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“Drop it, drop all of it. I know who you are.”
“Course you don’t.”
“Course I do. No idea how you can be here, but there’s only one person in the universe who hates me as much as you do.”
Well, that was a strange one, wasn’t it? After watching ‘Amy’s Choice’ on Saturday evening, I honestly had no idea what I thought – if you’d asked me there and then, I couldn’t have even told you if I’d enjoyed it or not. Being the dedicated fan (/nerd) that I am, I thought that would never do, so I gave it another go to get my feelings about it clear in my head.
On second viewing, knowing what the real deal with the Dream Lord is, all his interactions with the Doctor take on a much more sinister, scary tone. Admittedly, it’s not the greatest twist in the history of artistic creation, but it was enough to give the episode an intriguing edge. Toby Jones was as marvellous as you’d expect – his continual probing of the Doctor, mirroring his worst aspects, is sinister before you know the twist, but even more so after.
The other major point of the episode, forcing Amy to choose between the Doctor and Rory, was really well done as well. I like that Rory is her first choice, that she acknowledges the attraction of the Doctor but sees that he can’t give her what she wants deep down. Karen Gillan really shines in the scene after Rory’s dream death, and I’m really warming to Arthur Darvill – the scene where they wake up in the frozen TARDIS and silently hold hands was genuinely touching.
I couldn’t help but think about what this episode would have been like if it had been written by a different writer. I really liked the central ideas, but they did at times get lost with all the other things that were going on. The scary, possessed old people were great fun, but they didn’t really gel very well with the rest of the episode, while the sitcom-style humour really jarred at points (although “If we’re going to die, let’s die looking like a Peruvian folk band” is a new contender for best line of the series). The emotional scenes were beautifully acted by the three lead actors, but I found myself wondering what the scenes after Rory’s death would have been like had they been written by Russell T. Davies. He always excelled at the big emotional scenes, whereas here, it was mostly the strength of Karen Gillan and Matt Smith that gave them emotional weight.
An intriguing rather than brilliant episode, ‘Amy’s Choice’ was still a nice change of pace from last week’s fun romp. And there’s one element of it that I was never in doubt about – the Doctor’s blue shirt, tie and braces ensemble. That was most certainly a winner.
Next week, an old Who monster returns in the form of the Silurians, the lizard race that originally inhabited the Earth. So, something completely different again, then? Excellent.
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