507: Amy’s Choice
This week sees the Doctor caught between a rock and a hard place – between Amy and Rory. Luckily, the three characters are on hand to deliver another good episode in a crafty and quirky story designed to mess with the viewers’ heads as much as the Doctor’s.
Five years have passed since the Doctor bid Amy farewell and she’s now married to – and pregnant with the child of – local doctor Rory. The two are living in a quiet, cosy village in the countryside where the only interesting thing going on are the couple’s walks. Suddenly the three fall asleep and find themselves on board the TARDIS with the power rapidly failing and are given a choice by a man calling himself the Dream Lord – they need to choose which reality is the real world and they need to find out by dying in the one they believe to be a dream. With the Doctor choosing his beloved TARDIS and Rory opting for the idyllic life he imagines his future to be, the final decision is Amy’s. Will she choose the right life and the right man with it?
Don’t be distracted by the show’s gentle spookiness or the creepy idea of a middle-aged man screwing with your head – the episode’s real purpose is to try and resolve the sexual tension between the three cast members and move on. Unlike the Mickey-Rose saga of previous series, the whole point of this one is to move past that sexual quandary before it becomes stale (again). Mercifully, this task is handled beautifully and the episode’s feel is one of satisfaction.
There are a few bones to pick, though – it doesn’t really make the most of the idea, the situation is slightly too obvious in its ‘which man will Amy choose?’ setup, the scene where the postman rides in and gets killed is unintentionally hilarious, the explanation for what’s really going on is pure bollocks and why are all the enemies in this series so far really slow-moving?
Having said that, the episode is still pretty good, managing to move the story along, keep the characters consistent and provide a few good sci-fi scares along the way. And the bit where the Doctor shoves an old lady out of a window with a table lamp is brilliant.
7/10
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Well lets face it the Mickey-Rose-Doctor love triangle was non event. Mickey was her dopey, shag-ever-so-often, boyfriend. She picked up the gay guy from Coronation Street in series 1. Then Captain Jack as well.
Mickey was there as a nod to modern slightly nebulous sexual relationships without the defined boundaries that previous, and lets face it more emotionally healthy, generations had.
Rory, emasculated, befuddled, man-child wanders after his betrothed absorbing the insults of a self-esteem bereft primadonna with abandonment issues. The freckly red-head proves as distasteful as the breed can only be shown by Doctor Who, taking every opportunity to ignore, control, dominate and insult a man who, if properly motivated could probably be classified as functional in a few years time. Rory is a poor message to young men, in that the only way to get on with a troublesome girlfriend is to endure mountains of verbal abuse. Donna 2.0 wonderfully conveys feminism as she rends her intended’s knackers from his proverbial body at every opportunity. She is a text book case of a emotionally troubled young woman described inaccurately as “strong and feisty” getting away with it.
Making Rory so pathetic sounds warning bells due to the constant and continual comparison between him and the Doctor. It is unfortunate that the Doctor does not possess enough gravitas or charisma to stand up against comparison to, someone who is a functioning man. Did the writers deliberately come up with drone-like simpering eunuch because normal blokes made him look bad? Was Rory originally supposed to be a normal guy who they changed to be this way due to the flimsiness of the new Doctor?
The Dream Lord was something once again directly lifted from X-Men comics, professor Xavier’s evil side projecting out into the world and causing hallucinations. It was patently obvious both realities were dreams due to the fact that there was no other way to write it for it to make any kind of sense and the identity of the dream lord, which I suspected and was certain of with the line “No one hates me as much as you do” by the Doctor.
5/10