Day 767: The Lodger

The Lodger's another highlight of Series 5 for me because it acts as the real showcase for the Doctor of Series 5. It's a simple character piece as we see the effect that the Doctor has on ordinary people, exposing what it's like to live with this fantastic magician of a man for better and for worse.

I think that, in order to best sum up how the story shows off the Doctor of Series 5, we should have a look at the simple scene where he convinces Sophie to follow her dream and work with monkeys. He deliberately antagonises Sophie into saying her feelings about working with animals, and how much she cares about them. Then, just as things start to get a little bit too unfriendly, the Doctor reveals the magic trick to Sophie and how he's helped her realise her inner feelings. This scene shows off the Doctor well by playing him as someone that can easily take control of the situation when he nees to, even if this is not obvious at first. The magic of the scene is thus created by the moment when we realise that the Doctor has been secretly taking control without us realising it, and so we get a small sense of wonder as we see how he did it. But not only that, there's also the magic of how he did it. Instead of using a simple method, he opted for a more complex but effective method that would change Sophie's mind. The fact that the Doctor is able to pull off such a complex trick from underneath our noses shows the degree of magic that is present within the character.

And this magic applies throughout Series 5. We saw it in the capture of Prisoner Zero in The Eleventh Hour, as well as the defeat of the Angels in Flesh and Stone and the ending of Amy's Choice. It's also inverted very well in the next episode, but that's another time. And speaking of the future, we begin to get a sense in this episode that the Doctor may not be as nice as he seems. Because even though he helped Craig and Sophie in the end, he still put Craig through a small amount of emotional trauma in order to reach his end goal. And that's just the start of the slippery slope that will lead to the darker Doctor that we'll meet in the next series. But, for now, we've got work to do as the Pandorica is due to open.

Day 763: Amy's Choice

When looking back at episodes, I'm sometimes hit with a wave of nostalgia for a time when I first watched it. Some are attached to where I first watched it, other times it's the time that I watched it (I'll never forget my sister getting up in the middle of the afternoon when we were watching Time and the Rani to say that she just couldn't stand to watch it any more). Amy's Choice is not an episode that I remember watching for the first time, rather it's an episode that I remember watching again.

It was a Sunday, and I was playing handball with some friends. I lost my footing, and fell over, in the process slightly injuring my knee and putting me into a state of shock - I was just recovering from a far worse knee injury that I'd had a couple of months ago. When we got home, I was heavily doped up on painkillers and decided that I would watch some random Doctor Who story to keep me calm. I ended up choosing Amy's Choice, either because I remembered it as a rather nice story that I'd watched the previous night, or because I was increasingly woozy and the picture on front of the recording I'd made of the episode was a rather pleasant country lane that looked fairly calming. For whatever reason, I chose it, and I rather enjoyed it.

It's not an episode that's particularly exciting. It's not an episode that's particularly scary either. Instead, it feels relatively relaxing with just enough action happening in it to keep the audience's attention. Take, for instance, the scenes in Upper Leadworth. Filmed with visible rain in a picturesque country village, it all feels perfectly nice and calm. Whilst there is a strong amount of danger present in these scenes, director Catherine Morshead keeps the scenes feeling nice and relaxed, filming occasionally in a soft focus and always keeping the greenery of the village in shot. It makes the scenes feel lighter, and helps contribute to the overall comfortable mood of the story.

Consider also the fact that it has the clear opportunity to be something terrifying and yet it decides to let that go in favour of something altogether nicer. Dreams are very terrifying things, because they can be completely surreal and yet you have no idea of whether they are real or not. It's a philosophical nightmare, and has led to countless sleepless nights on my behalf. But the story chooses not to dwell on the slightly frightening nature of dreams, instead moving along and telling a story about the darker side of the Doctor in the form of the Dream Lord. And even that is underplayed - the Doctor dismisses the Dream Lord at the end of the story as just another aspect of his personality, and it's only on repeated viewing that the Dream Lord's statements become interesting and occasionally worrying. But the fact that the story chooses to go for a more comforting angle to everything leaves us with a rather nice story. Sure it's not amazing, but I rather like it for what it is - a simple story where not much happens.