Amy's Choice

So... what do you do around here to stave off the... self harm? - The Doctor

So, it's five years into the future and it's very plain to see Amy's been busy. There are cupcakes everywhere. Rory too has had a slight change, adopting a pony tail and getting a doctorate. The two parents-to-be have also moved upmarket to Upper Leadworth, where everyone lives into their nineties and the birds won't stop singing.

So it's five years into the past and the Doctor has woken up from a nightmare in which he was visiting a pregnant Amy and a pony tail adorned Rory in a sleepy little upmarket village called Upper... wait a minute, this all sounds vaguely familiar...

"Whack her!"

This episode is an absolute mind fuck, and it's also amazingly good. When we consider too that this is Nye's first foray into Sci-fi, becomes that little extra special. The premise is simple:

"Two worlds. One here, in the time machine, one there, in the village that time forgot. One is real, the other's fake." - The Dream Lord

And so a choice needs to be made. Oddly enough this is possibly both the funniest and scariest episode at the same time. The principle nemesis of Upper Leadworth being the Eknodines, or psychopathic old people to you and me. They become sinister, crawling along in their zimmer frames over field and over dune, much the same way as zombies and Triffids have done in other horror stories. Aside from that they add a bit of humour to the story, clobbering old ladies with logs, lamping them off roofs and watching them shuffle forward with a lawn mower, like some sort of modernised grim reaper.

"The old man prefers the company of the young, does he not?"

I love the Dream Lord for, if nothing else, having a proper bow tie. Other than that he has a darkness in him that comes through as playful rather than sinister, but all the same being completely under his influence is a scary thought. His cutting remarks to the Doctor including having terrible hair, clothes designed by a first year fashion student and being an intergalactic wag give us an interesting insight into The Doctor's own mindset, as we find out The Dream Lord is just a personification of Doc's dark side.

"Star burning cold do me a favour!"

This story also has one of those endings that makes you go 'now why didn't I think of that?!', and of course, you didn't. The revelation that both Leadworth and the TARDIS were dreams was a nice twist for me and that the true menace was a combination of pollen and The Doctor, two typically mundane things, flipped on their heads. A few references in this episode includes The Doctor shagging Elizabeth I, bow ties and the TARDIS being built in 1963, as homage to the year the series began. Hopefully the Silurians next week can match this, but I doubt it.