Rory: We have to grow up eventually…
Amy: Says who?
“Amy’s Choice,” the most recent Doctor Who episode to air in the US, marks a turning point not only in this season, nor in this current series, but in the entirety of Doctor Who. For the first time in Who history (and I’m sure one of you will correct me if I’m wrong), a companion was not punished or sent away for choosing life without The Doctor.
In this episode, we find sci-fi’s favorite threesome—The Doctor, Amy, and Rory—caught between two realities. Someone calling himself the Dream Lord (Nice try, dude, but you look nothing like Morpheus) who seems to know The Doctor has given them two life-threatening dangers, one in the “real world”, the other in a “dream.” Only he’s not telling them which is which. If they die in the dream, they’ll awake in reality. If they die in reality…well, they’re dead.
And, of course, it’s all up to Amy.
Before I continue discussing this episode, I’d just like to acknowledge something I’ve got stuck in my craw (whatever my craw is. *Google-searches*. Throat of a bird. Got it.). As someone who reads comics, loves make-believe, wants to write make-believe stuff for a living, and still manages to maintain relationships, fulfill obligations, have integrity, and treat people with respect, the false choice given to us by stories like Peter Pan really irks me. You know the one. The one where you have to choose between make-believe and growing up. The one that says that you can’t be an adult AND play video games at the same time, and if you do, there’s something wrong with you. The one that says that adventure and fun and dreams and make-believe are all things that even the most enlightened and fun-loving adults are supposed to look back on with fondness and nostalgia. I say, Eff That Noise. And it seems that finally, at long last, Doctor Who is saying that, too!
For years, the show’s fans have watched as companions have “outgrown” the TARDIS. They “realize” that what they “really” want is stability, and either ask to be taken home, or The Doctor, in his “wisdom,” makes the decision for them. Very often, the companions are made to forget their adventures with The Doctor, which kind of defeats the whole purpose of making a choice, doesn’t it? If you don’t have to live with the consequences of what you’re leaving behind? And if it’s The Doctor doing the deciding, that makes it all the worse, and is pretty much mind-rape. What gives him the right to take away someone’s memories, even if it will save their lives, without their consent? Being an adult means having agency, and so all of the companions up until now, to varying degrees, have basically been children. I don’t just mean in comparison to a 900+ year old Doctor, but even by human standards.
Allusions to Peter Pan abound in “Amy’s Choice,” even going so far as to have the Dream Lord say things like “Your friends never see you again once they’ve grown up. The old man prefers the company of the young, does he not?” And like Peter Pan sulking in his hideout as the Lost Boys are seduced by Wendy’s talk of mothers, The Doctor picks on Rory and Amy for even entertaining the notion of another life, even as he’s trying to save the day.
But then, the characters grow up. Not in a superficial way where they all put on jackets and ties and start going to a 9-5 job, but in the ways that matter most. Rory cuts off the ponytail he loves so much to show Amy how much he cares about her. Unlike other things he’s done to show he cares—fighting monsters off, competing with The Doctor—this gesture wasn’t showy, but it was honest, and powerful, and mature. It was something that Amy alone would understand, and you could tell how much the ponytail meant to Rory in Amy’s reaction to his cutting it off.
The Doctor also did a bit of growing up, which one is always capable of doing even when one is over 900 years old, when he accepted Amy’s choice and handed her the keys to the van. He respected her as an adult in that moment, and in doing so, made himself more respectable. Amy’s growth was, of course, the most obvious and the most powerful, and I have to praise Gillan for another knockout performance in this episode. She brought an understated intensity to “Amy’s Choice,” and when after Rory dies in the dream and Amy says, “Then what is the point of you,” I got a chill.
First the characters grew up, then the show grew up. We know now, of course, that both realities ended up being dreams caused by psychic pollen and, armed with the knowledge of the choices made in both, Amy and Rory were able to make the decision I’ve been waiting for ever since I started watching the show: to have their cake and eat it, too! Their security is in each other, and so as long as they have that they can do anything and go anywhere and lead whatever kind of life they like. Early on, Rory says “We have to grow up sometime…” and Amy replies, “Says who?” Says who, indeed! She and Rory stay together and stay on the TARDIS, and The Doctor doesn’t try to second-guess them, or convince them to go home.
True maturity has nothing to do with lifestyle and everything to do with how we treat each other. It’s about knowing that the universe doesn’t revolve around us. It’s about being brave enough to be honest with each other. It’s about understanding and not always coming in first. It’s about pursuing your own happiness while allowing and encouraging others to pursue theirs. Children are immature, because they have a limited world view. They really do believe their problems and concerns are more important than anything in the world, because they have no concept of a world outside themselves.
The thing is, I’ve met people well over the age of consent who have the same trouble. People in jackets and ties who put on a good show and play the Grown-Up game the way it’s supposed to be played, but aren’t really any more mature for it. I also know people who watch sci-fi television and play Dungeons & Dragons who know how to treat people and how to handle themselves and their responsibilities even as they’re having fun! I’m so glad that Doctor Who has acknowledged that idea, and I hope that Amy and Rory stay on the TARDIS together for a long time, and that their relationship deepens even as they’re helping The Doctor fight monsters.
There was one flaw in the episode. Apparently, the psychic pollen that caused the dream state latched onto The Doctor because of the darkness in him, and so the Dream Lord was him. On second viewing, we can see in the Dream Lord’s vitriol toward him that The Doctor really doesn’t like himself very much. He also, apparently, has “a thing” for redheads. (Did he secretly pine for Donna? In my brain, he did.) The thing is, we’ve already had two Doctors in a row dealing with a “dark side.” Yes, we know. The Doctor has killed entire species, before. The Doctor is very old, and has seen and done lots of dark things. We. Get. It.
“Amy’s Choice” was very definitely putting a positive spin on growing up, and so it felt a bit tacked-on to have all of that growth have been caused by the neuroses of someone older. The convention was well-done, but The Dream Lord could have been an actual being that actually put them through this, and it would’ve been the same episode. Is every Doctor from here on in going to brood all the time? Patrick Troughton never brooded. And he rocked bow-ties, too!
Teresa Jusino was born on the same day that Skylab fell. Coincidence? She doesn’t think so. She is a contributor to PinkRaygun.com, a webzine examining geekery from a feminine perspective. Her work has also been seen on PopMatters.com, on the sadly-defunct literary site CentralBooking.com, edited by Kevin Smokler, and in the Elmont Life community newspaper. She is currently writing a web series for Pareidolia Films called The Pack, which is set to debut Fall 2010! Get Twitterpated with Teresa, Follow The Pack or visit her at The Teresa Jusino Experience.
I have a lot of things to say about this that I can’t really say yet.
And, for the record, only three Doctor Who companions had their memories erased — Jamie, Zoe and Donna. The Doctor wasn’t the one who erased Jamie’s and Zoe’s memories and he only erased Donna’s with her permission and because he had no other choice.
I found it interesting in retrospect how similar the “Dream Lord” was to the McCoy Doctor, who is generally acknowledged as the darkest of the Doctor’s incarnations. I wonder if that was intentional?
Well, I’d say that the “dark side” of the Doctor that is being explored here is entirely unrelated to the dark side that is a result of his double-genocide. And, in terms of characterization, resolving the darkness that came from the genocide won’t resolve all the other things that he was ignoring in his focus on the genocide.
In this episode, the “dark side” being explored is how he thinks of his companions, and how he treats his companions. It is his intimate side, the one that brings people close and then rejects them, the one who thinks he knows what they want better than they know what they want, the side that is both obsessed with and contemptuous of humanity, the side that rejects domesticity.
It’s worth noting that “Rory’s dream” in this episode isn’t really Rory’s dreaming. It is what the Doctor imagines Rory wants, and what he projects choosing Rory will do to Amy. Subconsciously, the Doctor sees Rory as dull and domestic, a wannabe-doctor who will tie Amy down.
ETA: The setting of Rory’s dream is the Doctors, but once we see Rory acting in the dream worlds, his actions are his own. And his actions give lie to the negative image the Doctor’s subconscious created. End ETA.
While Rory does like that dream world, for its initial safety, calm, and domesticity, it may not be what he’d dream, if he could dream any future for himself and Amy.
I don’t think this will lead to the doctor brooding. If anything, it is about his subconscious forcing him to recognize a problem with his behavior, and his conscious mind then working on improving his behavior – an improvement he already started on, in his initial invitation to Rory to join them on the TARDIS.
Also, I’d say that the character issues exposed by the Dream Lord are part of a much larger story/characterization arc for the Doctor that has been building for some time.
The Doctor began to see how his behavior affected former companions while adventuring with Sarah Jane Smith in “School Reunion.” He was forced to confront it even more when seeing the various companions fight together against the Reality Bomb, and how Donna was doing while adventuring with Wilf. He also sees it in the way Amy was affected by his delayed return from when she was seven.
This realization has been building for a while, and inviting Rory to join them was the first step in the Doctor improving his behavior, but here he starts to realize that he can’t just decide to make different decisions, he needs to let the companions make their own decisions as well.
This is a big character issue for the Doctor, one that the show completely ignored for a very long time.
If the Dream Lord had been an outside threat, rather than the product of the Doctor’s mind, then any growth the Doctor showed would be a response to the outside threat, rather than the organic result of learning from his own mistakes.
Bravo on the message indeed. I’ve often said that being mature means knowing when it’s ok to be immature.
@Pendard – That’s it. You just keep those spoilers to yourself! :) Donna gave permission? Hmm. I’ll have to rewatch that, because the way I remember it, she wanted to stay the Doctor/Donna.
But really, my qualms about those moments have more to do with what the SHOW is saying about certain choices, not necessarily what the Doctor himself is saying/doing. That was basically the show saying, “Donna would be better off living a normal life.” Which I don’t think is the case at all.
I’m actually curious what you would’ve had to say WITHOUT the aid of spoilers. You know, if you’d just watched this episode like you were SUPPOSED to, and not skipped ahead. :) But seriously, what would you have thought of the episode on its own terms?
See, this is what I don’t like about people pirating. They lose the sense of taking each episode as it comes because they’re trying SO HARD to create a big picture out of all the episodes. It’s a matter of taste, I suppose, but I prefer to enjoy the individual parts first.
@Robotech_Master – I haven’t gotten to him yet! Hmmm. Anyone else know?
@Ursula – I love that you always give these eps so much thought! :) And I agree that The Doctor’s dark side is something that’s been explored this whole season. I don’t have a problem exploring it in general, I just have a problem with the way it was handled in this episode.
“If the Dream Lord had been an outside threat, rather than the product of the Doctor’s mind, then any growth the Doctor showed would be a response to the outside threat, rather than the organic result of learning from his own mistakes.”
I totally disagree with this. I think that making a personification of the Doctor’s inner turmoil just seemed amateurish. That kind of hit us over the head with it. If the Dream Lord were an outside force, we could have seen the Doctor’s growth in how he handled the situations and through his ACTIONS rather than through a symbol. THAT, to me, would have been more organic than The Doctor essentially talking to himself just so the viewers at home don’t have to try so hard to work it out.
It should be interesting, to see what you think of the next episode then. It might change your mind about all this.
There was a dark side to “Peter Pan”, too, that people often miss. I highly recommend Brom’s “The Child Thief” for an even darker Peter than Barrie’s. It wasn’t all just a bunch of boys hanging out in a tree in animal costumes. Peter goes to war, literally, with Hook. People tend to only remember the Disney version, but Peter’s world wasn’t just unicorns and Neil Patrick Harris.
Frankly, I thought the end was a cop out. Magic pollen? Really? If you’re going to do this premise then you have to COMMIT to it. ***BUFFY SPOILERS*** That ep of Buffy where she’s in and out of the mental hospital, yeah, we know she’s not really crazy, or do we? The scenes in the hospital are a lot more realistic and convincing than the world we’ve just spent the last few years ingrained in. And that coda at the end, where she’s still in the hospital and her parents are lamenting her retreat into Insano-land, now that is commitment.***END SPOILERS***
There was no doubt in this ep. We know straight off the bat it’s a dream or a hallucination and Moffat and crew never go about making us doubt it. And once Amy’s left in the TARDIS alone, it wasn’t hard to spot the Sixth Sense twist. This was the first time this series that I was actually bored through most of it. I got it, it was fun and interesting, but *yawn* seen it, been there, got the t-shirt. And the ending just made it a wasted ep. I also don’t understand the bird tweeting stuff…sometimes he couldn’t fit it at all and down he went, but then other times he’s all “I can stay up as late as I want! You can’t tell me what to do, you’re not my dad!” Look, he’s either susceptible or he ain’t. Pick one and stick with it. You can’t change canon 20 minutes in.
They could’ve just ditched the octogenarian evil aliens for a real villain, or tied up this ep with the end to the Salurian (sp?) ep – making the homo reptilius (man, that name pisses me off) a regular ep instead of a 2 parter – and, bing bang boom, you’ve got a much more well constructed series with a greater emotional impact.
Its nearly a month since I watched it so its not quite as clear in my mind as this weeks episode. I didn’t think the ending was much of a surprise with them both being false realties and the relationships between them but I couldn’t think of a reason why it could be all the Drs fault (until the pollen was plucked out of the eye).
I liked seeing the Dr’s fears and worst opinions of him self, it must be quite uncomfortable at times spending his life with a species that is similar to his own but still different enough that there is a barrier between him and his friends.
But did Amy have to make much of a choice in the end since she only picked the Tardis after Rory died. I’ll have to watch it again.
and the zombie aliens would have been rubbish if they were real (but amusing after last weeks vampires), I’m sure the Doctor could have imagined something much more creepy after 900 years traveling the universe.
@TeresaJustino:
Well then, you should have asked him three weeks ago when it first aired. :)
Bah. I don’t have cable, so it’s all the same to me whether I download it right away when it airs in Britain, or wait 3 weeks and download it when it airs in the US. Given the choice, I’ll see it three weeks sooner and just keep the spoilers to myself.
At least this way I know for a fact I’m getting the whole thing. When it was aired in Canada on CBC, the 65-minute “Journey’s End” was cut down to 44 minutes. That’s basically 1/3 of the story gone. (Granted, Sci-Fi did air it in its entirety…once.)
McCoy’s Doctor always seemed practically a demigod. Wasn’t there a line in the trial where the Master says “she doesn’t really know what you are?”
Anyway, because of that, the line “Then what is the point of you,” was really chilling. What’s the point of God if he can’t save you from death?
No one has mentioned that the Dream Lord is not really gone. The Doctor sees his shadow reflection in the Tardis after he’s tossed the dream particles.
@9: Yes, Amy made a choice: “Do I want to live if Rory is really dead?” She chose no.
When it comes to the posited choice of “Rory vs. the Doctor”, what she experienced was not a choice, but a revelation.
But since the dream is all in the Doctor’s head, what’s the real consequence of her choice? Her choice becomes moot in this case. I mean, at the most it just proves to Eleven that her kiss didn’t really mean anything (which is both good and bad), and she learns something new about herself (I suppose every show has to do one of those “very special episode” thing), but, at the end of the day, her choice is meaningless because it’s Eleven’s dream, Eleven’s fears, and Eleven’s issues. He’s the one who made the real choice: the choice to let Amy have a say in her own fate.
Teresa, I’m with you that Donna wanted to stay the Doctor-Donna.
However, given that being the Doctor-Donna was literally mind-altering for her, causing her excruciating pain, and killing her, I have less of a problem with the Doctor wiping her mind. Particularly since the condition was sudden onset and severe, so that she had not time to contemplate options before deciding whether or not to accept the treatment. This is a shotgun-victim in the ER situation, in severe shock, not someone who has suffered cancer and undergone treatments deciding to stop treatment.
It strikes me as being the same sort of situation, in terms of medical ethics, as treating someone whose illness has affected their judgment so severely that they’re refusing life-saving treatments. There are times when it is appropriate to let the patient refuse treatment and die, and there are times when it is appropriate to treat in spite of the patient’s refusal. I’m not sure where Donna was, in terms of medical ethical standards. Perhaps if anyone here is a doctor or otherwise expert in medical ethics, they could analyze it for us?
***
As far as the Dream Lord being a manifestation of the Doctor, I found it refreshing that the growth the Doctor was experiencing was growth that started a while back, and that he’d already been working on improving his behavior on.
Too often in entertainment, you see someone with a problem, and there is some sort of crisis, and that crisis sparks them making a life-changing growth in personality.
I find that suspect – won’t the person tend to revert to old habits, once the crisis is past? One incident is not enough to undo a lifetime of habit.
This was opening the door to the mind, to see growth the way that adults grow. Examining their own behavior, looking at the consequences of their behavior, working to change their behavior, struggling and making mistakes, but continuing the work. Having their subconscious cling to old habits, even as the adult’s conscious mind works to reject the habits.
Even though it was all in their heads (the dream settings were from the Doctor’s mind, as were the two deadly threats, but their actions were each their own) it matters because Amy knows what she chose and, more importantly, Rory knows what she chose.
Amy realized she genuinely loves Rory, and was willing to risk everything, real death to get him back. But she also know that she’s not a person who is ready to settle down to a quiet domestic life – her mind gave the “explanation” for the pregnancy being that she got pregnant because she was bored and didn’t want to deal with things like small-town theatric companies doing Oklahoma.
Given that she ran away the night before her wedding, both Amy and Rory had been left in a state of some confusion about where their relationship was going, and what she really thought about Rory.
Then, at the end, knowing that Amy loves him and would (and did choose to) die for him, Rory then gives Amy the choice of how their life will move on, together. The Doctor asks where to next, and Rory answers that it is Amy’s choice.
And so we’re back to the same situation we were at the end of “Vampires” where Amy chooses Rory for the man she loves, and the Doctor for the lifestyle. But now it is better for all of them, because there is no insecurity left for Rory as to whether she genuinely wants him or is just letting him tag along. Rory isn’t just coming along so he can keep being with Amy, he knows that Amy is his, and is happy to let her choose the lifestyle for the two of them that will make her happiest.
Also because the Doctor recognizes that while part of him, from his past, would have forced Amy to choose, he doesn’t have to be that person any more.
Even at the end of “Vampires” the Doctor’s instinct was to make Amy choose, suggesting that since she was reconciled with Rory, the next logical stop had to be the registry office for them to get married, and where he would give her away. Even though it respected Amy and Rory’s relationship, the Doctor’s instinct was still that Amy would have to choose, and that he would offer choices rather than letting her decide the options.
The Doctor can now be genuinely happy to have two companions who are intimate with each other, and not force them into difficult and unhappy choices without even realizing it.
@mark-p: “I’m sure the Doctor could have imagined something much more creepy after 900 years traveling the universe.”
What worse nightmare for the Doctor than the one where all the children die?
@Milo1313: “Frankly, I thought the end was a cop out. Magic pollen?”
Bet you a Jammie Dodger things are not what they seem.
This series is…Gerberesque.
@Milo1313 – while I agree with you re: their commitment to certain things, I agree w/Ursula about the dreams being meaningless because they were the Doctor’s. They weren’t. The pollen put them in a shared dream state. It fed off the Doctor’s dark side, and a lot of that fed the dreams, but each of them was autonomous in the dreams, and the fact that they remembered the choices they made once they woke up made their choices matter a great deal.
MarianMoore @11 – I didn’t mention the Doctor seeing the Dream Lord’s reflection at the end, but I definiely noticed it. I don’t think it was actually the Dream Lord though. It seemed more like an acknowledgement of the Doctor’s continuing struggle w/his dark side. But who knows with this show? :)
The one thing that was unclear was when in the story the Doctor figured out that both worlds were dreams.
He certainly seemed to have figured out that the Dream Lord was an aspect of his personality early, when he commented that he only knew one person who hated him as much as the Dream Lord. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that he understood the psychic pollen or the mechanics of both worlds completely at that point.
But if he knew that both worlds were a dream, it seems unkind to leave Amy and Rory thinking they had to make such a difficult and potentially deadly decision, when he could have arranged for their dream-deaths in both worlds and alleviated their fear.
On the other hand, if he consciously knew that he was doing a bad job of being a supportive friend to Amy and Rory, and letting them choose their own future, then holding back with his know-it-all nature and letting them explore their options, symbolically, was perhaps a kind thing, compared to jumping in with the answer and giving them no choice. After all, once he knew that both worlds were a dream, he knew they were in no danger, and that it was safe to let Amy and Rory explore their options in this way.
The Seventh Doctor was physically similar in appearance to the “Dream Lord” in some ways, but more importantly he was also known as a manipulator who liked playing mind games with people. (Though I gather that this comes a lot more from the novels featuring the character, especially the ones that carried out the “Cartmel Masterplan”, than the TV show; a lot of his TV appearances were kind of dumbed-down and hokey, though he did have his moments.)
When it was revealed who the “Dream Lord” really was, it seemed fairly obvious in retrospect that the pollen was channeling the 7th Doctor, with enough physical differences to make it harder for the 11th Doctor to realize this. (In an ideal world, they’d just have gone ahead and brought Sylvester McCoy in to play the role, but I suppose that would have given the game away early.) Of course, that’s just my guess. I haven’t seen the Doctor Who Confidential for this episode.
There was one thing that irked me about this episode that no one has mentioned.
The fact the Amy was pregnant and even knowing that there was a possibility that it was the real world that Rory died in, she went ahead and made the decision to not go on if he was not there. Without once mentioning anything about the baby that was coming.
Of course, none of it matters since it was only another dream world. But still. What if that was the real world?
I thought they covered the pregnancy with her statement that if that world was real, without Rory, she didn’t want it.
It seemed pretty clear, to me, throughout the episode, that the small-town dream world was supposed to be the Doctor’s imagining of Rory’s dream of life with Amy (safe, domestic, boring), while the TARDIS dream world was the Doctor’s fear of what his life with Amy (and Rory) would be (destroying them.)
Amy is willing to risk destruction for the excitement of the life of the TARDIS, and she’s willing to take up parenthood and domesticity for the sake of Rory and Rory’s happiness. But she doesn’t want parenthood and domesticity for its own sake – even when Rory was still there, she seemed decidedly unenthusiastic about that dream.
Without Rory, that dream was a nightmare for Amy, being trapped, pregnant in small-town life.
It’s a manifestation of just how much Amy loves Rory. With him, she can be content (if not fully happy) with small-town domesticity and parenthood, and believing that it was something he wanted, she couldn’t reject it while he lived. Yet she’d rather die trying to get him back than live that life on her own.
@@@@@ Teresa – Well, okay, I’ll try to discuss my thoughts about the characters in this episode without talking about the episodes that come next.
I pretty much agree with what you’ve said about the characters in the review. The only difference is that I don’t think that Amy “grows up” in this episode. I think she already HAS grown up and this is where she realizes it. I think when the chips were down, Amy would have always chosen Rory over the Doctor — she just never has had to make that choice until now. She could always have her cake and eat it too up to this point. She could run away with the Doctor and have wonderful adventures for as long as she wanted like Wendy in Never Never Land and still be back by morning to marry Rory. And, yes, she did try to jump the Doctor’s bones, which is normally considered “wrong,” but notice the idea never entered her head that she was going to have any kind of permanent relationship with the Doctor. The Doctor was never in Rory’s league.
Well, here, the chips are finally down and she has to decide. When Rory is “killed,” Amy’s first instinct is to do what she’s always done — bargain with the Doctor to put off making a decision. When the Doctor has no way to save Rory and she says to the Doctor, “Then what’s the point of you?”, it means a lot of things, but one of the things it means is “what are you good for if you can’t save me from making this kind of decision?”
A lot has been made of Amy’s inability to trust people and how the Doctor is responsible for it. I think he IS responsible but not because of her disappointment that he broke his promise to her when she was a child. She made the Raggedy Doctor her imaginary friend, created an entire fantasy world around this fantastic person she met for only a few minutes, without a doubt filling in a lot of things that she hadn’t learned about him using her own imagination. That isn’t what you do when you feel betrayed. For her, I think the Doctor harkens back to a time of childlike innocence — in real life and in the fantasies of her childhood he fights the monsters and makes all the hard choices. She’s virtually an orphan, uprooted from Scotland, raised in exile by an aunt who never seems to be around, so I think she needed a fantasy like that to cope with a lonely and vulnerable childhood that was beyond her control.
But, like so many of the coping mechanisms people form out of necessity in childhood, this one has become a pattern of behavior that isn’t necessarily healthy for an adult. Why would she need to trust anyone? Why would she need to ever make a decision on her own? The Raggedy Doctor always knows who should be trusted and what to do. He always knows what to do, so she never had to learn how. It’s an attractive and necessary fantasy for a lonely, vulnerable child but not for a young woman. I’m amazed she ever got engaged to Rory at all. I don’t think there’s any question whose idea that was.
Unfortunately for Amy, the Raggedy Doctor doesn’t exist. The REAL Doctor is someone she barely knows who can’t always protect her from everything. Frequently he can make the decision for her—he enables her bad habits—but not always. This time she has to decide, and it’s one of those moments where you kind of learn who you are because the choice that you thought would be so hard and that you’ve avoiding making for so many years is so obvious that you don’t even need to think about it. She doesn’t so much grow up in this episode as she learns that she IS grown up and has been for awhile. She doesn’t need the Raggedy Doctor anymore. She’s an adult and capable of making her own choices. So she chooses to love Rory and get to know the real Doctor as a friend.
As for the Dream Lord, I didn’t really see the connection to the Seventh Doctor. I don’t think you need to go back that far. In his tweed and bow tie the Dream Lord looks like Matt Smith, not Sylvester McCoy. The Dream Lord is the personification of the Doctor’s self-loathing and even though this eleventh incarnation is only seven episodes old he’s already got plenty of grounds for self-loathing. He let down little Amelia, he nearly murdered a gentle and innocent space whale, he allowed the Daleks to return stronger than ever, he failed to protect all those frightened clerics from the Weeping Angels and he condemned an entire species of space vampires to extinction… not to mention that Prisoner Zero and the Angels have suggested that he should know more about the cracks than he does, that perhaps he’s the cause of them and he has forgotten. There’s fertile ground right there for this self-loathing Dream Lord to sprout from, and the Doctor has been carrying on like this for centuries with no intention of ever stopping.
One of the things I love about my two favorite classic Doctors (the Second and the Fourth) is that they’re totally irresponsible in the manner of children. One of my favorite things about my favorite modern Doctor (the Tenth) is that he presents his manic side to the world but hides a depressive side capable of deep emotional suffering. The Eleventh Doctor has definitely brought back the childlike, irresponsible nature of the earlier Doctors—he seems to have turned the corner from the Tenth Doctor’s soul-crushing depression and found the fun in life again. But I really like this undercurrent of self-loathing they are working into him. As much as he wants to get back to the irresponsibility of his Second and Fourth incarnations, he has changed a lot since then and he can’t totally let go of the sense of responsibility that he feels for the whole universe now that he’s the last Time Lord.
And I really like that it is out in the open for Amy to see rather than bottled up and hidden away like it always has been. Amy Pond may end up being the first companion to really understand the Doctor… even though, as the Dream Lord points out, he’ll probably never tell her his name.
What if the Doctor does tell Amy Pond his name…and that’s how River Song knows it?
Names for bodies of water, four-letter-last-names with the same vowel sound…who knows what could happen? :)
Pendard @@@@@ 22: I agree with everything you’ve said – except the bit about Eleven finding the fun in life again after Ten. I think he WANTS to find the fun in life, but the specters of all those deaths are holding him back. I think he’s still haunted (since 2005 anyway) by the way things ended with Rose, Martha, Donna, The Master, and even Jack and the clones. Not to mention the multiple (and oft repeated) genocides that make him not much better (and in some sense worse) than the Cybermen and the Daleks.
I think all this manic joy and irrepressible smiling is a mask, a cover. He didn’t want to sit around and sulk so he picked up Amy straight off the bat rather than wandering around a bit and dealing with his issues. He’s trying to avoid having to do any heavy lifting so he’s using Amy and Rory to distract him from that. I also think that’s why he’s so keen to see them get together, that he can’t be with any of his former loves and lovers so he’ll live vicariously through them.
Robotech_Master @@@@@ 23: Amy and River are related I’m going to be seriously pissed.
Ever notice that a lot more bad stuff has happened to the Doctor over the last five years than happened to him over the entirety of the series before that? Sure, every so often you’d have a companion die, but life went on. On the other hand, it seems like a remarkable amount of tragedy has been compressed into the last five years.
Ever notice that a lot more bad stuff has happened to the Doctor over the last five years than happened to him over the entirety of the series before that? Sure, every so often you’d have a companion die, but life went on. On the other hand, it seems like a remarkable amount of tragedy has been compressed into the last five years.
How does that compare when you’re counting by story, rather than season? The old show had multi-episode stories, and fewer stories per season.
Looking at the Wikipedia list of episodes, at the end of this season, there will be 55 new stories. By contrast, it took until the 8th season to get to 55 stories in the old series.
The pacing of the two versions is so different, it’s hard to compare if there is more bad stuff, or if we’re just seeing the same stuff at a different rate.
@@@@@ 24. Milo1313
Have to agree with you about Amy and River. I am dreading that we’ll discover they’re the same person.
Regarding the Doctor’s dark side: I can see how some people are drawn to make the comparison to 7, and as someone mentioned, his almost continual manipulation of events, especially when it came to Ace. I am surprised however, that no one has brought up The Valeyard from 6’s final (and best) serial, _Trial of a Time Lord_. The Dream Lord seems positively milquetoast compared to the intensity of the Valeyard’s loathing of the Doctor. While watching this episode, I almost expected the Dream Lord to turn out to be someone similar to The Master (not THE Master) from the 2nd Doctor serial, _The Mind Robber_.
Normally genre fiction has no idea what to do with the dark alter ego of the hero. Lots of writers throw it in as if expecting you to be so shocked by the very idea that a hero might have a dark side that you won’t notice that in fact it’s their only idea.
It’s well done here, however (and fun). The Dream Lord sounds just like the Doctor, but the Doctor if he were a lot nastier. That makes him plausible, since after all the Doctor does sound like a jerk at times, though it isn’t what defines him. What emerges as he speaks aren’t horrible large-scale sins, but rather the kind of shortcomings that a man who’s trying very hard to maintain his decency might hate himself for. It isn’t necessarily implied that the Doctor actually should hate himself over these things, just that it’s a fact about him that he does. What primarily emerges is that he isn’t as oblivious as he looks.
This leads nicely into the dream sequences, in a way that wouldn’t have worked as well if the Dream Lord hadn’t been the Doctor himself. Since the Doctor is the Dream Lord, they’re his dreams, something he’s using, as we do use dreams, to set up scenarios, surface the unthinkable, and deal with problems. But once he’s involved Amy and Rory, they’re not just his dreams, just as it isn’t only his TARDIS once he’s invited them aboard, and it helps to keep him honest. He can’t just kill off Rory to get him out of the way, for example. Amy’s willingness to kill herself, even though she’s pregnant in the dream, makes sense on this level. It would be very problematic if she actually believed that she was in a real situation, but not if she knew at some level that she was in a dream and needed to assert herself against the Doctor’s solipsism. She’s insisting on what’s real.
The preoccupations in the dreams are more telling than what the Dream Lord actually says. A geriatric menace? Yes, the Doctor really is worried about being old and preying on the young … When Amy says “What’s the point to you, then?”, it’s not that far away from his saying in “The Beast Below” that once he’s killed the whale he will be “the Doctor no more.” You could probably tell some kind of story about his being a man who’s so intolerant of his perceived moral failings that he’s taken on a role as the Doctor to compensate (“Has he ever told his his real name?”), but who knows, really.
Speaking of “The Beast Below,” the season has been quite consistent about its themes. First, the necessity of both childlike and adult qualities, in balance. Second, speaking of growing up, balance among people — anyone can surprise you, and the Doctor isn’t alone in that, and isn’t an exception to being one human among others, like the rest of us. (Or sort of human, and sort of like the rest of us.) Not as immediately gratifying as putting the hero in a more privileged and charismatic role, but much more satisfying, and one of Moffat’s great strengths is that any of his characters can surprise you at any moment.
That even-handedness might have made it seem as if the Doctor was being set up to be less so Amy could appear to be greater. In “The Beast Below,” however, what we see is that Amy, by being childish, more than by being childlike, tries to abdicate responsibility. (She literally presses a “forget” button.) The Doctor, for his part, is so agonized by what he sees as the alternatives that he forces himself to be hard and adult, and in doing so, he closes himself off to the solution, and tries to dominate Amy as well. Amy restores the balance, and in doing so she’s the one who finds the answer. But neither of them would have found the answer alone; Amy had been trying to pretend the problem didn’t even exist.
The one case I can think of where Amy does clearly dominate while the Doctor looks foolish is “Victory of the Daleks.” But this plainly happened in some bizarre alternative universe, as witness the many physical impossibilities, and it Didn’t Really Happen. Probably it ended with Amy waking up from a dream, and they cut that bit out for time. In any case, it’s a story about the London Blitz, so shouldn’t a British citizen, as opposed to a foreigner like the Doctor, be the one to save the day?
As far as I could tell, anyway, the only thing the episode was really about was Karen Gillan’s eyes. Certainly it’s all I can remember. Maybe some day-glo Daleks, too, but I must have imagined that.
@@@@@ Milo1313: I definitely agree with you that the Eleventh Doctor hasn’t completely “found the fun” in life again, but I think the way he invited Amy to travel with him so easily when the Tenth Doctor was determined to be alone forever definitely shows some kind of change in outlook, or at least a desire to put the Tenth Doctor’s tragedies in the past.
@@@@@ Robotech Master: Rightly or wrongly, I have faith that Amy Pond won’t somehow turn into brunette 51st century archeologist River Song just because they both have aquatic names. I trust Steven Moffat that far. If that trust is misplaced I’ll be very upset.
@@@@@ TheMarchChase: I’ve definitely heard some people comparing the Dream Lord with the Valeyard. And I haven’t watched Trial of a Time Lord yet, so I have no idea how close they are. But is the modern show really going to reference Colin Baker?
@@@@@ Penard
People really need to give Colin Baker a chance. I truly enjoyed his run as the Doctor. Yes, yes, he was hampered by a horrible outfit, and probably two of the most annoying companions (Peri and Mel), but his portrayal of the Doctor was so different, so unique that he has to have some respect. 6 came across as a petulant coward, at times appearing to revel in his cruelty (especially for the first few serials) towards Peri. His mannerisms caused his adversaries to continually underestimate (or even, dismiss) him, similar to 2. Unfortunately, format change (going from 4 half hour eps. to 2 45min eps.), issues with the Beeb and JNT, and an 18 month break in the show didn’t give 6 a chance to fully come into his own. And he had some strong stories. _Vengeance on Varos_, _Timelash_, _The Two Doctors_ and the afore mentioned _Trial of a Timelord_ are all good.
Part of my affection towards 6, might be that he and 5 were the Doctors when I discovered the series.