Doctor Who 5x07 - Amy's Choice
May. 15th, 2010 10:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lightcastleFor one brief, glorious moment, I thought it was The Master of The Land of Fiction.
I'm perfectly happy to be wrong, though.
Episode here for those who want to watch online.
Now that was great fun. I did, in fact, call they were both dreams, since the forced choice scenario almost always calls for the third option as the answer. That lets me forgive somewhat both the "old people zombie movie" scenes and the "star burning cold". In other cases, I'd be far less forgiving of that. Basically, the directing wasn't strong, but it was passable.
But this was a character episode, and the "mortal dangers" were secondary - something the episode was kind enough to basically tell us up front. Instead it was all about Amy and her ultimately manifesting the infamous coin-flip decision method in dramatic fashion.
(For those who don't know it: There's an old saying that if you are torn between two choices, you should flip a coin, because if it comes up the one you don't want, you'll know when it happens.)
I really thought that aspect was handled quite well. Of course, given it was the choice I was rooting for, I might be biased.
I did like the Dream Lord's role as the Doctor's Shadow Self. His barbs were true, and that's what gave them bite. I especially liked him calling the Doctor out on his Peter Pan syndrome. Since that's been an admitted theme of the series, it was nice that someone underlined the less uplifting aspects thereof. Amy's takedown of the Doctor's arrogant dismissal of settled life was also rather lovely.
All in all, I was most pleased with this episode, even if it turned out not to be a major hint along the road of the Cracks and the Silence after all.
And the trailer for next week confirms who our classical monster is, so we can all buckle up for tragedy.
As for throwaways and callbacks, the biggie is the writing on the panel of the little compartment where The Doctor finds the strange eggbeater generator device. That's just pure fan service, although I am annoyed that The Shadow Proclamation is there. (I wasn't under the impression they were affiliated with the Time Lords in any way.)
I'm perfectly happy to be wrong, though.
Episode here for those who want to watch online.
Now that was great fun. I did, in fact, call they were both dreams, since the forced choice scenario almost always calls for the third option as the answer. That lets me forgive somewhat both the "old people zombie movie" scenes and the "star burning cold". In other cases, I'd be far less forgiving of that. Basically, the directing wasn't strong, but it was passable.
But this was a character episode, and the "mortal dangers" were secondary - something the episode was kind enough to basically tell us up front. Instead it was all about Amy and her ultimately manifesting the infamous coin-flip decision method in dramatic fashion.
(For those who don't know it: There's an old saying that if you are torn between two choices, you should flip a coin, because if it comes up the one you don't want, you'll know when it happens.)
I really thought that aspect was handled quite well. Of course, given it was the choice I was rooting for, I might be biased.
I did like the Dream Lord's role as the Doctor's Shadow Self. His barbs were true, and that's what gave them bite. I especially liked him calling the Doctor out on his Peter Pan syndrome. Since that's been an admitted theme of the series, it was nice that someone underlined the less uplifting aspects thereof. Amy's takedown of the Doctor's arrogant dismissal of settled life was also rather lovely.
All in all, I was most pleased with this episode, even if it turned out not to be a major hint along the road of the Cracks and the Silence after all.
And the trailer for next week confirms who our classical monster is, so we can all buckle up for tragedy.
As for throwaways and callbacks, the biggie is the writing on the panel of the little compartment where The Doctor finds the strange eggbeater generator device. That's just pure fan service, although I am annoyed that The Shadow Proclamation is there. (I wasn't under the impression they were affiliated with the Time Lords in any way.)
