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Original Transmission
Cast The Doctor Matt Smith
Crew Written by Simon Nye
Plot outline from Wikipedia Five years after she last travelled with the Doctor, Amy is now pregnant and living in Upper Leadworth married to Rory. The Doctor lands the TARDIS outside their house, and seems just as astonished by Rory's new ponytail as Amy's pregnancy. While sitting on a bench in the village, the three fall asleep - only to wake up back inside the TARDIS. When they all figure out that they have just had the same dream, they decide that strange forces are at work, but fall asleep again and awake in Leadworth. The Doctor points out a retirement home where a large number of the village's population are living. When Rory and Amy take him inside, the Doctor seems to find something a little odd about all of the residents, particularly the elderly Mrs Poggit (Audrey Ardington). The three collapse again in the middle of the room and wake in the TARDIS - but this time they are confronted by a strange figure calling himself the 'Dream Lord' (Toby Jones), who shuts off the TARDIS' power supply. The Dream Lord gives the three a challenge: one of the two worlds they are drifting between is real, while the other is fake. In each world, they will face 'a deadly danger', and if they are killed in the fake world, they will wake up permanently in the real one. Of course, death in the real world will be permanent, so the Dream Lord advises them to take their pick very carefully.
Back in Leadworth, the Doctor notices that all of the elderly residents have moved away from the room. After spotting Mrs Poggit watching over a group of children, he moves in for a closer look, but collapses before he can reach her. Inside the TARDIS, they see the first danger: they are slowly drifting towards a freezing cold star, and they only have a short time to save themselves. After waking up in Leadworth, they find that the children have been somehow reduced to dust. When they turn around, a large group of residents are heading towards them. The elderly reveal themselves to be aliens known as the Eknodine, small green eye stalks which use humans as hosts. Poggit explains that their race was very nearly killed off, and that they plan to do the same to other races. The Eknodine try to turn the three into dust -- as they have done with the children -- simply by breathing on them, but Doctor and his Companions manage to get away.
The Doctor leads away the large group of aliens, and locks himself in the storage room of a butcher's shop when he starts to fall asleep. Amy and Rory escape to their house and fall asleep on their staircase. In the TARDIS, the Dream Lord tells them that they do not have long in either of the two worlds, and that they must decide which of the worlds is real soon. Amy stays in the TARDIS while Rory and the Doctor try to defend themselves from the Eknodine in Leadworth. Waking up on the staircase, Rory drags the sleeping Amy up into what will be their baby's room. The Doctor escapes from the butcher's and takes a camper van towards Amy's house, rescuing a number of civilians on the way. The Dream Lord questions Amy as to who she would choose between Rory and the Doctor; he states that she should choose between the worlds, because one leads to a peaceful married life with Rory while the other leads to adventure and excitement with the Doctor.
Amy falls asleep and wakes up beside Rory in their house. The Doctor arrives at the house just as Mrs Poggit climbs up to the window; in an attempt to protect Amy, who is going into labour, Rory tries to fight her off, but she breathes on him and knocks him back. The Doctor pushes her back and she falls to the ground below, but Rory turns to dust when he turns back round. Amy decides that she will always value Rory more than the Doctor, despite the fact that she was visibly unsure before his death. Amy decides that the world in Leadworth with the Ecnodeen is the fake, and that if they all die there they will be able to save themselves in reality and she will be reunited with Rory. Even if Leadworth is the real world, she doesn't care if she dies there because she now knows that she can't live without Rory. The Doctor and Amy storm outside past the Eknodine and climb into the camper van; Amy then crashes it into the house at full speed, killing them both.
The Doctor, Amy and Rory all wake up in the TARDIS. The Dream Lord reactivates it mere seconds before it crashes and states that they have made the correct choice and that he has been defeated, he then leaves. However, Amy and Rory are shocked when the Doctor sets the TARDIS to explode. When they ask him why, he says that it is because both worlds are not real and that he knows this because he knows who the Dream Lord really is. The three awake for the last time in the real TARDIS. Amy and Rory find the Doctor holding several specks resembling crystals. The Doctor tells them that they are specks of psychic pollen which had fallen into the TARDIS and heated up, which then made them fall asleep. He blows them out of the door and into space. He then reveals that the Dream Lord was actually a physical incarnation of his darker side, as the pollen acts as a parasite which feeds on people's dark sides and builds them into physical forms. Rory asks Amy why she was so sure that Leadworth was the fake world after he died; Amy replies that she wasn't sure at all; she just wanted to be with him again, which Rory is delighted to hear. The Doctor begins to fly the TARDIS away, and sees an image of the Dream Lord smiling slyly at him in his reflection on the console.
Analysis by Cuisle A preview of the episode that appeared online complained that it wasn’t special enough. But I think it’s time to stop worrying about what some of the nitpickers think. The Doctor, Rory and Amy were trapped in a pair of alternating realities, one of which they were told was a dream, both of which they would face danger in. Which was real, which reality. It is not, in fact, the first time The Doctor had to face dilemmas like this. In The Deadly Assassin, he had to face his worst enemy in the dream world of the Matrix, and again in Ultimate Foe. Even further back, stories like Mind Robbers questioned the nature of reality.
But it is the first time since the 2005 revival that The Doctor has had to question his own senses this way. And it made quite an engaging story. Anyone who watched it and wasn’t torn between the two realities wasn’t paying attention. They also didn’t think about the title. Amy’s Choice. Although the Dream Lord was using The Doctor to create the two worlds, it was Amy who held the key to it all. She had to decide whether the idyllic country village life where she and Rory are about to become parents is her reality or the one where they are still travelling in the TARDIS on the night before their wedding. Tough choice. Making her pregnant in one reality was quite cruel. How many women could turn their back on that reality?
Of course, in the end, both are dreams. The Doctor works it out once Amy has made her desperate choice. He also realises that the Dream Lord is his own dark side manifesting itself. Hands up everyone who thinks that there’s a similarity between the Dream Lord and the Valeyard, also meant to be the dark side of The Doctor which is meant to exist between his 12th and 13th incarnations. But honestly, don’t get hung up on that. It really doesn’t matter. The Doctor admits he has a dark side. And that’s good enough. What does surprise me, especially after talking to some younger viewers, is that there hasn’t been a moral outrage from mums.net or some other puritan organisation about the fact that The Doctor pushed an old lady out of a window and off a roof and Rory hit one around the head with a plank. Did they miss this one? I really am surprised they aren’t going on about it. The well-balanced kids I know all realise there is a difference between hitting old ladies possessed by aliens and hitting the old ladies at church. The sort of kids that do like hitting vulnerable people don’t need TV to show them how. But all the same, you could feel the ghost of Mary Whitehouse stirring a bit.
Oh, and did you notice it was snowing in some of the scenes? When
Britain was at a standstill and Coronation Street and Emmerdale both
shut down, Doctor Who carried on. The long winter of 2010 is commemorated
in some lovely scenes with summer flowers in the gardens and Amy and
Rory in light clothes doing a remarkable job of not freezing to death.
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