Companions: Fifty Years of Doctor Who Assistants (46 page)

Rory is enjoying his stag-do when the Doctor jumps out of the giant cake. ‘Now then, Rory, we need to talk about your fiancé. She tried to kiss me. Tell you what though, you’re a lucky man. She’s a great kisser.’ Unsurprisingly this doesn’t go down well, leaving Rory both angry and embarrassed. Amy is not too happy about having Rory join her in the TARDIS – invading her little fantasy world. Rory takes the interior of the TARDIS in his stride, and when the Doctor starts to explain about transcendental dimensions, Rory shows his understanding of such things. ‘I’ve been reading up on all the latest scientific theories. FTL travel, parallel universes…’

The Doctor is determined Amy & Rory remain together and decides to take them on a date, to Venice in 1580 (
The Vampires of Venice
). Rory is not happy that Amy’s been travelling with the Doctor for a while, but he is secure enough in their relationship that he doesn’t feel the need to fight over it. However, he does feel a little threatened by Amy and the Doctor’s close friendship. When they need to go undercover into Rosanna Calvierri’s private school, Amy suggests the Doctor pretend to be her fiancé, which annoys Rory as
he
is her
actual
fiancé. Amy doesn’t help the situation when she suggests that Rory pretend to be her brother instead. Rory fights Francesco to save Amy, but she ends up saving him instead, which leads to a kiss. The Doctor wants to give Amy away at her wedding, but she is reluctant to get married. Rory realises that Amy wishes to remain with the Doctor, and asks to be returned to Leadworth, but Amy suggests Rory join her and the Doctor; ‘My boys,’ as she calls them.

Amy & Rory find themselves living in a false reality in
Amy’s Choice
, a life five-years hence, where she and Rory are married, living in Leadworth still, and she is pregnant. The Doctor visits them now and then. When they awake in the TARDIS, Amy reveals that a life with Rory and a baby is not her ideal, but it is Rory’s. She doesn’t wish to give up her life with the Doctor, and wants to postpone the wedding. Rory isn’t happy about this at all. In the false reality, Rory is a bit of a bumbling man who thinks growing a ponytail makes him interesting. Amy is torn, unsure who to choose; the Doctor or Rory? When Rory dies before her in the false reality, she is angry at the Doctor for not saving him. ‘What is the point of you?’ she cries, realising she just wants Rory, and would rather die than not have him.

In
The Hungry Earth
they arrive in a small mining town in South Wales in 2020, and from a distance spot their older selves who have passed by to wave at them. Amy is surprised to learn that they are still together ten years later. Once again it seems Rory has much more faith in them than she does. He is also worried about her engagement ring, certain she will lose it. She returns it to him and he takes it into the TARDIS to keep it safe. Upon stepping out he is mistaken for a policeman by Ambrose Northover, and her son, Elliot. Rory plays along and pretends to investigate the local graves. He is impressed by Elliot, who quotes Sherlock Holmes saying the improbable is true. Rory agrees – he has seen enough improbable things since Venice.

Trying to rescue Tony Mack, Ambrose’s father, from being eaten by the Earth, Amy herself is sucked beneath the ground. She shows her usual bolshiness when she comes to, a prisoner of a Silurian scientist, but it gets her nowhere. She manages to free herself, and with Mo Northover, she explores the Silurian city, picking up a weapon along the way. After the Doctor talks the Silurians down, he appoints Amy and Nasreen as representatives of humanity in the initial peace-talks (he failed to broker peace three times before, but is determined not to make the same mistake a fourth time). As they flee the Silurian city for the TARDIS, Rory is shot by one of the Silurian warriors, Restac. Amy is distraught, but as a temporal crack appears, the Doctor pulls Amy away but Rory is consumed by it. The Doctor drags Amy into the TARDIS, telling her she needs to hold onto the memory of Rory, but he knows she is going to forget him (just like she forgot her parents and the Daleks). It is a vain attempt since the memory of Rory soon fades completely. Amy spots her future self again, and waves, and the Doctor is disheartened to see that it is only Amy – Rory has been erased from history.

Following this, the Doctor starts being extra nice to Amy, taking her to Arcadia, the Trojan Gardens, and in
Vincent and the Doctor
the
Musée d’Orsay
. She jokes about him being so nice to her, and he responds that he is always nice to her. ‘There’s nothing to be suspicious about,’ he points out. ‘OK,’ Amy says, ‘I was joking. Why aren’t you?’ He won’t say. Upon meeting Vincent van Gogh, Amy starts flirting with him, and Vincent especially loves her hair colour, thinking that they would have really amazing babies together (‘the ultimate ginger’). She is surprised he doesn’t like sunflowers (and is later stunned when she sees ‘for Amy’ inscripted on the infamous Sunflower painting). Vincent can see Amy’s sadness, although she has no idea why she is so sad, or why she is crying. She really believes that they managed to save Vincent from his depression, but he still kills himself after they depart. At one point Amy remarks that she is not the marrying kind.

While the Doctor deals with a mysterious flat that should not exist in
The Lodger
, Amy is trapped inside the TARDIS. From there she advises the Doctor on how to be a normal, everyday kind of guy; going to the pub, playing football, watching TV, etc… She also reveals a sound understanding of the console, even though we have yet to see her learn how to use it. Once the Doctor has returned, Amy searches his jacket for a pen and finds instead a box containing her engagement ring. She looks at it curiously, having no recollection of it at all.

The Doctor and Amy are once more summoned by River Song in
The Pandorica Opens
, where she is camped with a legion of Romans near Stonehenge, pretending to be Cleopatra. Amy is confused by River’s timeline, certain this is River from after their last meeting, but River points out that the crash of the
Byzantium
(
The Time of Angels
) has yet to happen for her. The Doctor draws attention to the fact that both Pandora’s Box and Romans are among Amy’s favourite things, and tells her that they should never ignore coincidences. He tells her that her life doesn’t make sense – her house with too many empty rooms, her lack of parents, and her lack of knowledge of the Daleks – which is why he took her with him. When River returns to the Roman camp to secure an army to defend Stonehenge and the Pandorica which sits beneath it, she meets a very special centurion – Rory! Possibly due to Rory having been erased from history River does not recognise him, even though she really
should
(later revelations about her origins leave no room for such a lack of recognition), and this is compounded when she is later in Amy’s bedroom and sees a picture of Amy & Rory together.

After rebooting the universe, and losing the Doctor, Amy wakes up on her wedding day in 2010, to find that her parents are there and Rory back in existence. She is sure there is something missing though, and rings Rory to see if he feels the same; he does, but only because he ‘loves and fears’ her. At the wedding reception, she sees River walk past the hall and begins to cry – sad about a huge loss. River’s TARDIS-blue diary reminds her of something, and upon seeing a bowtie and a pair of braces Amy remembers the Doctor. ‘When I was a kid I had an imaginary friend. The Raggedy Doctor. My Raggedy Doctor… I remember! I brought the others back and I can bring you home, too.’ Rory cannot believe that he forgot the Doctor, or that he was once a plastic replica.

The Doctor’s first attempt to give Amy & Rory a wonderful honeymoon fails because the spaceship they are travelling on is crashing into the planet Ember in
A Christmas Carol
. They are stuck on the ship, and call the Doctor for assistance. He eventually finds a solution, and they join him on the planet. He wants to know why they are dressed in their kiss-o-gram and centurion outfits, but Amy shushes him. Rory asks if the Doctor has any more honeymoon ideas, and in
The Sarah Jane Adventures: Death of the Doctor
he tells Sarah and Jo that he left Amy & Rory on a honeymoon planet.

After their honeymoon, the Doctor returns them to Earth 2011 where they spend at least two months. At the start of
The Impossible Astronaut
they think the Doctor is being intentionally ridiculous, appearing in the most obscure historical stories (even in a
Laurel & Hardy
film), as if he is trying to attract their attention. Although no one knows it, Amy is replaced during this time by a Ganger, while the now-pregnant real Amy is being held at Demon’s Run (
The Almost People
and
A Good Man Goes to War
). Amy, Rory and River witness the Doctor’s death but agree not to tell the Time Lord.

Amy feels queasy as a result of her encounter with the Silence – a strange reaction of the Ganger’s connection to the real, pregnant Amy. When the Doctor is threatened again by an astronaut, revealed to be a little girl inside the huge suit, Amy shoots to protect the Doctor.

Amy, Rory and River go on the run for three months at the start of
Day of the Moon
, to see how far the Silence is spread out. Amy confesses to the Doctor that she is not pregnant after all, but thought she was. While investigating Graystark Hall, Amy finds a nursery containing photographs of herself and a baby. She soon works out that the baby is the girl in the astronaut suit.

By accident Rory overhears Amy talk about the man who is coming for her, who ‘dropped out of the sky’, and mentions his ‘stupid face’. Rory is convinced she is talking about the Doctor again. He admits to the Doctor that he remembers the 2000 years he spent waiting for Amy to be released from the Pandorica, and the Doctor tries to reassure Rory that Amy loves him. While River and the Doctor deal with the Silence, Rory frees Amy and she tells him that he needs to get his ‘stupid face’ to safety. It is then that he realises she was talking about him all the time, not the Doctor, and that she was waiting for him to come and rescue her. After River shoots down the remaining Silence she wonders if her ‘old fella’ has seen her, and looks back at Rory who is watching. When the Doctor asks Amy why she told him that she thought she was pregnant rather than Rory, she tells him that it is because ‘you’re my best friend’. Rory is listening in through the nanorecorder, but Amy knows he is listening and intentionally winds him up over it. As the two of them leave the console room, the Doctor turns back to the scanner, and finds out that the TARDIS cannot decide if Amy is pregnant of not.

In
The Curse of the Black Spot,
when Rory is close to death, he insists that only she can save him, because he knows she won’t give up on him. Later, in the TARDIS, the Doctor calls her ‘Amelia’, and Amy points out he only does this when he is worried about her. In response the Doctor agrees that he is always worried about her. A feeling Amy cannot help but share – worried as she is about the Doctor’s impending death. Rory reminds her that they agreed she cannot tell him.

After receiving a message from an old Time Lord friend, the Corsair, the Doctor pushes his TARDIS into another universe (
The Doctor’s Wife)
. The TARDIS’ soul is forced into the body of a woman called Idris and the ship is possessed by an entity called House. Together Rory and Amy flee deeper into the TARDIS. House plays mind games with them, separating them. Amy comes across an older Rory, who is angry at her for not waiting. ‘Two thousand years I waited for you and you did it to me again!’ Fortunately she is soon reunited with the real Rory, but the emotional damage has been done. It becomes obvious that Amy feels extremely guilty about Rory’s sacrifice for her. When Idris attempts to contact Amy & Rory, the Doctor suggests she get a message to Amy. ‘Which one’s Amy? The pretty one?’ She sends a message to Rory. The Doctor is incredulous; ‘the pretty one?’ They find their way to the previous console room – destroyed when the Doctor last regenerated, although the TARDIS reveals she stores all the console rooms. Amy demonstrates that she is able to operate the console even though she has never seen this particular console before. Rory and Amy can do little but sympathise as the Doctor breaks down when the TARDIS/Idris dies. Amy particularly doesn’t know what to do, since she has never seen the Doctor so distraught before. Later, while the Doctor is distracting himself by working on the TARDIS, Rory tells him something that Idris whispered before she returned her matrix to the TARDIS-proper; ‘the only water in the forest is the river,’ which makes no sense to either of them. For now…

At the beginning of
The Rebel Flesh
we see a much more domesticated side to life in the TARDIS, with Amy & Rory playing darts while listening to music. For the first time, we can see that they are really living there, not just travelling from one adventure to another. The Doctor wishes to go off and do ‘things’, dropping off Amy & Rory to have chips, but Amy refuses to leave his side, saying she wants to be involved in whatever he is doing. In the event the TARDIS is pulled to a factory on a small Earth island – the destination the Doctor has in mind, although he wishes to explore it alone for reasons that become clear later. On this island they are introduced to the Flesh, fully programmable matter which can replicate any living beings.

Rory and Amy have a hard time getting their heads around things, especially Amy when later confronted by a Ganger-Doctor who she does not consider real at all. Rory befriends Jennifer, who is revealed to be a rogue Ganger, and shows sympathy for her despite her increasingly unstable mental state. The Doctor seems unusually concerned about Amy and tells her, ‘I never thought I’d have to say this again. Amy. Breathe.’ Amy is confused by this. ‘Yeah, I mean, thanks. I’ll try.’ Once again Amy sees Madame Kovarian through a non-existent hatch, and she tells the Doctor about it. He calls it a mirage, a time memory, and then dismisses it. When apologising to the Ganger-Doctor for how she treats him, she confesses that she saw the Doctor die, and thinks it might have actually been the Ganger who dies on Lake Silenco.