Doctor Who - Series 5 - Episode 7 - "Amy's Choice'

As usual, this review contains spoilers, so read on with care.

One of only two writers new to Doctor Who this year (both of them veteran sit-com hands with a wealth of other experience besides – this is no longer a show which can develop new talent it seems), Simon Nye seems at first glance a curious writer to pick, but actually he fits into Moffat’s fairy tale vision of the show very neatly. As most will know, this is the season “cheapie”, filmed last to the almost audible sound of barrels scraping and wallets straining. Sometimes the season cheapie turns out to be a little gem like the shamefully overlooked Midnight. On other occasions we get the more dubious Love & Monsters or Boom Town (to say nothing of The Horns of Nimon or Time Flight). Certainly, this puts more weight on ideas than on execution, but Doctor Who has (almost) never been about visual spectacle.

Nye’s script was a very simple idea – possibly too simple. Toby Jones’ Dream Lord offers the now three-person TARDIS crew a puzzle to solve. Which is the true reality? And for a while, I was actually interested to see which it would turn out to be – forgetting the almost cast-iron Rule of Story Choices. This rule states that unless we know in advance which is the right choice (such as who such-and-such is supposed to marry) that given X choices, the hero of a story will pick none of them, either because the choice is no longer necessary or because an X+1th reveals itself. And so it proves to be here. The story has one more twist before the titles roll though, and one Nye can’t keep from us. Having promised that the Doctor knows exactly who the Dream Lord is, we have to have an explanation, and fandom primed itself for the revelation of The Celestial Toymaker, The Master or even (Verity save us) The Valeyard. This all seems a little foolish now, but we live in a post return-of-the-Macra world, so never say “never”.

The reveal that the Dream Lord was the Doctor certainly made sense of a lot of the foregoing, with or without the slightly naff space pollen (to me very redolent of Star Trek The Next Generation, both in conception and appearance) but seemed to lack any kind of sting or bite, and while the adventures in the two realities had some fun and clever moments, the key moments of death in each world were curiously muted. Why can’t we be with the Doctor and Amy as they hurtle towards that cottage? Why can’t we see the TARDIS disintegrating and the void of space wrenching them apart? Instead we just cut away.

Nye’s structure means he has to keep cutting back-and-forth between Leadworth (sorry, Upper Leadworth) and the increasingly refrigerated TARDIS with nowhere else to go and he does a decent job of continually upping the stakes, I just wanted some kind of third act complication if only for variety. But while we keep just flipping back and forth it’s all too apparent that Leadworth is where the real action is, whereas back on the TARDIS, there’s little more than chat and ponchos. This means that the performances and dialogue have to really work hard, and luckily Nye, Smith, Gillan and Darvill are all up to the task, but while the ending was satisfactory and the concept neat, I felt the whole was just a little underwhelming, with the possible exception of Amy’s reaction to Rory’s “death”, which was beautifully handled by all concerned.

A few other niggles. Why is the Doctor’s savagely cheeky line “how do you stave off the, you know, self-harm?” talked over? Why is the exterior lighting/grading suddenly so flat and EastEnders-y after the lovely tones and shades we got in what is supposed to be the same location in The Eleventh Hour? Bad weather? Another eye on the end of a pseudopod? Really!?

Three and a half stars, but I’m in a good mood cos it’s the Silurians next week!