Screencaps and Review for Amy’s Choice

[springdew]

Posted are the screencaps for Amy’s Choice, and the review is below.
Monsters and Wank

Monsters: yes - Eknodines
Emotional Wank: 4 out of 10 - relationships and self-hatred

Intended Destination: not given, inflight
Actual Destination: none, or contemporary Leadworth, depending

Rory Death #1
Summary


The Doctor drops in on the Ponds in Leadworth five years after their departure from the TARDIS and Amy is massively pregnant. The village is threatened by some kind of parasitic life forms inhabiting the senior citizens and turning the rest of the villagers to dust by breathing green gas on them. Or, the TARDIS crew are still on board but about to fall into a cold star and freeze to death. They keep crossing from one of these scenarios to the other by means of falling asleep to the sound of birds chirping. A mocking stranger calling himself the Dream Lord tells them that one is reality and one is a dream. They must choose which - dying in the dream will free them in reality, while dying in reality will of course render them dead. In the struggle to escape from the pensioners, Rory winds up dead, and Amy realizes she can’t handle that life being reality so they may as well die. She smashes a camper van with the Doctor inside into a stone house, and they abruptly wake up in the freezing TARDIS, the Dream Lord congratulating them and then vanishing, restoring power to the TARDIS so they can get away from the cold star. This clues the Doctor in that this must be a dream too, as a Dream Lord would have no control over reality. He blows up the TARDIS, and reality does reasser itself. The Doctor finds psychic pollen in the time rotor and lets it go outside the TARDIS. The pollen had been feeding off the dreams, and the Dream Lord had himself been the Doctor’s darkest parts, evoked by the pollen.
Likes

• The little tendernesses between Amy and Rory. He cuts off his hair. She cuts him a poncho. She holds him tenderly when he asks what happened to him. All these little touches and the sweetness at the end as she explains how the first dream ended.

Dislikes

• Powdered children.
• The not at all convincing effects of the eyeballs coming out of people’s mouths. They’re cartoony.
• How our heroes are able to dodge the green breath when the bicycle guy was nowhere near and succombed.

Comments, Questions, Speculation

• The first time I saw this episode, it was the first time I realized the depth of the Doctor’s self-hatred. I’d sort of heard about it before, and I remember the 4th Doctor rather hating himself, but I didn’t fully get it until this one. That’s also when I realized he’s a narcissist, because being the piece of crap at the center of the Universe is still having it all be about yourself. And also, I’ve loved a few narcissists in my time and can see the pattern.
• I believe this is Rory’s first of many deaths.

Raw Caps: 653
Finished Caps: 114

Watch at Amazon.com:
Amy’s Choice

Amy’s Choice [HD]

Originally published at It's Timey-Wimey!. Please leave any comments there.