Okay, so I didn't quite make it through season 5 before The Impossible Astronaut hit our screens but last week wasn't a good week for Who fans and things distracted me. So only slightly later than planned... probably the best episode of the series.
Everything about this episode cries out "good old fashioned entertaining Who". There's a superb pre-credits teaser (yes, the Doctor's line into the theme is terribly cheesy and fourth wally but who cares, I love it) and I can't think we'd ever see the Doctor having to drop back in on a happily pregnant Amy with husband Rory after having dropped them back on earth.... I mean thank goodness it's all a dream :) We even get a "Space Museum" reference, how cool is that! Oh, okay, don't answer that one.
Just a shame that the superb cold opener is still followed by that theme music/title sequence.
Anyway, one of the greatest characters from season 5 (and, actually, quite a few of the recent seasons) is the Dream Lord. Twisted, bitchy and played to absolute perfection, the Dream Lord really was one of the highlights of the year's episodes. Part of me would like a re-match but I'm not sure how they'd go about doing it now that we know all about him. Well, I say "him", we know nothing really about the Doctor and this is one of the few times that any attempt to look inside the Doctor's mind has thrilled me but this story mostly hangs on us not knowing his true identity till the very end and now we know his way of working as well... oh well, as a one off he was great. Other things that are stunning about this episode include the ice covered console room (oh how I love the look of it, I wonder if when they do another console room we could have an ice themed one?), the CGI TARDIS freezing over and the fact the script doesn't feel like an old Tennant knock off, it actually starts to show the Smith Doctor as actually having his own traits. Completely inappropriate ones admittedly but the self harm line still raises a smile whenever I hear it (the town I live in isn't quite as dull as the dream scenario but oh boy does it come close). I love Rory's practical nature, I think the Doctor building a generator out of a whisk is inspired and death by dissolving into sand is also pretty grim.
As with pretty much everything in season 5 though, it's a story about perception and what's real/what's not. I am starting to get just a little tired of this and Amy is REALLY starting to irritate me now. When this was shown and Amy and Rory finally realised that they were made for each other I really and truly hoped that this would push Amy back to the background and let us concentrate more on the Doctor... we'll see how that panned out when I face the next two parter.
"Amy's Choice", absolutely superb. I know quite a few people didn't like it but this, to me, is how a Doctor Who love story should be done. Creepy, surreal and with possessed OAPs being hit with bits of wood. I just wish it could all have been like this.
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