| 208 – "Amy's Choice" | |||
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| Doctor Who episode | |||
| Cast | |||
Others
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| Production | |||
| Directed by | Catherine Morshead[2] | ||
| Written by | Simon Nye[1] | ||
| Script editor | Brian Minchin | ||
| Produced by | Tracie Simpson[2] | ||
| Executive producer(s) | Steven Moffat Piers Wenger Beth Willis | ||
| Music by | Murray Gold | ||
| Production code | 1.7 | ||
| Series | Series 5 | ||
| Running time | 45 minutes | ||
| First broadcast | 15 May 2010 | ||
| Chronology | |||
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"Amy's Choice" is the seventh episode of the fifth series of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who. It first broadcast on BBC One on 15 May 2010. It was written by sitcom writer Simon Nye and directed by Catherine Morshead.
In the episode, the Eleventh Doctor, a time travelling alien played by Matt Smith, and his human travelling companions Amy (Karen Gillan) and Rory (Arthur Darvill), are in a trap set by the mysterious "Dream Lord" (Toby Jones), wherein they repeatedly fall asleep and wake up in a different reality. In one, Amy and Rory are happily married but pursued by elderly people possessed by aliens, while in another they are on board the Doctor's time machine, the TARDIS, where they anticipate being frozen to death by a nearby astronomical phenomenon. They must decide which is the real reality and die in the dream, to wake up in reality and escape the trap. At the episode's conclusion, the Dream Lord is ultimately revealed to be a manifestation of the Doctor's dark side and self-loathing.
Nye wrote the episode to explore and to test Amy's relationships with both the Doctor and Rory. Showrunner Steven Moffat suggested that Nye, a comedy writer by trade, build the episode around a split dream concept, and encouraged Nye to create a "monster" for the episode, which influenced his writing of the retirement home dream. The dream scenes in Amy and Rory's village was filmed in Skenfrith, Wales and used CGI and prosthetics. "Amy's Choice" was seen by 7.55 million viewers on BBC One and BBC HD. The most positive critic reviews praised the episode's surrealism and commended it as one of the year's strongest scripts, but other reviewers felt the episode's horror or monsters unsatisfying.