Doctor Who, Series 5, Episode 7: Dreaming of the Valeyard.

DOCTOR WHO
‘Amy's Choice’
15/05/2010
BBC One

In the words of the Doctor's future wife, SPOILERS!!!

Now, with that formality out of the way, let's dwell on the first truly great episode of this series. 'Amy's Choice' is simply far more mature, believable and nuanced than any of the episodes that have gone before it, and probably every episode that will follow. The dialogue is excellent and the script is competent and well thought out. The story line is compelling and the pacing is wonderful. What more could you ask for? Well, maybe a plot that’s not akin to The Mind Robber, but you can’t have it all one supposes – nigh-on fifty-years worth of Who will led to some repetition after all.

The plot, for those who want it over and done with, is this: Via some psychic contamination, the Doctor's hate, guilt, self-loathing and sadism manifests itself as the 'Dream Lord' who puts the Doc, Rory and Amy through a literal nightmare (or three), forcing them to make some serious choices...

...This is ingenious simply because it allows the characters to either develop or reveal hitherto hidden depths. Amy learns she really loves Rory, while Rory proves how much he loves the deranged ginger tart in turn. The Doctor meanwhile is revealed as both solution, villain and matchmaker, using the experience to lead Amy away from him and choose Rory. In fact, it could be read as the Doctor using the experience all along to teach Amy that lesson, that one day the Doctor will have to leave her, and Rory is what she really wants. Rory meanwhile leaves behind his ideal, sterile 'reality' for the imperfect but more human and genuine reality that awaits him. He learns that having a house, a child on the way and a job as a country doctor isn't enough - he needs the truth more, his self-indulgent ponytail cut off as a gesture of adulthood.

This is of course probably the most brutal episode in years. There's at least two suicides, killer aliens hiding in the bodies of old people murdering children and postmen in equal measure, betrayal and barely repressed bitterness, a pregnancy that never comes to be, bereavement, major existential crises and the Doctor finally becoming what the new series has always seemed to want him to be: a villain, a monster and a dire foe.

This does of course fit in with one of Nu Who's worst traits, its deranged obsession with diminishing the Doctor and making him look like a total wanker. (Sort of a Reverse Spike, for all the Buffy fans that Nu Who in part is rather keen to woo.) This is so 1980s, when you think about it, but 'somewho' it all seems rather lame, an adolescent iconoclasm in an age where po-mo is dead and we really do need to pick sides again.

But that's the only quibble. This same conceit is inspired in many other ways - the 'Dream Lord', played with tangible malice and cruelty by Toby Jones, is both the conscience and the Greek chorus of the story, haunting the Doctor up to and including the last frame. You may care to watch the episode twice to see all the clues that reveal who he really is. It also puts the Doctor in a new light, no longer falling in love with his assistant but trying to save her from that fate and do the 'right thing'. (Everyone chooses to in this one, which may or may not be redemption, or simply a delay of the inevitable.) And yet, it is probably not the last time we will see the Dream Lord: He echoes the Doctor's future evil regeneration, the Valeyard (from the Colin Baker era, for all the completists out there), and may be seen as his warm-up. It isn't too much like Fight Club - just in case you're wondering.

So maybe they should just give in, stop trying to make the Doctor a hero and just make him a monster for a series or two, or at least make him amoral again, like William Hartnell's Doctor. But that might blow the gaff - after all, he's still meant to be at least officially a 'hero', albeit one that has shit hurled at him non-stop, and yet this episode suggests there's much to be explored if they actually had the balls to take it as far as it can go. They won't of course, but 'Amy's Choice' shows how it could be.

Matt Smith is also getting better, slowly but surely moulding his Doctor into something that's not entirely Tennant, but with much work left to do. Arthur Darvill's slightly beleaguered Rory really shines this time, his journey every bit as taught and troubled as the Doctor, whilst the non-stop low-level love/hate between the two is wonderful. Shockingly, Amy Pond (or Karen Gillan as her parents call her) is bearable here too, mainly because the script reins in her worst traits and forces her to evolve as a character too. 'So what is the point of you then?' she spits, as the Doctor reveals to her what we all know but which she was too immature to accept: the Doctor can't always save the day, and only a child can't agree with that fact. A child like Amy.

And yet the story is ultimately about love. Rory and Amy realise how much they love each other, and the Doctor reveals how much he loves them both too. But it's not a romantic love, but the kinf that is necessary if sometimes monstrous, leering back at the Doctor on the reflective surface of his Tardis console, not gone but simply waiting.

WHOPOINTS 8.5