Companions: Fifty Years of Doctor Who Assistants (47 page)

She is so certain she knows which Doctor is which, and is surprised to learn how mistaken she is. When the Ganger-Doctor is about to give his life to save them, he whispers into Amy’s ear, ‘push… But only when she tells you to,’ leaving Amy none-the-wiser. As they escape into the TARDIS, Amy convulses in pain, much to Rory’s surprise. The Doctor explains that she is feeling the contractions and insists that Rory stand away from her. Such is the power of his voice Rory complies, although he clearly fears for Amy at this point. Amy is beyond confused, and the Doctor explains that he has to learn more about the Flesh to block the signal. Amy is frightened,
properly
frightened, but the Doctor promises he will find her. ‘However hard, however far, we will find you.’ He disrupts the signal and Ganger-Amy dissolves in front of a horrified Rory. Amy snaps awake, inside a medical capsule on Demon’s Run, and Madame Kovarian opens a hatch and tells her that the little one is almost ready to ‘pop’. Amy is shocked by her own pregnant body and promptly goes into labour.

We see more of Amy’s faith in Rory at the start of
A Good Man Goes to War
when she tells the newly born Melody Pond that she knows Rory will come for them – not even an army can stand in his way. Proving her faith, Rory attacks the Twelfth Cyber Legion just to get Amy’s location.

During the final battle of Demon’s Run, Rory heads off to the front line, but Amy makes him promise to let all the others die first. ‘You’re so Scottish,’ he tells her. Madame Kovarian escapes with Melody while the baby in Amy’s hands is revealed to be a Ganger and dissolves as pre-programmed to do so. Amy is furious and seeks solace in Rory.

When the Doctor tries to comfort her, Amy backs away – the first time there has ever been a distance between them. The Doctor is hurt, but when River arrives she reveals her secret. The Doctor rushes off to find Melody, and orders River to get Amy & Rory home. Beyond tired and emotionally exhausted, Amy draws a gun on River and demands answers. River points to the cot. Amy & Rory realise the shocking truth. ‘The Doctor will find your daughter. And he will care for her, whatever it takes. And I know that. It’s me. I’m Melody. I’m your daughter.’

In
Let’s Kill Hitler
we are introduced to Mels, Amy’s best friend from childhood. She has never been seen, or mentioned, before, but apparently Amy and Mels have been friends forever – Mels is the first person to notice that Rory and Amy have a thing for each other and points it out. Prior to this Amy has always thought of Rory as being gay.

When Amy & Rory track down the Doctor, Mels gatecrashes the reunion. She pulls out a gun, deciding they should all go and kill Hitler. Confronted, Rory punches Hitler and stores him in a cupboard, and they all stand back in shock as Mels starts to regenerate. Amy & Rory didn’t need to look for Melody after all; she found them when they were seven years old. She last regenerated in 1969 (at the end of
Day of the Moon
), into a baby, and lived throughout the twentieth century, growing (very, very) slowly, until she found her parents. Paradoxically, Amy reveals that she named Melody after Mels. Now looking like River, although she has yet to
become
River Song, Melody attempts to kill the Doctor with a kiss, her lips layered with poison from the Judas tree. In the TARDIS the Doctor activates a hologram interface, which initially appears as Rose, Martha and then Donna. He feels guilty seeing them, and when he asks for someone who he has not screwed up, the hologram takes the form of young Amelia – a telling moment for the Doctor.

After recent events, the Doctor decides it is time for a holiday and takes Amy & Rory to Apalapucia (
The Girl Who Waited
)
.
Amy finds herself trapped in a faster time-stream. She has to outrun the Hand-bots, who wish to cure her of Chen-7, a disease she does not have – any such cure will kill. The Doctor sends Rory in after her, since he is susceptible to Chen-7 and will die should he enter Amy’s time-stream. Rory finds Amy, only it has been thirty-six years for her. She tells him, coldly, that she has been waiting for him. She had given up hope of them coming for her, and blames the Doctor totally. In the time she waited she reprogrammed one of the Hand-bots and called it Rory. She finds the glasses that Rory is wearing ridiculous (he has to wear them so that the Doctor can communicate with him), and Rory states that anything is better than a fez. This makes Amy laugh – the first time she has done so in many, many years. She considers that she has lived through hell, and berates the Doctor again, telling him it is his fault. The Doctor finds a way to restore the timeline, to save younger Amy so she never has to become the twisted older version. Old Amy doesn’t like this idea, and she refuses to help. She tells them that when she was Young Amy she remembers that her old self refused to help, and so by doing so she is ensuring her timeline remains unchanged. Rory stands aside as the two Amys discuss how Rory has always loved them, and how Young Amy needs to be saved
for
Rory. This moves Old Amy and she resolves to pull time apart for Rory, but only if the Doctor allows her to travel with them. The Doctor has no choice but to agree, but he is lying. He knows it cannot happen. Nonetheless they find a way to merge the two timelines, and Rory finds himself having to choose between his wives. It tears him apart, and he tells the Doctor that he doesn’t want to travel with him anymore – like Old Amy, Rory blames the Doctor for everything. This highlights, once more, that he has never been totally OK with the Doctor’s influence on Amy’s life. Rory is a little awkward around Old Amy once he has his wife back – he thinks it is like being with her mum. Young Amy doesn’t want Old Amy to come with them. He makes his choice, by carrying Young Amy while Old Amy fights the Hand-bots, and the Doctor supports this decision by closing the TARDIS doors on Old Amy. Rory is not happy with this situation, and stands by the TARDIS door while Old Amy stands outside; he snaps at the Doctor, ‘this isn’t fair – you’re turning me into you!’ Rory is about to let Old Amy in, regardless of the consequences, but Old Amy won’t let him. She has forgotten how much she loved being Young Amy. While waiting for her to wake up, Rory wants to know if the Doctor ever thought they could save both Amys, but the Doctor doesn’t answer directly.

Rory’s disenchantment with travelling continues in the next story,
The God Complex
, illustrating how worried he gets when the Doctor becomes friendly with someone – he feels as though he should notify their next of kin. In a moment of clarity he says, ‘after all the time I’ve spent with you in the TARDIS, what was left to be scared of?’ The use of past tense is noted by the Doctor; it is clear that Rory is pretty much done with it now. When seeing a Weeping Angel in one of the rooms of the Ersatz Hotel, Amy thinks it is for her – somewhat ironic considering later events in
The Angels Take Manhattan
. Much like he did in
The Curse of Fenric
with Ace, the Doctor forces Amy to lose faith in him to stop the Minotaur’s food supply. He tells her to stop waiting for him and to start seeing people as they really are. The final straw for Amy is when the Doctor calls her ‘Amy Williams’.

The Doctor takes Amy & Rory back to Earth, 2011, and presents them with their new house. Rory accepts the keys straight away and goes to get champagne – for him the journey is over, and it is welcome. But not so for Amy! She wants to know why the Doctor is leaving them, and he tells her it is because they are still breathing. Amy doesn’t want him to go, but he tells her, somewhat prophetically, ‘what’s the alternative? Me standing over your grave?’ Tears are shed and the Doctor leaves. Rory wants to know where he has gone, and Amy tells Rory that the Doctor is ‘saving them’.

Some two hundred years later for the Doctor, he visits Craig, a man he befriended the previous series in
The Lodger
, and spends the weekend with him, helping look after Craig’s son, Alfie, and defeat an attempted Cybermen takeover in
Closing Time
. While shopping, Amy & Rory almost bump into the Doctor, but he stays out of sight and watches them from afar. Amy is now a model for a perfume called Pertrichor, for the ‘Girl Who Waited’. He watches her sign an autograph for a little girl, and leaves them to it, smiling sadly.

During the confused events of
The Wedding of River Song
we discover that it is River herself in the astronaut suit at Lake Silenco, and it is she who killed the Doctor – as part of her conditioning by the Silence, overseen by Madame Kovarian. But River cheats, and creates a parallel world that is stuck at 17:02 always. In this One Minute World, Amy works alongside River to rescue the Doctor. Even though Amy knows she has never met him, she still knows the Doctor and remembers everything. But she doesn’t remember Rory, although one of her key officers is Captain Williams, who is always close at hand. Amy doesn’t know why she keeps him so close, but Rory does and is, as ever, waiting. As the Silence break out of their water-cages, Rory stands his ground, even though his eye-drive – an eye patch that enables him to remember – malfunctions and causes him great pain. Amy rescues him; even in this reality their bond is as strong as ever. And she allows Madame Kovarian to die after Kovarian points out that everything River has become is because of her. Amy says, however, that ‘she didn’t get it all from you, sweetie.’ Amy & Rory watch while the Doctor marries River in a handfasting ceremony, which requires him to tell her his name (he doesn’t, but pretends to). Upon contact, the real world is restored and River kills the Doctor at Lake Silenco.

Back in the real world Amy is visited by River, and they check their diaries – by this point they often see each other – and they work out that this River is from just after Amy first met her (
The Time of Angels
). Amy still mourns the Doctor, believing him to be dead, but River mentions that she still has adventures with him and she tells Amy the secret; he never died at all. Rory returns to find his wife and daughter dancing in joy, but then something occurs to Amy; now that River and the Doctor are married; she has become the Doctor’s mother-in-law.

Two years pass until they see the Doctor again, and he abruptly turns up at their house on Christmas Day 2013 in
The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe
. Amy is happy to see him, but she is also a little bitter that he has taken so long to visit them. Eventually Amy asks him if he wants to join them for Christmas dinner, and she tells him she has a place set for him. ‘But you didn’t know I was coming.’ Amy smiles; they always set a place for him.

When we next see Amy & Rory in
Asylum of the Daleks
, it is unclear how much time has passed, although enough for them to drift apart and begin divorce proceedings. Rory seems the most hurt by this. He clearly doesn’t want a divorce, while Amy is bitter and extremely furious with him. Amy, who is still modelling, is actively pushing him away. Both are pulled out of time by the Daleks and taken to the Parliament of the Daleks, where they are reunited with the Doctor. The Doctor suspects something is not right, but he doesn’t query it for a while, too busy dealing with the Daleks, who want his help. Amy is, of course, delighted to see the Doctor, but Rory a little less so. After they are cast down to the Daleks’ asylum planet, the first person Amy calls out for is Rory – a notable reaction. Despite having the Doctor back, it is Rory who she calls for when distressed. Rory finds himself alone in the heart of the asylum, surrounded by insane Daleks. He accidentally wakes up the Daleks, but receives help in the shape of a young woman called Oswin Oswald, who is trapped inside her ship, which crashed into the asylum planet some time ago.

Amy finds that she has missed the danger (which makes sense, since it has been over two years, at least, since the Doctor left her on Earth at the end of
The God Complex
), and the Doctor asks her what has happened to her and Rory – ‘Don’t give me those big wet eyes, Raggedy Man. It’s life. Just life, that thing that goes on when you’re not there.’ Amy becomes infected by the Dalek nanogenes, designed to turn people into Dalek puppets, and her memories and feelings start to get overwritten. The Doctor tells her to hold on to ‘scared’, as ‘scared’ is very un-Dalek. Rory responds favourably to Oswin’s flirting; it is a feeling he has not had for some time. Amy seems convinced that fixing their marriage is a lost cause, and when she expresses this to Rory he is clearly unimpressed. Her aggression hurts him. They finally have it out, while Amy is apparently holding on for her life, and Rory tells her that he believes he loves her more than she ever loved him – it is a fact as far as he is concerned. This angers Amy, who tells him not to dare say that again, but then he reminds her how he waited for her for over two thousand years, and it was she who kicked him out. Amy responds by saying she did that because Rory wanted children, and after what happened on Demon’s Run she couldn’t have any more. She didn’t kick him out – she gave him up. After getting all this out, they realise that the Doctor placed his nanocloud bracelet (which prevents the transformation into Dalek) on Amy’s wrist, and they realise that the Doctor didn’t tell them because he wanted them to fix things. Fear of death is a good motivator. The Doctor returns them home, where Amy invites Rory back into the house. He celebrates when he thinks she isn’t watching, but she tells him, ‘I can see you.’ Rory smiles and pretends to be ashamed.

It is another ten months before we come across them again in
Dinosaurs on a Spaceship
, and we meet Brian Williams, Rory’s father, who thinks Rory is lucky to have Amy. Once they are transported to the Silurian Ark, Brian finds himself rambling at the Doctor, who initially thinks he is a spy until Rory points out the Doctor materialised the TARDIS around them. Rory, who is known for his own ability to ramble, clearly gets this from his father. Rory is now thirty-one (it is never made quite clear if he is older than, or the same age as, Amy, despite the stories of their school life together). Amy reveals she is a fan of Queen Nefertiti, but considers Nefertiti and John Riddell (a twentieth century game hunter) her companions while they explore the Silurian Ark, and she will not have them flirting. This is kind of ironic considering how much she flirts with both the Doctor and Rory. To save the ship from being destroyed by missiles, two pilots are needed with the same DNA – it is fortunate Brian was there changing a light bulb when the Doctor materialised the TARDIS around them. Sharing a quiet moment amongst the chaos, Amy reveals that she cannot settle, always waiting for the Doctor to arrive to spirit her away on another adventure. But she worries that the gaps between visits are getting longer, almost as if he is weaning her off him. The presence of Nefertiti and Riddell concern her – when first seeing them she wonders if they are the Doctor’s new companions. The Doctor tells her; ‘the others; they’re not you. But you and Rory, you have lives, each other. It was what we agreed.’ Amy is not entirely convinced, certain there will be a time when he will never return and she will just be left there… waiting. Despite these concerns, both she and Rory want to go back home, but not forever, just for a couple of months.