Story 209 - Amy's Choice

In which the Doctor goes to Upper Leadworth to visit Amy and Rory some five years after they have left the TARDIS. Rory is now the village GP, whilst Amy is heavily pregnant with their first child. The Doctor finds life in a small village boring, but the couple seem content enough. They sit on a bench and listen to the birds singing, commenting how there was never much time to relax like this back in their TARDIS travelling days. All three suddenly fall asleep at the same moment.
The Doctor wakes in the TARDIS and tells his companions that he has just had a nightmare which involved them. He then learns that they have both just woken up after having experienced the same dream of their future life in Upper Leadworth. The Doctor suspects some kind of shared hallucination but they then hear bird song and fall asleep - waking up on the bench in the village. Are they in the TARDIS dreaming of the village, or are they in the village dreaming of the TARDIS?
As they try to work out which is reality and which is dream, they hear the bird song once more and wake to find themselves back in the TARDIS. The ship then suffers a serious power loss. They fall asleep again and find themselves once more in the village, and this time the Doctor becomes suspicious about the residents of an old peoples' home which Rory often visits. He detects that there is something not quite right about them. On next waking in the TARDIS, they are confronted by a strange man who is dressed in an outfit similar to the Doctor's. He is extremely rude to them all, and seems to know a lot about them.

He claims that he can control dreams, and so dubs himself the Dream Lord. He sets a challenge. They must decide which is the dream and which is reality between what is going on in the TARDIS, and what is going on in Upper Leadworth. They will face a danger in each. Back in the old peoples' home, all the residents have vanished. The Dream Lord appears, now in a suit and acting like a doctor. They go outside and stop at a playground next to the old ruined castle, where they see a school party. The Doctor also observes one of the old folks - Mrs Poggit - enter the castle grounds.
On waking next in the TARDIS they discover that the temperature is falling rapidly. Without power, the Doctor rigs up a mechanical means to operate the scanner, and they see that they are drifting towards a cold star. They will freeze to death long before they crash into it. Back in the village, they discover that all the school children have vanished. In their place are mounds of dust. The Doctor challenges Mrs Poggit - or rather the alien entity inhabiting her body which the Doctor believes is giving her prolonged life, like all the other residents of the home. An eye stalk emerges from her mouth. The Doctor recognises the species as Eknodine. Through Mrs Poggit it explains that its world has been destroyed, and so they will take this planet. A passing postman is reduced to dust by the Eknodine, which can emit a disintegrating gas. The Dream Lord reappears, this time in the guise of a rich land owner. All the other old people begin to converge on the castle.

Amy and Rory escape back to their cottage home, but the Doctor becomes separated, and takes refuge in the village butchers. The Dream Lord is here, posing as the butcher. About to fall asleep once more, leaving him open to attack by the Eknodine, the Doctor manages to get into the freezer.
In the TARDIS Amy uses some blankets to make ponchos for them all as the temperature falls below freezing. The trio debate which is the dream and which the reality. Rory favours the village, though the Doctor suspects this may be more about what he wants to be real. The Dream Lord reappears on the ship and this time he states that Amy will be the one to make the choice. The Doctor and Rory fall asleep and return to the village, but he keeps Amy with him. He changes into a dressing gown, with gold medallion, in a vain hope of seducing her. In the cottage, Rory is awake but Amy remains asleep, so he drags her up to the room which will be the nursery as the old people begin to lay siege. The Doctor escapes from the butcher shop and commandeers a van to drive to the cottage to rejoin them. The Dream Lord appears in the vehicle dressed as a racing driver, but this time the Doctor tells him that he now knows who he is. Amy wakes up in the cottage. One of the old people break through the window and Rory is hit by the Eknodine gas. He dies, crumbling to dust in front of Amy. She is heartbroken, and decides that the village is the dream, as she can't live without Rory. She and the Doctor take to the van, which they deliberately ram into the cottage.
All three wake to find themselves in the TARDIS, whose power returns. The Dream Lord tells them that Amy made the right choice, and admits defeat. He vanishes. The Doctor, however, sets the ship to self-destruct. They wake again in the ship, and the Doctor explains that their recent visitor only had power over dreams - not reality - and so both scenarios must have been false.
He tells them that the Dream Lord was himself - the only person who knew and hated him that much. He had been generated by a speck of psychic pollen which they had picked up on a recent journey, and had been a manifestation of the Doctor's own psyche all along.

Amy's Choice was written by Simon Nye, and was first broadcast on 15th May, 2010. Nye is best known for scripting the BBC sitcom Men Behaving Badly.
Technically, this is the first story since 1964's The Edge of Destruction to be set entirely within the confines of the TARDIS, because all the scenes we see in and around Upper Leadworth are from a dream, and the TARDIS trio never actually leave the ship.
The episode was designed to showcase Karen Gillan's Amy Pond, and her relationship with Rory and the Doctor. Up to now, it has looked as if she regretted agreeing to marry Rory, preferring to run away and have adventures with the Doctor, but when confronted by her husband's apparent demise in the village dream, she realises that he is the one who she wants to spend her life with. The title of the story refers both to her choice between the two dream worlds, and her choice of who it is she really loves. One influences the other.
The dream worlds make for an interesting set-up for a story but as viewers who knew something of the episodes still to be broadcast in Series 5, we never accept the Upper Leadworth sequences to be real. What might have fooled some viewers was that the cold sun sections weren't real either.

The Dream Lord, played by Toby Jones, kept fans guessing as to what his true identity might be. A darker version of the Doctor caused many to think that he might be the Valeyard - the amalgamation of the dark sides of all the Doctor's incarnations who had appeared in Trial of a Time Lord. Like the aforementioned The Edge of Destruction, the answer to the mystery besetting the TARDIS crew proves to be far more prosaic. Jones is the son of noted British actor Freddie Jones. He first came to fame playing writer Truman Capote in the 2006 film Infamous, though many know him best as the voice of Dobby the House Elf in two of the Harry Potter movies. He was in the first two Captain America films (as Hydra scientist Arnim Zola), and won awards for his performance in the cult Giallo-esque horror movie Berberian Sound Studio. Another role of note was as the odious Culverton Smith in Sherlock episode 'The Lying Detective'.
As half the action takes place within the confines of the TARDIS, the story has only a small additional cast list. Mrs Poggit is played by Audrey Ardington. She previously appeared as the Abbess / Gorgon in Eye of the Gorgon, one of The Sarah Jane Adventures.
Another of the old people is Mr Naimby. He is played by Nick Hobbs, who was a regular stunt performer throughout the Jon Pertwee / Tom Baker era of Doctor Who. He is best known for playing Aggedor in The Curse of Peladon and its sequel, The Monster of Peladon. he also played one of the Wirrn in Ark in Space. One role where he wasn't hidden in a monster costume was as the UNIT lorry driver who is hypnotised by the Master in The Claws of Axos. He was still stunting as of 2019, appearing in 'The Bells' - the penultimate episode of Game of Thrones Series 8. You'll also spot him as one of the scientists on the planet Eadu in Rogue One, kind of giving the game away that they are all about to get shot down by Imperial Stormtroopers. (As soon as you see a familiar stunt performer in a film or TV show you just know that something bad is about to happen to them).

"If we're going to die, let's die looking like a Peruvian folk band".

No story arc plot points this week, for a change.
Overall, an interesting little episode, with a great performance from Toby Jones. Pity we never got to see a return for the Dream Lord. Presumably if they ever did bring back the character they would have to be a darker version of whoever the current Doctor was.
Things you might like to know:

• Amy becomes only the second companion to get her name into a story title - the previous person being Rose. To date River Song is the only other companion character to appear in a title (in her case twice).
• The Doctor mentions that he no longer has the TARDIS manual, having thrown it into a supernova because he disagreed with it. Two stories ago River Song told him off for not operating the ship properly, ignoring the blue stabilisers and leaving the brakes on during materialisation / dematerialisation. Previously, the manual had been seen to prop up the hat stand, and to be said to be propping open a vent. We've also seen the Doctor tear pages out of it when he disagreed with its instructions.
• We don't know if the Eknodine actually exist, as they have only ever been seen within the context of a dream.
• There is a reference to The Space Museum, as the Doctor includes jumping a time track as one of the potential reasons for them having had a shared dream.
• Fans took note of the name of the old folks' home - Sarn. This was the name of the volcanic world in Planet of Fire.
• The box beneath the console from which the Doctor removes the items needed to build the gizmo to operate the scanner has a plaque on it. This states: "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". Obviously this was never meant to be seen on screen, unless you paused a recording of the episode - or took a look at the BBC Doctor Who website where there was a tour of the new ship's interior. Note that 'Dimension' is singular, as it was when Susan first named it in An Unearthly Child. It only became plural in 1965 when Vicki named it for Steven. The build date obviously refers to the year the programme started, and can't be a Gallifreyan year. The plaque also seems to imply that the Time Lords needed permission to operate TARDISes from the Shadow Proclamation, so must have been subject to them in some way. The prologue to the novelisation of Spearhead From Space - Doctor Who and the Auton Invasion - is the only place where the theft of the TARDIS is specifically mentioned as one of the reasons for the Doctor's trial and subsequent exile to Earth by the Time Lord tribunal. In The War Games, the theft of the TARDIS is never mentioned when it comes to the charges laid against him.