(no subject)
Re: Rate / Review "Amy's Choice"
I was torn between an 8 and a 9, and now I wish I'd gone with the 9. First off, the episode was beautifully shot, especially the closeups of frozen faces in the TARDIS toward the end. Our lead actors were all terrific, but then I always think so. The mind game stuff and competition between the Doctor and Rory was extremely well done. I didn't suspect the Dream Lord's identity at all (I was leaning toward him being the Master of the Land of Fiction), but it makes perfect sense in retrospect. That line about him being the one who hates the Doctor the most was really effective, the more so when you realize that he was talking about his own self-loathing, the guilt and negativity he manages to hide away inside himself most of the time.
So why did I mark it down? Two things, one totally subjective reason and one plot point that I thought could have been more dramatic. On the former, well, I just didn't care for the murderous alien parasites inside the old people. Nothing really wrong with them as a plot device, it just didn't quite work for me.
And the dramatic weakness? Amy's choice is ultimately between a bleak future without Rory or a "reality" in which she has both Rory and the Doctor. How hard is that to decide? Sure, it must be a little hard to commit to "suicide" to escape that reality, to take that chance, even if that reality is really dreadful. But imagine instead a choice between, for example, dead Rory and dead Doctor, or a wonderful life with one man or the other, but not both. Make it a real wrench; make her work for it. Much more dramatic, wouldn't you say?
Still, the end works well enough, and there's so much that's great in this episode that I probably should not have rounded down my 8.5 out of 10 to an 8, but gone with the 9 instead. Ah, well!
K.
***
On the use of a dream trope, particularly the "all a dream" status of the TARDIS sequences:
The basic problem with "And then they woke up, and it was all a dream" as a device is that it robs the story of drama and import. If it was just a dream, then presumably there are no consequences to what you've just read or seen, and there is no resolution to the original conflict. The reader or viewer has been, in effect, cheated and lied to. He or she was encouraged to invest intellectually and emotionally in something that wasn't real, and then robbed of a resolution to those thoughts and feelings.
Personally, I really hate that kind of story. The "all a dream" ending ruins Alice in Wonderland for me, and to a lesser extent (partially redeemed by the setup with actors in dual roles) the film version of The Wizard of Oz.
But here was have something altogether different from that. From the first sight of pregnant Amy, we know something is up, because that's not how we left her last week. Within minutes we know for sure that at least one of the situations our characters are experiencing is a dream, so we're not being tricked or cheated. Instead we're invited to play along with both the intellectual puzzle - what is reality and how will the the characters work this out? - and the emotional one involving Amy's relationships with the two men in her life. Really, the best comparison for this story is not with Alice or Oz, but with the Buffy episode "Restless," where the dreamscapes were established as such from the outset, and nevertheless had real world consequences.
The final twist - neither situation is real - can be deduced without becoming annoyingly obvious in the meantime. Clues include the cold star, Amy's recognition that Rory's bucolic village would not satisfy her, and, as he supposedly concedes defeat, the Dream Lord's remark about "fictions" - plural. Moreover, even though we are told not to trust that what see see is real, there are still emotional consequences, and a slight possibility of physical consequences in case we and the characters guessed wrong.
Works for me!
K.
and
I was probably about twelve, but perhaps younger, when the end of Alice struck me as a cheat, largely because it gets her instantly out of danger from the Queen. Even though I've had The Annotated Alice on my shelves for nearly 30 years, I've never gone back to look at how the story stands up to an adult's understanding and sensibilities. Maybe an adult (particularly a Victorian adult) would immediately see the nonsensical world down the rabbit hole for the dreamscape that it is, and accept Alice's rejection of this reality ("nothing but a pack of cards!") as an acceptable resolution. But really, for a child especially, are hookah-smoking caterpillars and rabbits with fob watches (the White Rabbit is a Time Lord?) that much dreamier than Mr. Toad and friends, or the flying boy with the escaped shadow in a world of pirates, Indians and mermaids? Come to think of it, Peter Pan is implicitly a dream world as well, accessed from a bedroom. But Wendy et al. don't escape from danger simply by waking up.
The idea of suicide as the stated rule for how to escape the dream is an interesting reversal of other dream fiction. For example, in Thurber's "A Friend to Alexander," getting shot by Aaron Burr in a dream is fatal to the dreamer in real life. In the usual order of things, one just needs to stay alive long enough to wake up, which makes the nightmare basically a surreal version of the waking world, in which the danger may or may not be real. Here, the Doctor and friends are explicitly told that their only escape is through death, with the possibility of that death being a real one. That makes the drama less physical and more psychological, and the story is better for it.
***
On Amy's options:
But see, if that's the case [that Amy choosing between Upper Leadworth and the TARDIS is essentially the same thing as choosing Rory or the Doctor], then the choice she makes undercuts that, because by that point in the story it's not set up for her to make that choice. At that stage, Rory is gone from the Leadworth option. If she chooses Leadworth, then she's got the baby, and nonagenarian killer aliens, and either a quiet life (which she's already expressed dissatisfaction with) or the possibility of climbing back aboard the TARDIS (with a baby? Wouldn't that be interesting!). If she rejects Leadworth, and she's guessed correctly, she's got Rory, and the Doctor, and the freedom of TARDIS travel. She also still has the opportunity, if she survives, of having the baby later.
So the choice is ultimately not between Rory and the Doctor at all. It's between Rory's preferred world, only without Rory to make it bearable, and the Doctor's preferred world with all the goodies: Rory, the Doctor, and freedom. There is no intellectual difficulty at that point, and no incentive to choose Leadworth (since the baby exists as future potential in the TARDIS version). The choice she makes is therefore the only reasonable one.
Even so, she makes that choice for the emotional reason, to be reunited with Rory and in grief over losing him otherwise. Fortunately, Rory catches on that Amy chose the Doctor's preferred reality for Rory's sake. It's not the only possible interpretation of her decision, but he apparently can tell from what little she says and the say she says it that she did it for him. That's the emotional core of the story, at least as far as Amy is concerned. I think her emotional state is perfectly valid for this character in this situation.
For what it's worth, I do think Amy's relationship with Rory and the Doctor is very important to the story, but not the only important aspect of it. The puzzle and the Doctor/Dream Lord stuff are the other two legs of the stool. And although Rory's death does make Amy's choice too easy in the sense that it's not a choice between Rory and the Doctor, with no chance to have both, I'm not all that bothered by this. It has the intended result: it gives her a new appreciation for Rory and reassures Rory himself, while not breaking the format by ending her time in the TARDIS prematurely. That's more important than a clinical Leadworth/TARDIS or simplistic Rory or the Doctor choice.
and
If heaven enters into Amy's calculations (as the dialogue implies), that's the other part of the same gamble. If Leadworth is real, and she dies, she might see Rory in Heaven. (Let's discount the idea that suicide is often thought to preclude heaven as a destination.) That's a calculation based on consequences (Stay, no Rory, die, maybe Rory) rather than the inherent likeliness of "Upper Leadworth" being real. It's merely adding an extra possibility to the equation:
Option One: Live in Upper Leadworth, Die in the TARDIS
IF CORRECT GUESS
*Chance of being with Rory (alive) - 0%
*Chance of having a baby - 99%
*Chance of traveling with the Doctor - approx 1%
*Chance of seeing Rory in Heaven anytime soon - negligible
IF INCORRECT:
*Chance of being with Rory (alive) - 0%
*Chance of having a baby - 0%
*Chance of traveling with the Doctor - 0%
*Chance of seeing Rory in Heaven - presumably good to excellent
Option Two: Die in Upper Leadworth, Live in the TARDIS
IF CORRECT GUESS
*Chance of being with Rory in the TARDIS (and after) - 99%
*Chance of having a baby, eventually - excellent, if desired
*Chance of traveling with the Doctor - approx 99%
*Chance of seeing Rory in Heaven anytime soon - negligible
IF INCORRECT:
*Chance of being with Rory (alive) - 0%
*Chance of having a baby - 0%
*Chance of traveling with the Doctor - 0%
*Chance of seeing Rory in Heaven - presumably good to excellent
The incorrect guesses (resulting in death) are the same, so they cancel each other out. Option One gives her the baby, but no Rory for sure, and probably no Doctor (since he's unlikely to let her travel with a baby). Option Two, which Amy chooses, results in her having access to Rory almost for sure, and secondarily the Doctor. Easy, really. Not that she's likely to reason it out in that much detail, but the emotion of the decision leads the same way.
***
On the consequences for later in the season:
We know the immediate fallout, that Amy's relationship with Rory is strengthened, and they both stay in the TARDIS for now. But we don't know how the developments in the characters' relationships and outlook will play into whatever happens in the season finale.
As I said, I should have given it a 9. Maybe even a 10.