Amy has to choose between life with the Doctor or life with Rory. We have to choose whether we like this one or not. Now you have to choose whether to listen or not!
Opening
Live from Master Closet Studios, you’re listening to the only podcast on the internet that can’t choose which reality to stay in: Noobs and the Whovian!
My name is Austin and I’m the Whovian, and these are my sons Tripp and Corbin and we’re the noobs!
This is the podcast that introduces a whole new generation to Doctor Who by watching an episode each week and discussing it from the perspective of a dad who’s seen it before, and two sons who haven’t.
Welcome to Episode 71 covering series 5 episode 7, Amy’s Choice.
Super-short Recap
This is the one where the Doctor, Amy, and Rory are trapped by the Dream Lord between two competing realities. They have to choose which one is real and in the end, it’s Amy’s choice. She chooses Rory.
Remember that one?
Production notes
- Story # 208
- Originally aired May 15, 2010 to 7.55 million viewers
- Written by: Simon Nye – his only Who credit
- Directed by: Catherine Morshead
- Awards:
Misc Trivia
- First episode to have the companion’s first name in the title since Rose. Of course, we got Martha’s last name in Smith & Jones.
News
- College students have restored an old Doctor Who episode and it premiers on the Doctor Who YouTube channel at 5:50 BST on October 9th.
Cast
- The Dream Lord – Toby Jones
- Played Dr. Arnim Zola in the MCU
- Claudius Templesmith in The Hunger Games
- Currently playing the Librarian in Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance
- He’s the voice of Dobby!
Checklist
- Creature of the week
- Eknodine
- Question – are they real?
- Eknodine
- Bad CGI
- Eknodine coming out of mouths
- The cold star was pretty good
- Jiggery Pokery
- TARDIS
- He threw the instruction manual into a supernova
- There’s an inscription on the box under the control center that says: “TARDIS. Time And Relative Dimension In Space. Build Site: Gallifrey Blackhole Shipyard. Type 40. Build date: 1963. Authorized for use by qualified Time Lords only by the Shadow Proclamation. Misuse or theft of any TARDIS will result in extreme penalties and permanent exile.”
- Psychic Paper
- Random
- Jibberty Jabberty
- Time War
- The Pandorica will open
- Silence will fall
- The Crack
- Jammie Dodger sighting
- Running count – 1
- Existential horror
Who’s Who?
- Who is Amelia?
- Of course, she’s chosen… it’s YOU, dummy!
- Who is Rory?
- Who is The Doctor?
- He’s the one that hates himself more than anyone in the universe
- There’s something that doesn’t make sense… let’s go poke it with a stick
Can we talk about the Doctor as a matchmaker?
- When the Doctor figured out that the Dream Lord was actually him, did he then also figure out that they were both dreams?
- Cuz if so, was he just playing along to make Amy choose? He made it seem so uncertain, but what if he actually knew all along?
Other stuff we noticed
- What do you do to keep back the… boredom… self-harm
Classic Who Connection
- The Doctor is a vegetarian.
- In the serial The Two Doctors, the Sixth Doctor said that he and Peri (his companion) would eat a vegetarian diet from then on. They had narrowly escaped death from creatures who viewed humans as food. But he dropped the vegetarian stance after a while.
- When The TARDIS is getting colder and The Doctor goes under the console he opens a box that reads
TARDIS.
Time And Relative Dimension In Space.
Build Site: Gallifrey Blackhole Shipyard.
Type 40 Build Date: 1963
Authorized for use by qualified Time Lords only
by the Shadow Proclamation
Misuse or theft of any TARDIS
will result in extreme penalties and permanent exile.
- The retirement home is named “Sarn Residential Care Home”.
- The Fifth Doctor serial Planet of Fire, was set on the planet Sarn. Sarn was the name of a character in the Seventh Doctor serial Time and the Rani. Neither the Tardis wiki or I could find a connection for the names though.
- Valeyard
- There was a reoccurring character very similar to the Dream Lord with the Seventh Doctor called the Valeyard. He could teleport around easily and was (according to the Master) made of up the Doctor’s darker character traits. The Valeyard’s main purpose was to try and take the Doctor’s remaining reincarnations.
- Time Track?
- While trying to figure out why they all had the same dream, The Doctor casually mentions that maybe they jumped a time track. This is the opening premise of the First Doctor’s serial The Space Museum.
- TARDIS Instruction manual
- You can actually watch the Fourth Doctor disagreeing with the TARDIS instruction manual in the serial The Pirate Planet. While he doesn’t throw it in a black hole there, he does rip pages out of it.
- Swimming pool
- We have another mention of the swimming pool in the TARDIS. The earliest mention of a pool is back with the Fourth Doctor when his companion Leela went for a swim.
Overall impressions
- Overall rating out of 10 –
- Jared – 9.8
- Austin – 8.5 grains of psychic pollen
- Corbin – 8.5 mouth eyeballs
- Tripp -10 grannies
- Creep Level – out of 500
- Jared – 350
- Austin – 400
- Corbin – 200
- Tripp – 210
Theories
- Corbin thinks The Crack will
appearfeature in everyepisodestory and thateither the Master orthe New Paradigm Daleks or Davros are responsible for it and the Silence.- Well ACTUALLY, it didn’t appear in episode 4
- Tripp thinks The Crack is the end of the universe like the end of the sidewalk. The Crack is in the Wall of the Universe.
- He also thinks that when the Doctor messed with it in Eleventh Hour that it changed it and caused the problem.
- Tripp thinks the Star Whale is significant and we’ll see it again.
- Not yet…
Listener Input
- We read out two new-to-us international reviews we found this week!
- We’re still on our mission to get a new review each month. So here’s a challenge: leave us a review in the month of your birthday. So, if your birthday is in September, it’s your turn! If you do, send me an email saying you left your birthday month review and we’ll not only read the review but we’ll wish you a happy birthday on the show!
The Game Plan
- We’re chuggin along through series 5!
- The next special episode will be a Classic Who Rewind featuring the Third Doctor story The Terror of the Autons which is the first appearance of The Master.
Next Time…
Join us next time as we discuss Series 5 Episodes 8 & 9, The Hungry Earth & Cold Blood.
Closing
Noobs and the Whovian is a production of Master Closet Studios, where it’s always smaller on the inside. Your Senior Producer is Austin Reason. Our Audio Engineer is Tripp Reason. Corbin Reason is our Production Editor. Special thanks to tardis.wikia.com for the trivia, Jared for the Classic Who Connection. Shout outs to Victor and Jared for their Patreon support.
You can find us at facebook.com/noobsandthewhovian and email us at [email protected]. Consider supporting us at https://www.patreon.com/noobsandthewhovian. Please subscribe and leave a rating wherever you found us, and share us with a friend not because we’re a great show but because we watch one.
