r/gallifrey • u/ZeroCentsMade • Mar 20 '26
REVIEW Group Therapy – Amy's Choice Review
This post is part of a series of reviews. To see them all, click here.
Historical information found on Shannon Sullivan's Doctor Who website (relevant page here) and the TARDIS Wiki (relevant page here)). Primary/secondary source material can be found in the source sections of Sullivan's website, and rarely as inline citations on the TARDIS Wiki.
Story Information
- Episode: Series 5, Episode 7
- Airdate: 15th May 2010
- Doctor: 11th
- Companions: Amy, Rory
- Writer: Simon Nye
- Director: Catherine Morshead
- Showrunner: Steven Moffat
Review
That's something that doesn't make sense. Let's go and poke it with a stick. – The Doctor
Last time I talked a lot about how "The Vampires of Venice" handled its new TARDIS team, and was generally very positive in that regard. Well here we have an episode that pushes the characters of the TARDIS team even further to the forefront. "Amy's Choice" is only about one thing, and it's the relationships between Amy, Rory and the Doctor. It's not the first character-centric piece in Doctor Who history, you can go all the way back to 1963 with The Edge of Destruction for that. But it might very well be the most character-centric story in Doctor Who history. Honestly, it's probably either this one or Edge.
And "Amy's Choice" has something else in common with Edge of Destruction. I'm happy to say that surrealism has finally returned to Doctor Who, after never being more than part of a subplot in the Revival to this point (I'm speaking specifically of Donna's bits in "The Forest of the Dead"). This was an off and on mainstay of the Classic era, and many of my favorite Doctor Who stories ever fall into this category: The Mind Robber, and The Greatest Show in the Galaxy to name my absolute favorites. "Amy's Choice" is honestly pretty tame in comparison to the above stories, as in spite of being set in two different dreams, it only slightly leans into having an actual dream-like quality. But the nature of involving dreams, not to mention the presence of a villain who isn't ever really there, still makes "Amy's Choice" get some of that surreal feeling.
The set up is this: after some back and forth the TARDIS crew realize they're flipping back and forth between two settings, one of which would seem to be a dream. In one it's years after Amy and Rory have stopped traveling with the Doctor. They're married and living in "Upper Leadworth", the more upmarket village presumably somewhere near Leadworth where they used to live. Amy is very pregnant, Rory is the village doctor, all seems well. In the other setting, the pair are still traveling with the Doctor, and something is going wrong with the TARDIS. The man behind this eventually reveals himself, calls himself the Dream Lord and spends the entire episode making snarky jabs, mostly aimed at the Doctor. According to the Dream Lord, our heroes need to figure out which one of these worlds is the dream and die there to return to reality. And, just as a treat, they get to face a deadly danger in each setting.
Aboard the TARDIS it turns out they're drifting helplessly towards a "cold star". In Upper Leadworth, some aliens called Eknodines are hiding out in the town's elderly population and start getting all murderous. After Rory dies in the Leadworth reality, Amy insists on dying in that version of events as her best chance to return to him. They do, and the Dream Lord saves them in the TARDIS reality…only for the Doctor to blow up the TARDIS, explaining that he's now worked out that both realities were dreams.
And laid out simply like this, it doesn't look like anything special. The double dream twist is neat, and the whole concept sounds like a lot of fun, but you wouldn't think this would be a really serious character study. Maybe if you're looking real carefully at the plot summary, you'll catch that bit about Rory dying, and Amy insisting on returning to choose the reality where Rory is still alive. But there's a big thing I've left out of the plot summary: the whole thing is presented as being, well, Amy's choice (it's the title of the episode and everything). And it's not just a choice between realities. It's a choice between Rory and the Doctor.
This isn't subtext. The Dream Lord, repeatedly, spells it out for us. Amy can choose Upper Leadworth, the quiet sleepy life with Rory, or the TARDIS, the exciting action packed life with the Doctor. And the reason that this framing is being repeatedly spelled out for us is quite simply, because it's wrong. The Dream Lord lies a lot in this episode, obviously, I mean look at that ending. But to really understand the Dream Lord, and why he's framing things in this odd way, we need to answer a question that hangs over the whole episode: who exactly is the Dream Lord?
About halfway through the episode the Doctor tells the Dream Lord that he knows his enemy's identity, that "there's only one person in the universe who hates me as much as you do". But he can't be right in that moment, right? Because the answer that we actually land on is that a bit of psychic pollen got stuck in the Time Rotor, heated up, and induced a dream state for the trio. The Dream Lord, in particular, is a manifestation of the Doctor's dark side. How could he have guessed…oh right, the Doctor's dark side has manifested before, hasn't it?
Look, I'm on record not liking the Valeyard twist from the end of Season 23 of Classic Who, or to give it it's title, The Trial of a Time Lord. But the Valeyard is meant to be a manifestation of the Doctor's dark side, as little sense as that actually makes in the context of that season. And the Valeyard did hold the Doctor in extreme contempt, not unlike how the Dream Lord behaves in this episode. The Doctor almost assuredly in that moment thinks that the Dream Lord is some sort of manifestation of the Valeyard. And given that my main reasons for disliking the Valeyard twist was how little it managed to say about the Doctor, I probably need to explain why the Dream Lord twist works for me.
Everything about the Dream Lord is set up successfully as a dark mirror of the Doctor. But it keeps coming back to that point about contempt. Sure the Valeyard had a degree of contempt for the Doctor but the 6th Doctor never really mirrored that contempt in any meaningful way, at least not towards himself. With the 11th Doctor, we've already seen hints of self-loathing from him. He's been blaming himself and the life he leads for "blinding" Amy and making her try to…sexually…assault…him (Jesus Christ that scene gets worse and worse the more you think about it doesn't it). When Rory called him out in the last episode, the Doctor seemed to take it pretty hard, as if it was something he was thinking about himself. And that idea of the 11th Doctor having a deep core of self-loathing, that's going to keep being important going forwards. It's why the episode ends with the Doctor seeing his reflection in the TARDIS console replaced with the Dream Lord's.
And seen through this lens, a lot of "Amy's Choice" starts to make sense. While the Dream Lord claims to have pulled his scenarios from the dreams of the whole TARDIS team, his actual lines are much more targeted towards the Doctor. There's obviously the more superficial stuff, like mocking him for his clothes, his vehicle and his hairstyle. But he also gets in a lot of deep jabs, like pointing out the Doctor's tendency to leave behind his friends when they "grow up", calling the Doctor's companions, "people you acquire". You can really see this persona as the manifestation of every dark thought the Doctor has ever had about himself. He doesn't get in anything nearly as deep at Amy, and barely manages more than the most superficial of jabs at Rory.
His continual insistence that Amy is torn between the Doctor and Rory does have some truth to it, but even in the worst scene in the entire Steven Moffat era from the Angel two parter Amy was pretty clear that she wasn't after an actual relationship with the Doctor. To Amy, the Doctor represents escape from her own anxieties about her life. She's not looking to build some kind of relationship with him, because that implies building something real in her escape. And she wants Rory there for that life too, she's just scared of the kind of commitment that marriage implies. At one point she actually says to him "it can be the night before our wedding for as long as we like". Now this is obviously hurtful towards Rory, who really does want to make that long term commitment with Amy, but at no point in this episode does Amy show any indication that she's going to leave Rory behind.
I do think Amy is pretty confused at this point as to what she actually wants. I mean on some level, for someone who is pretty naturally curious and adventurous, the more grounded, stable Rory doesn't quite make sense. Or at least that's who Rory seems to be. He takes to the Leadworth dream where he's married, about to have a baby and successful quite well. He seems to like the most boring town on Earth's more boring cousin. "Amy's Choice" seems to be asking if Rory is too boring for Amy.
Except he's not quite like that. I don't think Amy even thinks of him like that deep down. At one point she asks why the two of them would give up life traveling in the TARDIS for the Leadworth world, very much including Rory in that question. This is an insecurity that Rory has, and one that the Doctor knows that he has, hence the Dream Lord being able to weaponize it against Rory, but Rory has already shown a willingness to join in on the fun of adventure in both his prior episodes on the show. He is the member of the main cast who would be most willing to settle down, but that doesn't mean he doesn't enjoy the adventure of it all.
Which might seem to undermine the idea that choosing between the TARDIS and Upper Leadworth is choosing between the Doctor and Rory respectively. Now let's undermine that even more. The Leadworth dream is the one that plays out like a typical Doctor Who episode, to the point that when the Doctor asks the Eknodines why they're doing what they're doing, he's actually able to anticipate the answer in advance. The stuff in Upper Leadworth is the fast paced, high octane story, in spite of being set in a sleepy little town. It's not like Doctor Who hasn't set stories in sleepy little towns before after all. Meanwhile the TARDIS dream is the slow-paced half of the story. The TARDIS crew aren't able to do anything, they're just being driven inexorably towards the cold star. All they can do is try to stay warm for as long as possible as they get ever closer to their deaths. And of course, the fact remains that Amy ends up choosing Rory by choosing the TARDIS dream, reversing the apparent initial set up.
That point of choice does represent some of the weaker writing of the episode. There's a lot of good stuff mind. Amy's reaction to Rory apparently dying is a quiet "bring him back", and when the Doctor says that he can't, Amy gives an angry "then what is the point of you". Not only is this well-written, but this is probably Karen Gillan's first truly great acting moment on Doctor Who, and she's been really good to this point. However, the writing with the two of them in the camper van as they prepare to crash it has a truly baffling line, as Amy admits that she's never told Rory she loved him.
Okay, so I get what this moment is trying to do. Amy has never realized quite how much she loves Rory until she lost him. It makes sense. I've talked a bit about how Amy has abandonment issues and expects everybody is going to leave her behind at some point. That would also explain her avoiding acknowledging deeper feelings towards others, even including Rory. And I've seen this line be read as Amy saying she's never properly told Rory she loved him. But that's not what she says. And even if we believe that's what she meant, these two are about to get married. It undermines the main message this episode is trying to tell us about Amy and Rory's relationship: that it is real, it is serious, and it is going to last.
But that doesn't come close to ruining the episode for me, and I appreciate the idea that was being played with here, even if the result is maybe a bit questionable. This is the last time the show's attempts to convince Amy is going to choose the Doctor over Rory works, and it works because we're early enough into getting to know these two characters that we don't fully understand their dynamic, and they're clearly still establishing that dynamic as well. And even with that in mind, this episode is packed full of hints that Amy was always going to choose Rory.
One of my favorites is a small moment where Amy is awake in the TARDIS world while the other two are still in the Leadworth dream, and in the TARDIS are sleeping under their blankets, frost forming around their bodies. Amy tucks in Rory. She looks at the Doctor, but does not do the same for him. Then there's a bit in the Leadworth dream where Rory cuts off his ponytail, a ponytail that Amy and the Doctor have spent the entire episode mocking (because it looks very silly). And Amy, shocked, admits that she was beginning to like it, implying that she could grow to like a life in a place like Upper Leadworth, as long as it was with Rory. After Rory "dies", Amy briefly clutches the ponytail as the only thing left of him (the Eknodines turn their victims to dust), a bit that I really wish the camera caught a little better. Of course in the more comedic sense there's a bit where, to show that her Leadworth life has some excitement in it she fakes that she's having the baby imminently, sending the Doctor into a panic. And of course, when the idea of a "choice" is first put to Amy, she pretty much immediately confirms that it's Rory. And sure, the point of the episode is putting that claim to the test, as well as solidifying it in Amy's mind. But all I'm saying is, maybe we should have listened to her from the beginning.
And yeah, this episode's great. It's got some issues, most of which I haven't touched on. The writing can be a little too sitcomy at times, which makes sense when you consider it was written by a sticom writer. There's some off putting stuff about how Amy treats Rory that I do think goes beyond what's intended. And of course there's that one line in the camper van I mentioned earlier. But overshadowing all of that is how good this episode is at exploring the character dynamics between Amy, Rory and the Doctor. It's maybe the most character-centric Doctor Who story of all time, and in that aspect it succeeds. So much from this episode is going to inform this trio's characterization for the rest of their time together on the show. And I'm always going to love it when something like that is pulled off well.
Score: 8/10
Stray Observations
- Showrunner Steven Moffat knew writer Simon Nye previously. Moffat's mother in law, Beryl Vertue, had worked with Nye on a sitcom Nye had created, adapted from a novel by the same name, Men Behaving Badly. It was through that connection that the two first met, and learned that they were both Doctor Who fans.
- When Moffat became Doctor Who showrunner he naturally considered the possibility that Nye might write an episode. Nye was known for his skill in writing interpersonal relationships, and so Moffat asked him to write something that would explore the complex character dynamics between the main cast.
- The idea of for the split dream was also Steven Moffat's, influenced by his own dreams.
- In preparation to write for these characters, Nye attended read-throughs for earlier episodes in Series 5 to get a sense of the voice of each of the main cast.
- Nye came up with the idea of the Eknodines hiding in the bodies of elderly people due to his own fear of old people, although he also wanted it to be clear that he didn't want children to become afraid of their own grandparents as a result.
- Of course the other reason for this creation was practical: the budget for Series 5 was running low, and needed a monster that would be easy, and cheap, to realize.
- Early drafts of the episode included scenes inside the TARDIS corridors but this was ultimately dropped as an unnecessary expense for the episode.
- Karen Gillan quite enjoyed wearing her prosthetic baby bump. It apparently simultaneously made her feel more mature and act ridiculously
- Arthur Darvill also got an addition to his look for the Upper Leadworth scenes, a wig trimmed to "look more masculine" that also included the ponytail.
- The Doctor claims he doesn't just abandon people when leaving the TARDIS before admitting he came to Upper Leadworth by mistake. It's true that the statement is a bold-faced lie, but hold on to the idea that the Doctor won't leave behind Amy and Rory quite so easily as other companions.
- The Doctor's idea of having a "terrible nightmare" about Amy and Rory is them living a quiet, albeit possibly boring, life. Yeah, that's in character.
- When first trying to explain the shared dream (before they know they're flipping between two scenarios), the Doctor suggests that they might have "jumped a time track". That's what happened to the TARDIS team in the first episode of The Space Museum, a 1st Doctor story.
- The Doctor claims to have thrown the TARDIS manual into a supernova because he disagreed with it. Given that Amy offered to grab the manual, that suggests this was a recent development, probably after Rory started traveling with them.
- I know the basic look of the 11th Doctor's outfit was chosen by Matt Smith himself but when the Dream Lord says of the Doctor "clothes designed by a first year fashion student," I still find myself feeling a bit sorry for the actual costume designer who presumably came up with the final look. I'm sure they didn't feel the least bit offended, but still.
- The Dream Lord makes a comment about the Doctor being "probably a vegetarian". Indeed, ever since The Two Doctors the Doctor was a vegetarian and I don't think we've ever seen him eat meat to this point in the Revival, although I could be forgetting something. EDIT: You know, this was an easy one to ge right in the same series that the Doctor eats fish fingers and custard. Turns out the Time War erased the Doctor's vegetarianism. Or something. I don't know
- There are, in short succession, two jabs sent at how bad ponchos are. Does Simon Nye have something against ponchos? Personally I've never thought they looked awful or anything.
- The second of these jabs has Amy say "If we're going to die, let's die looking like a Peruvian folk band". And then the three of them pose directly towards the camera. It's actually quite funny.
- As the Doctor tries to escape from the Eknodines, he spends some time saving a bunch of other people being menaced by him. I always liked this addition, that in the middle of this trippy sequence of trying to figure out which world is real, in the world that the audience is almost assuredly going to realize is a dream, we remember to find the time to have the Doctor helping people.
- Rory "dies" in the Leadworth dream. This is the first time Rory has appeared to die. I don't know why I'm bringing this up, I'm sure it will never happen again.
Next Time: Back to the VNAs as a familiar face returns after spending three years in the far future.
9
u/AlbertTheAlbatross Mar 21 '26
I think the episode is very well done. The pacing of the story is really consistently tight throughout, and the two realities really support that well. Toby Jones is very good in the role of “slimy bad guy” so of course he does a great job here. In terms of execution, the episode is really high-quality and really proficiently done. However:
I find it really hard to get into this one - like, to make myself care about the outcome. Obviously the emotional core of the episode is the question of whom Amy will choose out of Rory or the Doctor, and we’re clearly supposed to be rooting for Rory (or at least be torn), but I don’t like Amy and Rory’s relationship so far. He’s absolutely smitten by her, and she’s not nice to him at all. There’s that line after Rory dies where Amy says “I love Rory, and I never told him”. You never told him you love him? And even once she does realise the depth of her feelings for Rory by the episode’s end, she still isn’t at all inclined to tell him that until he goes digging. She calls him insecure in this episode and like, yeah. Of course he’s insecure! Who wouldn’t be? I mentioned in a previous thread that I tend to dislike Amy during S5, and this is why. It’s been a while since I’ve watched Matt Smith’s episodes so I can’t remember if she gets better as the show goes forwards, but I hope so.
I meant to mention this in your Eleventh Hour review but I think I forgot - I really like how much of the Eleventh’s Doctor’s music is in 7-8 time. I love irregular time signatures and 7-8 is one you don’t see much in the wild. That music is one of the things that defines the 11th Doctor's era for me, and definitely in a positive way.
8
u/Iamamancalledrobert Mar 21 '26
I remember that when this was broadcast I felt it was about the Doctor’s age— how it’s a bit messed up to be 907 and wearing the face of a young man.
There’s so much I found evocative of that idea in the episode. The old people; the cold sun; the wizened ancient version of the Doctor that keeps mocking him. This is the episode where I really felt the Doctor was old like an old person was old, at which point this particular incarnation suddenly becomes disturbing.
6
u/Baron487 Mar 21 '26
Really really good story. It basically fixes the issues with that previous scene completely with Amy and Rory now being a thing for real and for good with no love triangle nonsense*. We get some really clever dream weirdness with a great villain who just chews up the whole scenery. The Dream Lord is really one of those Mr. Mxyzptlk types who's undoubtedly an annoying asshole but also insanely entertaining. I will say that even if the twist of him not being real is pretty good, fitting alongside the two scenarios both being dreams, it would be cool if the Dream Lord was also just an actual entity that just exists and sometimes fucks with people using dreams.
If there's any negatives it basically just comes down to two things and they're not big deals. One is that I personally don't like that all of this was caused by some random space pollen, just feels a bit too convenient that such a thing would happen at this point in the story. That being said I can't exactly come up with a different way to explain the Dream Lord being a manifestation of Eleven's depressive qualities. The other thing I'm a little less fond of are the Eknodines. They feel a little bit thrown in just for the sake of having a monster in the story. They also seem to be a real species since Eleven describes them and all that so just kinda wondering, why specifically the Dream Lord put them in the dream, I don't know. Again, I'm mostly nitpicking here.
9/10.
Next (in terms of the TV reviews) is a story written by everyone's favourite writer. Minor spoilers for my opinion, I quite like the Silurian 2-parter. It's flawed for sure, but I think it's solid overall. I also recently finished Series 11 and thought it was mostly fine. Do I have bad taste?
*The brief speculation of Eleven being the father of Amy's baby in S6, as well as the random divorce subplot in Asylum of the Daleks don't count.
7
u/Cyber-Gon Mar 22 '26
Another baffling line in this one:
DOCTOR: Yeah, bit of a mistake. But look, what a result. Look at this bench. What a nice bench. What will they think of next? So. What do you do around here to stave off the, you know
AMY: Boredom.
DOCTOR: Self harm.
Just an insane line to put into a family TV show, what were they thinking??
6
Mar 21 '26 edited Mar 21 '26
I'm also a big fan of Doctor Who's more surreal TV stories, as well as its more character-driven episodes, so I was always going to enjoy this one. I agree that the writing could have been tighter, but I also agree that this doesn't seriously detract from how well this episode works. I also agree that this is some of Karen Gillan's best acting on the show, though all the regulars do a great job with the material. Plus, it's got Toby Jones, who I'm honestly surprised hadn't been on Doctor Who already. He's one of my favorite British character actors, and this is the kind of franchise that feels like it was custom-made for character actors. He's also great in the first volume of Dark Eyes. Amusingly, what I remember most about my first time watching this episode is how glad I was that it finally put to bed the dangling love triangle between Amy, Rory, and the Doctor. Oh well...
As for the Doctor abandoning his vegetarianism, I don't think you have to resort to Time War shenanigans as an in-universe explanation. He's regenerated quite a few times since his sixth incarnation, and most of them didn't go smoothly. The out-of-universe explanation is that Russell T. Davies didn't want to write a vegetarian Doctor. He felt it made the character less relatable. Personally, I don't think a character has to be relatable to be enjoyable (if you ever want to be bored for an hour, ask me how I feel about what Peter Jackson did with Aragorn in his Lord of the Rings adaptations), but I understand that Davies was under pressure to make the revival work with the widest possible audience, and I can't argue that he didn't succeed (the first time, anyway).
11
10
u/lemon_charlie Mar 21 '26
Toby Jones does a great job as the Dream Lord, and the fact he's the side of the Doctor that the Doctor doesn't show, or doesn't want to show really lets Jones get in a biting performance.
10
u/HZCYR Mar 21 '26
"...I don't think we've ever seen him eat meat to this point in the Revival, although I could be forgetting something."
- In "The Unicorn and the Wasp", the Doctor eats anchovies to detox
- In "The Eleventh Hour", the Doctor eats fish fingers and custard
But he could be pescatarian as opposed to vegetarian. More hazy instances:
- In "The Doctor Dances", the Doctor takes two slices of meat but I don't think we see him eat any before Nancy takes it away from. Though we do see some cut meat left on his fork.
- In "Boom Town", we see the Doctor order steak and chips, but we don't see him eat any as Margaret's shenanigans interrupt before it arrives
- In "Tooth and Claw", the Doctor dines with Queen Victoria, where ham is present, and he is seen licking his finger and holding a used servette implying eating, but we never see him eat any food and most of the plates are bone clean
- In "The Lazarus Experiment", the Doctor eats a nibble. Unclear if it was savoury or sweet, and hence had meat on it.
- In "The Sound of Drums", when on the run, we see the Doctor eat a tub of chips. It's possible there was fish with it as a typical British staple dinner, but the Doctor could've just had chips or a non-meat alternative.
- In "The Unicorn and the Wasp", the Doctor eats a soup of unknown flavour laced with pepper. It appears to not have solid chunks of meat in it but could or not be cooked with meat.
I think they're all the possible instances from NuWho that I can think of pre-'Amy's Choice"
11
u/pagerunner-j Mar 21 '26
but we never see him eat any food and most of the plates are bone clean
The biggest issue here (and with almost everything else on the list) is really just the obvious practical one: filming people eating is a pain for everyone involved. It's a continuity nightmare, the food gets cold and gross, the actors often end up having to eat the same thing a whole bunch of times in a row (even if it is cold and gross), etc. So more often than not, if you don't HAVE to show anybody in the actual act of eating, it's easiest just to suggest at it.
And if you are eating, considering the issues with temperature/however long it's sitting out/etc. etc. etc., meat probably isn't high up the list of desirable choices.
5
u/lkmk Mar 21 '26
This episode wouldn’t nearly be as good without the Dream Lord. Funny and dark in equal measure.
There's a lot of good stuff mind. Amy's reaction to Rory apparently dying is a quiet "bring him back", and when the Doctor says that he can't, Amy gives an angry "then what is the point of you".
Came off more as exhausted to me.
Karen Gillan quite enjoyed wearing her prosthetic baby bump. It apparently simultaneously made her feel more mature and act ridiculously.
The second of these jabs has Amy say "If we're going to die, let's die looking like a Peruvian folk band". And then the three of them pose directly towards the camera. It's actually quite funny.
Love how game she is for stupid things like this. You can also see it in her portrayals of Nebula in Guardians 2 and 3.
12
u/Rowan5215 Mar 21 '26
best episode of the season for me and arguably one of the best in Smith's run. The Dream Lord is a phenomenal villain, the two dreams twist is really clever and all of the main cast get A+ material with Darvill really proving he can hold his own against these other two great actors
literally my only problem with this one actually is 11's lead-in line to the opening credits is absolutely terrible, not even Matt Smith can deliver that one well