Well, isn’t this just a lovely wholesome episode? The one where a pregnant woman commits suicide while driving a VW bus head-first towards killer pensioners at her front door. See men, get yourself a woman who will prove to a lord of dreams that she loves you and not a two-thousand-year-old alien who is also from a race of lords, but rather of time, instead of dreams.

Oddly, it is not a Moffat-written episode. Instead, Simon Nye takes up his one and only credit with Doctor Who. It is one that I really like, I’d put it up there with episode 3, “Victory of the Daleks,” and episode 10, “Vincent and the Doctor.” It is not only fun, but it has heart, warmth, and simply lovely feelings that you could only get with Doctor Who following the last episode. Sure, there are the killer alien pensioners and Rory’s awful impish ponytail, two separate crimes against humanity, but I love it nonetheless. The episode, not the ponytail, never the ponytail.

“Five-years on” things have changed. Rory has gotten older, Amy swallowed a planet, and the old man still tootles around in the blue box. You know, the usual. Well, kind of. The phrase “it’s all a dream” is something you’d usually roll your eyes at and say, “Well, what’s the point in that?” Steaks, and not the one’s vegans moan about (they might, depending on the tripe they watch). Or rather, stakes; the things that give us risk and reward for watching the entire episode and understanding what is going on.

Ok, that might be a bit dramatic explaining it as if it is a mystery puzzle for your to crack, but it kind of is. The Dream Lord, as played by the wonderfully small and mustache-less whisker twirling Toby Jones, traps the three leads in his little dream world, with Amy having to decide which one is real. One is the posh bit of her little village, filled with everything she’s known for all her life, and the other is a cold T.A.R.D.I.S. heading to a burning cold star (yes, burning cold). Bouncing between the two places, which one is real and which one is just a dream? If you die in the dream, you wake up; Die in the T.A.R.D.I.S., you die.

To quote an older woman I love (or younger depending on where we are in her diary), “Spoilers!” This is the thing, I could watch the episode several times in a row and I don’t tire of it. This is unlike last week’s episode that puts me to sleep, now. The thing is, the last episode was meant to be the one where we more or less ‘get’ Rory. If we had an extra 5-10 minutes to the episode we could have had a quick pre-credit pick-up Rory (Kill Phil, go the Winchester, wait for it to blow over), the three of them fall over, crash to the credits, wake-up in Leadworth, and carry on.

What I am saying is, this is a better episode to make me love and care for Rory. The entire point of this episode is: Does Amy choose the Doctor or Rory? That is something that I think comes up a little too much in some other points, but we’ll cross those “The Girl Who Waited” mirror worlds when we come to them in Series 6 – Part 2. I’ve already spoiled it because of course I have. However, it is one of those “it’s the journey” type games we’re playing; Seeing how we get to Amy killing herself and the Doctor is what makes it so good.

The little bits of boring old Leadworth (Upper-Leadworth) brought to life with the army of alien OAPs is brilliant. It is just not the type of thing I’d have pegged to come from Simon Nye, creator of Men Behaving Badly. For context, it is a very toned down BBC 1 blokey take on Bottom, but not as… funny? Bottom, of course, is helmed by the truly fantastic Rik Mayall. As much as Martin Clunes is great, he’s no Rik Mayall. While Bottom went for surrealism, physical violence, and swearing, Men Behaving Badly tried to “class” that up a bit. Yet, a lot of “Amy’s Choice” is about that surrealist nature of dreams.

If there was one episode I could force you to sit down and watch, or rather watch again, it would be this one. I honestly think there is no way you could sit there and come away bored or unhappy about watching it. It is love. It is a surrealist nightmare forced by a petty little gremlin of space pushing out nothing but love. You really would have to be a monster to think the episode wasn’t, at the very least, fun, engaging, interesting, and filled with little nuggets of gold. From wonderful little lines dropped in, “What do you do around here to stave off the…” small pause, “self-harm” as Amy says, “boredom?”

From Jones’ distinctive take on what any lesser actor would do as a John de Lancie impression to Amy’s pregnancy being a joke, it is wonderful and joyous. Yeah, the “monster” ‘isn’t scary enough,’ I honestly don’t care. I’ve never sat in an episode of Doctor Who and thought, “I am scared of what I am seeing on the screen right now,” I’ve been disturbed by things, but I’ve always disliked children and Torchwood. I don’t need a “scary monster,” I want a fun adventure and that’s what this was, an adventure. It made an adventure out of some OAPs, a quiet little village, and a dead T.A.R.D.I.S., now how many times you can say that?

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Doctor Who "Amy's Choice"

9

Score

9.0/10

Pros

• So many perfect throw away lines.
• Beware, the killer OAPs.
• A lovely wholesome episode about love.

Cons

• For an episode full of knitwear, there is a lack of some color.