Amy's Choice

Okay, this blog is (probably) not going to be all Doctor Who all the time, but it is my favorite show, and many of these episodes have really interesting elements to them that, being obsessive, I can’t just ignore.

So I just finished watching the newest episode “Amy’s Choice,” and I currently have a lot of half-formed ideas and opinions that I will now foist upon the world—some of which may come into play later on in the season.

As a whole, the episode was really good—miles better than “Vampires of Venice.” The monsters were cool, the conclusion was really emotional and dramatic, and it proved what we’ve all known for some time: old people are terrifying.

I had high hopes for the episode from just the title. “Amy’s Choice” led me to think that Amy would be getting back some of the agency that she lost last week, and it worked out that way, to an extent. In the episode, the Doctor, Amy, and Rory are confronted with two dangerous situations in two different realities—one of which they are told is a dream and one of which is the real universe—and it becomes Amy’s job to choose which one is which. The reason for this is not entirely clear. The episode’s villain of the week, the “Dream Lord” claims that it’s because the Doctor and Rory are “Amy’s men,” and will abide by whatever she chooses. Upon reflection, maybe it’s more because the reality of the TARDIS flying into the cold star is clearly the Doctor’s world while the reality of the tiny village and pregnant Amy is clearly Rory’s world, and Amy is the one stuck in the middle of the two?

Anyway, so Amy finally chooses, but only after Rory dies in the tiny village reality and she decides that she doesn’t want to live without him. Although, if the Doctor had been the one to die in the tiny village reality, I feel like Amy would have done the same thing. Basically after anyone died in either reality, I would expect the other two to follow suit, and prove that the other reality was the real one, so the tension was sort of gone after that moment. I'm no television writer, but I think I would rather that Amy were forced to choose without Rory dying. The choice was too easy whether she was in love with him or not, especially since Amy didn’t seem too keen on Rory’s reality anyway, and only pretended to like it because she didn't want to hurt Rory's feelings. I wish she could have confronted Rory about what she really wanted—because it’s possibly to love Rory and yet not necessarily want to live an ultra-quiet life staying home and nine months pregnant and cooking and living with a husband who makes such unfortunate hairstyle choices. Wanting Rory and a life of adventure don’t have to be mutually exclusive.

Then there’s the Doctor. I started the season very ambivalent about him, but since then, I’ve started to see real differences between him and David Tennant. In “Flesh and Stone,” particularly, he showed a very tender side with Amy. In “Vampires of Venice,” though, he denied Amy’s agency by insisting that Amy loved Rory. Now, "Amy's Choice" has the Doctor competing with Rory for Amy’s affections in a way sort of reminiscent of Mickey and Nine, but in a more annoying way, especially in light of last week. There is a wonderful moment, though, when Amy decides to kill herself in Rory’s reality, and the Doctor completely accepts her decision and calmly, trustingly, gets in the car beside her.

In this ep, though, it seems that the Doctor has mostly lost his mojo. He just doesn’t seem to do a whole lot. And maybe it’s his youth (visually speaking), but Amy and Rory, as companions, seem to have very little respect for him, which is, on one hand, good that they’re not treating him like an all-powerful god who’s so much better than them, but also a bit disturbing. Furthermore, we find out that the Dream Lord was actually the Doctor’s dark side made manifest (or something), which is a cool idea, but, judging from the dialogue in most of the scenes with hero and villain together, it seems that this Doctor is somehow very, very self-conscious. Actually more than that: he's self-loathing. And again, while I don’t want him cocky, I also don’t want him always doubting himself. It just doesn’t seem very “Doctor-ish” to me.