Amy's Choice (TV story)

Amy's Choice was the seventh episode of the fifth series of BBC Wales Doctor Who. It focused on Amy's relationship with the Doctor and Rory as well as the darker side of the Doctor.

Synopsis
It has been five years since Amy Pond last travelled with the Eleventh Doctor, and when he lands in her garden she finds herself facing a heartbreaking choice – one that will change her life forever. They will have to choose which is the dream world and which is reality.

Plot
Upper Leadworth, 2015: Amy is stirring a bowl of icing, but starts to feel pain in her pregnant body. A pony-tailed Rory arrives on his bike as Amy screams his name. He rushes in, thinking the baby is coming. It's not a contraction, merely a false alarm. Amy's pain subsides. They are about to resume their routines when the TARDIS materialises outside their kitchen window. The Doctor exits the TARDIS whilst Rory and Amy hurry to greet him. Hugs are exchanged and the Doctor states how happy they look five years after they last travelled with him. Rory and Amy take the Doctor on a walk through their new hometown, explaining that most of the village's population are quite elderly. The trio sit on a bench and discuss life in Upper Leadworth. The Doctor fails to hide his exasperation with the dull tedium of it all. They fall asleep to the sound of birdsong to wake up in the TARDIS, five years earlier. Rory describes a dream he had, consisting of the above events. It becomes apparent Amy and the Doctor had the dream. Something is wrong, but before they can decide what, they fall asleep and find themselves in Upper Leadworth again.

The Doctor goes to a retirement home. "There's something out of place - let's go and poke it with a stick." Inside, the Doctor notices something odd about all of the residents, especially Mrs. Poggit, who makes him try on a jumper. The three fall asleep again, waking in a powerless TARDIS. A strange man who calls himself the 'Dream Lord' appears. He is testing them: one of the worlds they are drifting between is fake, the other real. In each they will be in deadly danger. They must decide which is which. If they are killed in the dream world, they will wake in the real one for good. However, death in the real world is just that, death. The Doctor, Amy, and Rory fall asleep again.

Waking up in Leadworth and arguing over which world is real, the Doctor notices all the old people have gone. They venture outside, to see Mrs. Poggit watching school children. Before they can get close, they again fall asleep to the birdsong. Back in the TARDIS, they learn the first deadly danger: the TARDIS is drifting towards a cold star, and they only have forty minutes before they are killed. Waking in Leadworth, they find the children missing, piles of dust in their place. The Doctor and Amy deduce what has happened. When they turn, many old people are walking towards them. The Dream Lord appears and taunts that the 'Attack of the Old People' must be the dream. The Doctor deduces who the Dream Lord is; there is only one person in the universe that hates him so much. The geriatrics reveal they are the Eknodine, aliens which use humans as hosts, completely hidden except for eyestalks they can poke out of the mouths. Their homeworld was destroyed. They will destroy the human race to make a new home for themselves. The Eknodine try to kill the three, but the Doctor, Amy, and Rory split up and manage to escape. Amy and Rory reach the safety of their cottage, beating up an old lady. The Doctor however...

Stumbling through the streets as drowsiness tears at him, an army of seniors are in close pursuit. He enters a butcher shop only to be greeted by the Dream Lord. He tries the back door, then runs behind the counter. The Dream Lord politely greets the oldsters with a pun and mockingly claims he cannot watch. With a final push, the Doctor locks himself inside the freezer before passing out. He wakes in the TARDIS with the others. They argue over which reality is the real one. While the Doctor rants the Dream Lord reappears, slyly proclaiming he should split them up, so that he may have a chat with the young lady. The Doctor and Rory fall asleep but Amy remains in the freezing TARDIS scenario.

Rory "awakens" to find the house under siege from the elderly. He quickly gets the unconscious Amy upstairs to the nursery for their unborn child, apologising for each step he bumps her on. The Doctor, meanwhile, calmly primes his sonic screwdriver and opens the door, supercharging the lightbulb and blinding the Eknodines to escape. He finds a man and a van under attack by a senior citizen. He leaps into action and rescues several people with the van. He gets them to the safety of a church before going to find his friends. The Dream Lord emerges in a Nascar suit and taunts the Doctor regarding his waning relationship with past companions.

Meanwhile the Dream Lord confronts Amy; anything could happen now that they are alone. Defiant, Amy ignores his lechery, snapping back. He makes it obvious to her that she is not the first girl to travel with the Doctor. He questions her romantic inclinations, claiming that Rory is nothing compared to the Doctor yet suggesting "settling for" Rory would be preferable to loving and losing the Doctor. He tells her they await her decision: "Amy's men, Amy's choice."

Amy wakes/dreams she is back in Leadworth, just as the Doctor enters through the window of the nursery, more unsure of which reality is which then ever. Rory is attacked by Mrs. Poggit, and he is dissolved to dust. Before he dies, he tells Amy to "look after our baby." Distraught, Amy decides that the Leadworth reality is the dream; it cannot be real because Rory isn't with her. She and the Doctor make their way past the suddenly-docile Eknodines to the van. Before giving her the keys, the Doctor asks her if she is sure about what she is about to do. Amy replies that she is, that even if it is real, she doesn't want to live in a world without Rory. As the Dream Lord silently watches, the two drive the van straight into the house, killing themselves and several Eknodines in the process.

The Doctor, Amy, and Rory wake in the TARDIS, almost frozen, but alive. The Dream Lord appears. He concedes defeat, congratulating them on finding reality. He pulls the TARDIS away from the cold star, turns the heat back on and vanishes. The Doctor, however, is not convinced and sets the TARDIS to self-destruct, despite Amy and Rory's protests, creating a blinding flash of white light.

The three wake in the TARDIS again. The Doctor shows Amy and Rory specks of Psychic Pollen from the Candle Meadows of Karass Don Slava that had fallen into the Time rotor and heated up, creating the dream state. After blowing the pollen into space, the Doctor reveals the Dream Lord was really the dark side of his own personality, manifested by the pollen. Rory asks Amy what stopped the Leadworth dream, having forgotten his 'death'. Amy tells him, confessing that she did not know which world was real, but could not live without him. Rory kisses Amy, and, when asked by the Doctor where to go next, tells him that it is "Amy's choice". As he works the TARDIS' controls, the Doctor briefly sees the Dream Lord's face in the console, smiling sinisterly at him.

Cast

 * Eleventh Doctor - Matt Smith
 * Amy Pond - Karen Gillan
 * Rory Williams - Arthur Darvill
 * The Dream Lord - Toby Jones
 * Mr. Nainby - Nick Hobbs
 * Mrs. Poggit - Audrey Ardington
 * Mrs. Hamil - Joan Linder

The Doctor

 * The Dream Lord brings up the Tenth Doctor's relationship with Elizabeth I.
 * The Doctor says he is 907.
 * The Doctor claims to hate himself more than anyone else in the universe (After realising the Dream Lord is his dark side personified).
 * The Dream Lord talks about the Doctor's many relationships with different women.
 * The Dream Lord makes a sly reference to Donna Noble, by saying "Loves a red head our naughty Doctor."
 * The Doctor again mentions the fact that he disagreed with the TARDIS instruction manual.

TARDIS

 * The Doctor states that he threw the TARDIS Instruction Manual into a supernova because he 'disagreed' with it.

Time travel

 * The Doctor initially assumes that the TARDIS has jumped a time track.

Story notes

 * The hostile aliens possessing the old folks are known as the Eknodine.
 * Technically, the entire episode took place in the TARDIS.
 * The box under the TARDIS console the Doctor opens has the words: "TARDIS. Time And Relative Dimension In Space. Build Site: Gallifrey Blackhole Shipyard. Type 40. Build date: 1963. Authorised for use by qualified Time Lords only by the Shadow Proclamation. Misuse or theft of any TARDIS will result in extreme penalties and permanent exile." written on it. This is also written on a plaque on the console itself, as shown in the TARDIS tour on the BBC website.
 * This is the first story of Series 5 not to have any cracks, silence or foreshadowing of the finale.
 * There is no indication of how much time has passed since DW: The Vampires of Venice.
 * The sign outside the old peoples' home reads "SARN Residential Care Home". Planet Sarn was the setting for DW: Planet of Fire and was also the name of a character in DW: Time and the Rani.
 * This is the only episode of Series 5 that is not referred to in any way later in the series.
 * This episode aired on the same day as the K9 episode, The Cambridge Spy was first broadcast on Disney XD in Britain. It also aired on the same day that The Fall of the House of Gryffen was first broadcast on Network Ten in Australia.
 * The van the Doctor uses to rescue the survivors has the license plate 'ADW 308N'. Fan speculation believe this could be an hint to the conclusion of the story. ADW meaning A Dream World, and the numbers on the plate adding to 11, the current incarnation of the Doctor.

Ratings

 * Overnight ratings were 6.2 million (5.9 million on BBC1, 0.3 million on HD) for a 33.0% share.
 * The Appreciation Index was 84.
 * The final BARB ratings were 7.55 million (7.06 million on BBC1, 0.49 million on HD).

Rumours

 * The 'Dream Lord' was rumoured to pretend to be the Doctor because of a shot of him inside the TARDIS wearing the Eleventh Doctor's costume in the trailer. He was, in fact, the dark side of the Doctor.
 * Aunt Sharon will appear. This was false.
 * The Dream Lord is an early form of the Valeyard. This was left unconfirmed.
 * This episode was rumoured to be Doctor-lite to match the companion-lite episode, The Lodger. This was false.

Filming locations
Skenfrith, Wales, UK

Production errors

 * When Rory and Amy are running from the Eknodine, there is clearly no mud on his back, but he was thrown on his back into mud a minute before.
 * When the schoolchildren walk across the field, not all of them wear raincoats. However, in the next Leadworth scene, every pile of dust had a raincoat next to it.
 * When Rory is attacked by the Eknodine, he has time to say parting words, yet when others are turned to dust, itis instantaneous. Also, all the others are dissolved from the point of impact downward, yet Rory was hit in the face and his legs dissolved first.
 * In the scenes where the Doctor is driving in the van and picking people up, there appears to be no back seat because three families can fit. However, earlier, when the Dream Lord appears in the van, he is sitting in the back seat.
 * The Doctor's clothing beneath his jacket changes in different scenes
 * The studio ceiling can be glimpsed briefly in the upper right-hand corner when the Doctor says that he threw the TARDIS manual in a supernova.

Continuity

 * This episode is the first since DW: Rose that features the given name of the companion in the title not counting DW: Smith and Jones, as that included the surname of Martha Jones.
 * The Dream Lord teleports around much as the Valeyard did in DW: The Ultimate Foe.
 * The Dream Lord refers to the Doctor as the 'last of the Time Lords' and 'The Oncoming Storm', two of his epiphets. (DW: Doomsday, Journey's End et al.)
 * The Doctor mentions again that bow ties are cool. (DW: The Eleventh Hour)
 * The Dream Lord refers to what happened between Tenth Doctor and Queen Elizabeth I. (DW: The Shakespeare Code, The End of Time, The Beast Below)
 * The Doctor initially assumes that the TARDIS has jumped a Time track, as it did in DW: The Space Museum.
 * The Dream Lord says "I'm surprised you haven't got a little purple space dog", an oblique reference to K9.
 * The Doctor tries to jump start the TARDIS by kicking it. (DW: Rise of the Cybermen)
 * The Doctor refers to throwing the TARDIS Instruction Manual into a supernova because he 'disagreed with it'. The Doctor had an instruction manual in DW: The Pirate Planet and disagreed with it (even tearing a page out of it). It's assumed to be the same manual.
 * The Doctor uses his stethoscope for the first time in his eleventh incarnation.
 * The Dream Lord accuses the Doctor of abandoning his companions in favour of younger friends, echoing remarks by Sarah Jane Smith about the Tenth Doctor and his relationship with Rose Tyler. (DW: School Reunion)
 * The Dream Lord, once alone with Amy, echoes a conversation Jackie Tyler had with the Ninth Doctor that 'anything could happen'. (DW: Rose)
 * After Rory dies in the dream, Amy asks the Doctor "What is the point of you?". Gwen asks the same of Jack after Rhys dies (TW: End of Days) and what the Doctor asks a Dalek. (DW: Dalek)
 * The swimming pool is referenced, and apparently has turned up; the Doctor said that "it'll turn up" in DW: The Eleventh Hour. Leela swam in the pool in the DW: The Invasion of Time.
 * Amy says "Can we not do the running thing?", which seems to be a running gag in Series Four and Series Five.
 * The Dream Lord taunts the Doctor with "I bet you're a vegetarian!" in a butcher's shop and then by calling him "veggie", perhaps referring to his failed vegetarianism. This originated at the end of DW: The Two Doctors but he has since been seen many times to have lapsed (even ordering steak in DW: Boom Town).
 * In the dreams, the Doctor wears both variations of his outfit. He wears the teal version in Upper Leadworth and his maroon version in the TARDIS.
 * When Amy is alone with the Dream Lord, he asks her if she thinks The Doctor tells her everything, to which she replies that he does. The Dream Lord then asks her if she knows his real name. This refers to DW: Silence in the Library and Forest of the Dead in which River Song whispers the Doctor's name into his ear and he is shocked that she knows it and later says that there is only one way he could ever tell anyone his name, but never explains what that way is.

Timeline

 * This story occurs after NSA: Nuclear Time
 * This story occurs before NSA: The King's Dragon

Home video releases
BBC Video - Doctor Who Series Five - Volume Three was released on Monday 2nd August 2010 (UK Only) on DVD and Blu-ray, featuring Amy's Choice, The Hungry Earth and Cold Blood.