Welcoming The Doctor

Five years after she last travelled with The Doctor, Amy is now married to Rory, pregnant and living in an idyllic looking cottage Upper Leadworth. While in the kitchen they hear the sound of the TARDIS materialise in their garden. The Doctor, on exiting seems just as astonished by Rory's new ponytail as Amy's pregnancy. While going for a walk in the village they sit on a bench so that Amy can take a rest. They then realise that they can hear bird song and start to feel drowsy. After falling asleep they find themselves waking up inside the TARDIS. When they all realise that they have all just had the same dream, they decide that strange forces are at work, but the sound of bird song is heard and they fall asleep only to wake up back in Upper Leadworth.

Nearby is a retirement home where a large number of the village's population are living. Amy and Rory take The Doctor inside where they find something a little odd about all of the residents, particularly the elderly Mrs Poggit. The three collapse again in the middle of the room and wake back in the TARDIS - but this time they are confronted by a strange figure calling himself the 'Dream Lord'.

Before The Doctor can stop him the Dream Lord shuts off the TARDIS' power supply plunging them all into near darkness. He then gives the three a challenge: one of the two worlds they are drifting between is real, while the other is fake. In each world, they will face 'a deadly danger', and if they are killed in the fake world, they will wake up permanently in the real one. But if they die in the real world then their death will be permanent. The Dream Lord therefore advises them to make their choice very carefully.

Amy Pond

Before they can question the Dream Lord any further they all fall asleep and then awake back in Upper Leadworth. There The Doctor notices that all of the elderly residents, who live in the retirement home, have disappeared. They go outside where they spot Mrs Poggit watching over a group of children. But before The Doctor can take a closer look they all fall asleep again.

Once more back inside the TARDIS they see the first danger: The powerless TARDIS is slowly drifting towards a freezing cold star, and that they only have a short time to save themselves. After waking up in Upper Leadworth again, they find that the children have been reduced to dust. They are then confronted by a large group of angry residents heading towards them. The elderly reveal themselves to be aliens known as the Ecnodeen, small green eye stalks which use humans as hosts. The alien controlling Mrs Poggit explains that their race was very nearly killed off, and that they plan to do the same to other races. The Ecnodeen try to turn the three into dust - as they did with the children - simply by breathing on them, but The Doctor and his Companions manage to get away.

The Dream Lord

The Doctor leads away a large group of aliens, and locks himself in a storage room of a butcher's shop when he starts to fall asleep again. Amy and Rory escape to their house but as soon as they enter they too fall asleep. In the TARDIS, the Dream Lord tells them that they do not have long in either of the two worlds, and that they must soon decide which of the two worlds is real. Amy then finds herself alone in the TARDIS while Rory and The Doctor find themselves back in Upper Leadworth trying to defend themselves from the advancing Ecnodeen. Waking up on the staircase, Rory drags the sleeping Amy up into what will be their baby's room. Meanwhile The Doctor escapes from the butcher's and drives a camper van towards Amy's house, rescuing a number of people, who are being attacked by the Ecnodeen, on the way. Back in the TARDIS the Dream Lord questions Amy as to who she would choose between. Rory or The Doctor? He tells her that she needs to choose between the worlds. One of which leads to a peaceful married life with Rory while the other leads to adventure and excitement travelling with The Doctor.

Amy falls asleep and wakes up beside Rory in their house. The Doctor arrives at the house just as Mrs Poggit climbs up onto the roof by the window. In an attempt to protect Amy, who starts going into labour, Rory tries to fight Mrs Poggit off, but she breathes on him and knocks him back. The Doctor pushes Mrs Poggit back and she falls to the ground below, but it is already to late for Rory who turns to dust before Amy’s eyes.

This makes Amy realise that she will always value Rory more than The Doctor, despite the fact that she was visibly unsure before his death. Amy decides that the world in Upper Leadworth with the Ecnodeen is the fake, and that if they all die there they will be able to save themselves in reality and she will be reunited with Rory. If she is wrong, and that Upper Leadworth is the real world, she doesn't care if she dies there because she now knows that she can't live without Rory. The Doctor and Amy storm outside past the Ecnodeen and climb into the camper van; Amy then crashes it into the house at full speed, killing them both.

Amy, The Doctor and Rory

The Doctor, Amy and Rory all wake up in the TARDIS. The Dream Lord reactivates it mere seconds before it crashes into the surface of the cold star and states that they have made the correct choice and that he has been defeated, prompting him to leave. However, Amy and Rory are shocked when The Doctor sets the TARDIS to explode. When they ask him why, he explains that it is because both worlds are not real and that he knows this because he knows who the Dream Lord really is…

After the TARDIS explodes the three awake for the last time but this time in the real TARDIS. Amy and Rory find The Doctor holding several specks resembling crystals. The Doctor tells them that they are specks of psychic pollen which had fallen into the TARDIS and heated up, which then made them fall asleep. He blows them out of the door and into space.

The Doctor then reveals that the Dream Lord was actually a physical incarnation of his darker side, as the pollen acts as a parasite which feeds on people's dark sides and builds them into physical forms. Rory asks Amy why she was so sure that Upper Leadworth was the fake world after he died; Amy replies that she wasn't sure at all as she just wanted to be with him again, which Rory is delighted to hear. However, as The Doctor sets the co-ordinates he sees an image of the Dream Lord smiling slyly back at him in his reflection on the console.