Tags: Doctor Who
I missed reviewing the previous episode, shoot me. Amy's Choice begins to redeem the last five minutes of Flesh and Stone (where Amy started to choose the Doctor) and that has me beathing a sigh of relief. Plus this episode makes it clearer what's going on with the episode-long story arc. And finally it is an excellent story in it's own right.
This story pops back and forth between two realities. One is back in Ledworth (Upper Ledworth to be exact) where Amy and Rory are having marital bliss in small town rural England. The other real it is in a dead TARDIS that's slowly drifting into an ice star, whatever that would be. The adversary is a "dream lord" who is putting them through this test which threatens to kill them. The main thrust of it is for Amy to make a choice between her two 'boys'. They have to choose which of the realities are rea when both seem so real. Except, it does seem rather nutty that a star would be cold.
Themes again include the stuff which resides in the subconscious, eyes, mouths, and the stuff we don't normally look at. The main 'monster' are these old people who have been infested by creatures where all we see are eyes on eyestalks. Eyes. Yup. What do the eyes see? Hm, it's when they open their mouths and the eye can see, that's when people die. Hence it fits with the theme of the unseen stuff being dangerous.
The dream lord we learn is actually part of the Doctors self who came out into reality to run this test on them. Again fitting the theme of the subconscious parts of us. We all have subconscious selves which have negative intent and we al have negative self image of one sort or another. That's the part of the Doctor which came out in this episode and had a lot of really negative things to say about himself.
I find it interesting that this episode was dreams becoming reality. One of the odd lines in the Weeping Angels twoparter had to do with dreams which come out to play in reality. What if our dreams could become real? Not all of them are pretty, yes?
All through the episode I felt this dream lord was really the Valliard. And I'm vindicated by two podcasts where the presenters say the same thing. One of them claim e Doctor had the setup figured out early in the story. If so it's curious why he let it play out. Maybe it was so that Amy would actually make her choice and get it over with.
It's still not any clearer what the cracks are and interesting that there was no obvious crack in this episode. However in the final scene the dream lords face showed as e reflection of the Doctors face implying that the dream lord will be back.
