The episode opens with a house in the country and Amy (Karen Gillan) pregnant in the kitchen. She's baking and acts the proper little housewife, oops, she wouldn't like being called little. Rory (Arthur Darvill) sports a ponytail and they hear the TARDIS. The Doctor (Matt Smith) takes one look at her and exclaims "you swallowed a planet." The Doctor hasn't changed in appearance but has aged in the 5 years they haven't seen him. He comments on Rory and then Amy's size and asks if she's pregnant. Rory says they live in Upper Leadworth now, not so you'd notice any differences. The Doctor tells them, "This Time Lord's for life." He refers to this place as boring Upper Leadworth, so there's not much time for birdsong and all three fall asleep on the bench.
They all wake up in the TARDIS and the Doctor had a nightmare about them, he's "getting on." Red lights on the TARDIS console. Amy and Rory had a dream too, they were married and lived in a village. They all had exactly the same dream, which is impossible. The Doctor had a nightmare, he calls it a "good...mare." There's more birdsong and they wake up on the bench. The Doctor wants them to trust nothing they see, hear or feel, what about what they say. Rory asks if they're flashing forwards or backwards. Returning back to the TARDIS. The Doctor threw the TARDIS manual in the supernova cos he didn't agree with it. They shouldn't talk to him when he's angry.
The Doctor thinks this could be a dream, but Rory adds, "maybe what rings true isn't so simple." Since they are on a ship bigger on the inside. The time machine dies. Amy thinks Leadworth is a dream. Back in Leadworth, an old woman, Mrs Poggit (Audrey Ardington) says hello to Rory, he's a doctor now and no longer a nurse. Maybe this is Rory's dream. The Doctor realizes something is awry here and Poggit asks if the Doctor is a junior doctor (what as in 'young for his age', ha.) The Doctor notices she's very old and birdsong appears again. Amy now says the TARDIS is real. The TARDIS is drifting. An oldish man in a bow tie appears ( big clue that!) They can call him the Dream Lord (Toby Jones). He creates dreams which the Doctor refers to as "cheap tricks." The Dream Lord calls Rory a gooseberry. Amy has to choose her man, but she's already chosen Rory. And says her customary, "Stupid."
The Dream Lord has seen her dreams and they make him blush. He refers to the Doctor and his "tawdry quirks" and tells them one dream is real and the other is false: one danger is real and sends them to sleep again. Or not. The Dream Lord could always see through the Doctor. If they die in a dream they can wake up but if they die in reality; Rory asks what happens then. Dream Lord: "You die, stupid." Hey only Amy can call Rory stupid. (As in season 6.) The Doctor doesn't know who he is. All the old folk have disappeared. The Doctor's quirk is figuring things out. Rory's a doctor so he can help Amy when she feels contractions. They're both doctors. Amy doesn't want the Doctor to ever call her life boring. Well it was until he came along.
The Doctor mentions Rory's ponytail and if she holds him down, he'll cut it off. Rory comments on that coming from a man in a bow tie. Doctor: "Bow ties are cool." Heard that practically every episode. The Doctor should have gotten angry over that, he always sounds so defensive when he says that. Birdsong is heard and Rory wants a dream life. Amy asks why they would give up the TARDIS for that life. Rory's insecure since Amy ran off with another man. But it wasn't like that. She went looking for adventure. The Doctor hands Rory a whisk, which is a generator. There's a cold star outside and they're drifting towards it. This is the danger part of the dream, or is it reality.
The Doctor believes this might be a battle they have to lose. Rory tells him the Doctor is so him - he's the only one who can save the day. Amy comments about the wedding, they can get married anytime and they keep putting it off, ('til the Doctor's "end.") The Dream Lord appears with a little ditty: "There was an old man from Gallifrey who ended up throwing his life away; he let down his friends and they ran out of time..."
Rory feels the village is real. The Dream Lord asks Amy what he thinks, the "tall, dark hero." Loves when he does that. He loves a redhead. Mentioning Elizabeth I. There's only one person who hates the Doctor as much as the Dream Lord does, i.e. the Doctor himself. The old folks mouths open revealing eyes. The creatures are inside them and the Doctor calls them Ecnodines. A proud race driven from their planet by the Crack. They were destroyed and now they're going to destroy others. The Doctor says they need to leave. Heard that before.
Rory calls Amy, "chubs." Amy ran off with the Doctor and left him alone. The Doctor stumbles into the butcher's shop, where the Dream Lord calls him a "floppy haired wuss." He almost falls asleep and yet more birdsong. The Doctor covers his ears as he struggles to stay awake and get away form the old folk. Ends up in the freezer and then in the TARDIS. They must agree on which is the dream. Rory and the Doctor ask if they're disagreeing or competing. Amy asks over what. Over her! Amy gives them ponchos to wear, calling them "my boys." As in the previous episode.
The Dream Lord wants Amy and the Doctor can have "pointy nose." I.e. Rory, always with the nose! It's all about Amy again. As the Doctor finally realized in episode 5.5. The Doctor escaping from the freezer by using his Sonic on them, takes over a camper van, rescuing all the people in the village. The Dream Lord tells Amy the Doctor always leaves her; he doesn't have to apologize and now he's left her with him. The Dream Lord changes into a robe, so he was the smarmy version of the Doctor. The Doctor trusts Amy. The Dream Lord posits the Doctor hasn't told Amy his name, so who would Amy choose. Well the Dream Lord hasn't told anyone his name either. Would she give up the handsome hero for a "bumbling Doctor." (That could mean Rory or the Doctor.) If she chooses a world, it'll end, he's waiting for her to make a choice. "Amy's men, Amy's choice." But she has made her choice, thereby rendering this useless, unless it was an allusion to the final episode.
The Doctor needs to find his friends. Rory cuts off his ponytail. The Doctor climbs through the window of the house where Amy and Rory have taken refuge in the village. He's not sure which one is real now. Rory is attacked by the creature and he dies. So this one's the dream cos he has to come back - be alive and Amy has to choose him again. Amy begs the Doctor to save Rory, "it's what you always do." Doctor: "Not always." Amy: "Then what is the point of you?" As said, Amy picks the village as the dream since she doesn't want this reality. She loved Rory and didn't tell him.
They awaken in the TARDIS. The Dream Lord says Amy got it right picking this world. It's all from their imagination. He was an evil Doctor. The Doctor is going to blow up the TARDIS. Had to choose the star burning cold and the Dream Lord has no power over the real world because the Doctor realizes who he is. Psychic pollen fell in the rotor and "induced a dream state." The Dream Lord was the Doctor, well duh. The pollen feeds on the darkness in them and he's got 907 years worth of darkness. Only shows he has plenty of darkness in him and is capable of this.
The Doctor chooses his "friends with great care." Amy tells Rory he was already dead but she didn't know it was a dream. This is Amy's choice; to go anywhere she wants. What did the Doctor notice was so strange when he's at the control panels of the TARDIS. Or was he thinking about who that other man really was and how he led them a merry dance.
This could've ended up being a confusing episode - running around between dreams, reality and which is real. A bit of a re-imagined Groundhog day, only instead of waking up to the same events occurring over and over, they woke up between worlds of both dream and reality. But the Doctor being dark and becoming so cos of the psychic pollen, shows he does have darkness in him as we've seen glimpses of it now and then. Amy being pregnant here which is what Rory wanted in his dream and Amy finally getting pregnant and disappearing in season 6.
The Dream Lord calls the Doctor, "the oncoming storm," a phrase used by the Daleks in The Parting of the Ways and the Girl in the Fireplace (one of my fave episodes.) As for referring to him as a "veggie" and him ending up in the butcher's shop, was alluding to the Doctor trying, but failing to become vegetarian.
Elizabeth I was from the Shakespeare Code and carried further in The End of Time episode; as well as The Beast Below: the Doctor is meant to have been on intimate terms with Elizabeth I, when they were married for a while, which he hasn't told anyone about to my knowledge.
No comments:
Post a Comment