Monsters of Television

“Then what is the point of you?”

You will not be sleeping during the episode. (But don't they look cute?)

Dream episodes are always tricky. They can come off as overwrought or feel like a cheat. After the vapid “Vampires of Venice,” I was eager for a strong episode, and I was happily rewarded with “Amy’s Choice,” which does a number of things well on a number of levels. It’s a smartly constructed chamber-drama of sorts with some very nice character beats to be found through all the birds chirping and dangerous old people.

Due to the preview, I though the episode would be divisive, though I don’t think it ended up being that way. I think the challenge of the episodes come in how you want to interpret the reveal at the end, and what impact that has on your perception of the characters. It’s an inkblot of sorts, I think.

But then most dreams are inkblots: you draw from them whatever you want to draw from them. If you don’t see anything in it, it’s just ink smeared on a paper. And if you dream about an apple being pierce by a sword that has a snake coiled around it and then that apple is shot with a gun and dismiss it was random neurons and not your own sexual frustrations, then that’s how you interpret your dreams. (But if you are having dreams like that, I would recommend seeing if you can find a good psychoanalyst in your area.)

However, dreams can come off as a bit of pressure cooker, regardless of how you want to interpret them, as things stew in the back of your mind are suddenly given a sort of life.  “Amy’s Choice” is no different, except that these dreams are constructed by the darker parts of the Doctor’s own mind. It’s a conceit that allows the episode to be read in a few ways, all that expose certain things about the characters involved, but mostly it potentially tells us a lot about the Doctor himself.

Indeed, the entire episode can be read as either a) the Doctor’s self-loathing seeking to destroy him and everyone he cares about (“I’m 907. It [the psychic pollen] had a lot to go on.”); b) the Doctor’s impatience with having to listen to Rory and Amy natter on about their relationship and wants to force them into a decision; or c) the Doctor wants to know if Amy would stay with him or choose Rory.

Any of these interpretations work given the episode. The Dream Lord (played with wonderful, delicious zeal by Toby Jones (which only makes me very excited for him portraying Arnim Zola in the Captain America movie)) regularly mocks the Doctor and Rory, while pestering Amy to choose between the dream worlds, each one reflective of the two men in her life: rural dullness (“So…what do you do around here to stave off the…you know…self-harm?”) with Rory or working through an impossible freezing star in outer space with the Doctor.

I personally find option C to be the most rewarding reading, if only because it adds more to the Doctor’s character, one that the show has been developing nicely over the season. It also has the benefit of working as “all of the above,” making the episode that much richer.

FINAL THOUGHTS

• The psychic pollen felt like a bit of an ass pull, but the episode itself was strong enough that I was willing to let the ending go (but I would’ve liked to see the Dream Lord becoming an entity in of himself).
• “We’ve got lots of steak here this week. Get it? Lots at stake?… This joke’s wasted on you.”
• “Oh, my boys. My poncho boys. If we’re gonna die let’s die looking like a Peruvian folk band.”