English, Her Name Is Sabine.

Directed by Sandrine Bonnaire, the movie is about her sister, Sabine, who goes through a lot of troubles in her life and is forced to live in protected care as a result. At the end of the film, Sandrine shows Sabine some old video footage, taken back when Sabine's life was "better". This makes Sabine cry, causing Sandrine to try and turn the footage off. However, she's stopped by Sabine, who says that they are "tears of joy".

They say that inspiration can be found in the unlikeliest of places, so it's perfectly normal that Curtis borrowed one of the episode's key lines from an obscure French flick released in 2007.

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Danny has been with WhatCulture for almost nine years, and is currently Doctor Who Editor and WhoCulture Channel Manager, overseeing all of WhatCulture's Whoniverse coverage. He has been writing and video editing for 10+ years, and first got a taste for content creation after making his own Doctor Who trailers and uploading them to YouTube (they're admittedly a bit rusty by today's standards). If you need someone to recite every Doctor Who episode in order or to tell you about the making of 1988's Remembrance of the Daleks, Danny is the person to ask.