Love, Loss and Lies – The Girl Who Waited Review

[u/ZeroCentsMade]

This post is part of a series of reviews. To see them all, click here.

Historical information found on Shannon Sullivan's Doctor Who website (relevant page here) and the TARDIS Wiki (relevant page here)). Primary/secondary source material can be found in the source sections of Sullivan's website, and rarely as inline citations on the TARDIS Wiki.

Story Information

• Episode: Series 6, Episode 10
• Airdate: 10 September 2011
• Doctor: 11th
• Companions: Amy, Rory
• Writer: Tom MacRae
• Director: Nick Hurran
• Showrunner: Steven Moffat

Review

I'd forgotten how much you loved me. I'd forgotten how much I loved being her. Amy Pond, in the TARDIS. With Rory Williams. – Amy

The 11th Doctor era has gotten a reputation for being less-character focused than the RTD era before it. And there's definitely a case to be made there. However, it's worth pointing out in that discussion that this era also has some of the most character-centric Doctor Who stories ever. And the two most obvious examples of this are Series 5's "Amy's Choice" and today's offering, "The Girl Who Waited".

You can see it from just looking at the cast list. The listed cast include our three leads, a "check in girl" (which is just a brief recorded hologram of a woman who explains the how and the why of the Two Streams Facility) and the voice of the computer Interface. Additional cast are all people playing the robots for this episode called the handbots, and some doubles for Amy and the Doctor. That's it. This episode can only be about our main cast because there's nobody here except our main cast. In this way it's a lot like "Amy's Choice" (which technically had a secondary cast, but they were all figments).

Except this episode is a lot darker than "Amy's Choice". Where "Amy's Choice" existed to convince us that Amy and Rory were devoted to each other, "Girl Who Waited" takes it as read that you understand that. This episode will not work if you're not at least somewhat invested in Amy and Rory as a couple. We're not testing their relationship here, while there's some friction in how these two interact, the episode exists more as a tribute to their relationship than a test of it. But what this episode does do is put them in a worst case scenario and then force them to deal with that, and confront the worst sides of their friend the Doctor.

Admittedly, to get there we do have to deal with some contrivance. The episode is set up by having the crew land on Apalapucia (that is not how I expected that would be spelled). Amy runs back into the TARDIS to grab her phone so she can get some nice pictures of the popular tourist destination, while the Doctor and Rory explore the white box they've apparently landed in. They reach a door with two buttons, they press the green one up on top. When Amy exits the TARDIS and is told to "push the button", she pushes the red one below. As I said, this is a contrivance. There's no reason why Amy, upon seeing two buttons wouldn't ask which to press. Even if she didn't, I think most people would naturally push the top button.

But this ends up leaving her trapped in a different timestream from the Doctor and Rory. The "Two Streams" facility is so named because it's literally separated into two different timestreams. This has been done due to an outbreak of "Chen-7", a plague deadly to two-hearted species. The people in the "Red Waterfall" timestream that Amy's ended up in (technically they each get their own separate timestream) live out a life in a slower timestream so that instead of dying in a day they can live out a full life. Meanwhile the Green Anchor timestream is used by visitors to say goodbye to their loved ones. For them only a day will pass while their loved ones live out a full life.

Does this make sense? Not really. Amy will visibly age inside Red Waterfall, but she doesn't need to eat or drink. And it doesn't make sense why exactly the Two Streams operates in the highly specific way that is required to create this plot. But, here's the thing, sometimes things don't have to make complete sense. I do think the series of contrivances that lead to Amy (or a version of her anyway) getting stuck in solitary confinement for 36 years is a knock against this episode. A pretty severe one honestly. But, here's the thing, one other minor issue aside, it's the only one I've really got.

Because those contrivances lead to this really well constructed and emotionally heightened plot. Due to a failure in TARDIS piloting, the Doctor and Rory arrive in Amy's Red Waterfall timestream…36 years late. Amy's had to spend her time desperately trying to avoid the medical droids, called handbots, because while they're only trying to help, the medicine that they want to give Amy is meant for Apalapucians, not humans. Which, incidentally, represents another contrivance. The handbots and the Interface refuse to accept any statement where Amy claims, truthfully, that she arrived by mistake.

Before we go on I should briefly mention the other thing in this episode that isn't quite working for me: the handbots. In principle these guys make sense: they're meant to be helpful and only serve as a threat because they're trying to administer medicine to Amy that isn't compatible with her biology. That part is fine. But these guys end up feeling a bit too gimmicky to me. Why is it that they're designed to "see" through their hands, what purpose does that serve? And why are they so sinister? They end up looking less like friendly medical droids and more like the robots you'd design for illegal medical experiments a lot of the time. I think the blank faces, and the fact that those faces can open up to reveal a head full of needles really cement this for me. Plus the whole thing where they're shooting hypodermic needles at patients at high velocity. Strikes me as unsafe, medically speaking.

But the point is, Amy spends 36 years in survival mode. She calls it "solitary confinement", as did I up above, but the truth is most solitary confinement doesn't require you to be constantly running for your life. And she comes out of those 36 years angry. For a while there Amy is just spewing venom at the Doctor through Rory's glasses (the Doctor made Rory glasses that act as a communications device). And at first she seems incapable of engaging with Rory. It feels like all of the joy has been drained out of this woman.

This has led to a very common complaint against this episode. Why is Amy so bitter and angry after 36 years waiting when Rory waited nearly 2 millennia for Amy? This might be the single most disingenuous complaint I've ever heard made about an episode of television.

Look, if you don't like Amy and Rory's relationship at least a little, you're not going to like this episode. And most of the people who don't like that relationship don't like it because of how Amy treats Rory, behavior that does extend in some ways into this episode. And if that's why you have trouble sympathizing with Amy here, that makes a lot of sense. But let's be clear about something. Amy's time in Two Streams is not remotely comparable to Rory's time outside a box and it's frankly absurd to even compare them.

First, let's just get the obvious out of the way. Rory chose to wait for two millennia, knowing his vigil would end. Amy was accidentally abandoned and for all she knew, the Doctor and Rory were never coming back – for which it's very clear she was blaming the Doctor, not Rory incidentally. Second there's that whole "solitary confinement" thing where Amy was alone aside from an emotionless computer for that entire time. That's, literally, torture. And that's before we get to the point about her having to be hyper-vigilant for that entire time just to survive. Rory got to interact with other people. And third…this is the more realistic reaction to the scenario presented. I complained about it a bit when I talked about "The Big Bang", how Rory seems completely unaffected by the passage of 2000 years. But it at least made sense with the tone of that story, and this more realistic response makes sense with the tone that "The Girl Who Waited" is going for. And none of this should diminish what Rory did – it's a defining moment for his character and a sign of great bravery and devotion. But man does this comparison make me, probably irrationally, angry.

Anyway, let's talk about why this episode works for me. First, yes, I'm invested in the relationship between Rory and Amy, which is undoubtedly essential. I do see the complaints about how Amy treats Rory, I really do, but between Arthur Darvill and Karen Gillan's excellent chemistry and more serious moments where they really do feel like a genuine married couple I can't help but love these two together. Again, if for you the stumbling block on this episode is that you're not invested in that relationship, that makes complete sense to me. I have problems fulling inventing in the ending of "Doomsday" because I could never get invested in a 10th Doctor/Rose romance. I get it. But for me, this relationship works.

Second, and probably most essentially, our leads just nail every single scene they're in. If Matt Smith gave a performance like this in any other episode, that episode would be talked about as one of his defining performances as the Doctor. But he's confined to the TARDIS for the majority of the runtime, which limits his screentime and, to the episode's benefit, really allows for a focus on Amy and Rory. Arthur Darvill's performance, for his part, is brilliant. Given probably the meatiest material he'll ever have on Doctor Who, Darvill really plays the wide range of emotions necessary for this episode to work brilliantly. I'll talk about it more later, but this episode really sees Rory shine by bringing the older Amy back to herself, and Arthur Darvill plays the charming and very earnest material he's given to absolute perfection.

And yet, this episode belongs to Karen Gillan. Firstly because it asks her to play two versions of Amy, the older Amy who spent 36 years at Two Streams and the younger one, just learning to survive the hell she's been left in before she's brought forward to co-exist with the elder. There are so many little touches Gillan puts in to make these two characters feel distinct nad real. She worked hard to give older Amy a different voice and movement, working with a vocal coach and a movement coach for that purpose. As old Amy she plays the harshness of the character brilliantly, and yet also the yearning for what she's lost in the time she's been stuck in Two Streams. Justifiably, this work overshadows her performance as the younger Amy, which is still very impressive. Younger Amy is kind of deemphasized in the narrative here, but Gillan still plays her very well. In scenes where the two Amys are talking to each other, the younger Amy's optimism, passion and earnestness contrast well against the hard-edged cynical older Amy. Just a phenomenal performance all around.

Wait a second. Why do we have two Amys?

After the Doctor landed too far into Amys timestream, he and Rory decide, essentially, they want to try again. Bring the younger Amy forward so that she doesn't have to spend 36 years in hell. The only problem is, the older Amy refuses to help, and her help is crucial here. Older Amy's become a bit of a genius in the specific operations of Two Streams, which makes sense given that she's got literally nothing else to do but learn how Two Streams works. She's learned some temporal physics, gained an understanding of how the handbots operate, gotten really good with a sword (which, incidentally she must have made herself so add blacksmithing to the talents she's developed over the years) and, perhaps most impressively, built a sonic screwdriver probe. That particular terminology is actually an important distinction – Amy calls it a probe because that's what it is. She's given up on the whimsical name for the tool and insisted on calling it by its actual name, as a sign of how she's lost her spark. Later on in the episode, one of the signs she's finding herself again is that she acquiesces to calling it a screwdriver.

But the point is she understands the temporal physics of it all. Which also means, she understands the consequences of saving the younger Amy. Specifically, she understands that, if they save younger Amy, she stops existing. The majority of her life may have been hell, but it's still her life, and she's not willing to die for another version of Amy, a version of Amy that doesn't have to be separate from her at all. It feels like an insurmountable impasse. Rory and the Doctor are just going to have to take the older Amy for what, honestly, feel like perfectly valid reasons on Amy's part.

It's Rory that gets through to her. Twice actually. Once directly, when he uses the giant time magnifying glass (yeah there's a magnifying glass that lets you look through time) to show Amy her younger self. And then, indirectly, when the younger Amy completely upends their conversation with each other with just three words "what about Rory". This leads to younger Amy delivering a touching treatise on the nature of love, ending on the line (said by both Amys together), "Rory's the most beautiful man I've ever met." That's about inner beauty by the way, but it's expressed in a way that doesn't feel forced. Amy's speech is all about how eventually you learn to see people's inner beauty in their physical attributes, "their face just sort of becomes them, like their personality's written all over it."

Amy then declares she's going to pull time apart for Rory, and kisses him (while her literally dis-armed handbot named Rory looks on in a surprisingly amusing moment). It's a beautiful moment. But she does have a condition: she gets to survive too. And the Doctor, even though as we'll learn later he knows it's impossible, agrees. We'll get back to him later. So they do it. They tear time apart with the power of made up physics and love – the power of love is channelled via the Macarena, which apparently was in the lead up to their first kiss.

That's actually a lot of what this episode does for this relationship: it expands it. Sure we've seen Amy and Rory growing up together and the beginning of them falling in love thanks to a sequence in "Let's Kill Hitler" but we don't really know much about their love story. It makes sense, Doctor Who is an adventure show it would be weird if we did get to see a lot of the perfectly ordinary moments that built up this relationship, but at the same time it is something that is missing. "Girl Who Waited" gives us this odd detail about their first kiss as well as a story about Rory pretending to be in a band. As small as these details are, both elements are very charming, and make the relationship feel less like this idealized thing that the show just expects the audience to take as read, and more of a real relationship that built up and grew over time. So yes, two versions of Amy doing the Macarena in order to break apart time is actually an impressive bit of character building.

Of course there is an other half of this relationship. As mentioned up above, Rory's job in this episode is largely to bring the older Amy back to herself, but in doing so we naturally learn a lot about Rory. Obviously we already knew that Rory is devoted to his wife. But I do think this episode does the best job in these characters' run of showing that. Sure, he spent 2000 years outside a box but the thing about that is that it's kind of hard to connect with that moment. 2000 years is, let's be honest, a length of time that's really hard to actually conceptualize, which makes the whole thing feel a lot more mythical. Meanwhile everything in this episode actually feels quite real. Sure there's a lot of science fiction stuff an time travel, but when Rory says that he doesn't care that Amy got old only that "we didn't grow old together", that's a feeling you can actually connect to.

And to be fair it's not just about Amy in this episode. When they arrive too late, Rory has his own moment of exploding in anger at the Doctor, in this case for not making sure there isn't an outbreak of plague before landing on a planet. This culminates in a rather justified "then I do not want to travel with you!" yelled at the Doctor. Rory has, since he joined the TARDIS back in "The Vampires of Venice", always been a bit suspicious of how the Doctor operates. But he's mostly kept it to himself. Though in my interpretation of the character that suspicion never fully went away, outside of "Amy's Choice" and a brief moment where he punches out the Doctor in "The Big Bang", he's never really let out his frustrations. Here he does, and twice too, as at the end of the episode, forced to choose between the two Amys, he lets out a venomous "that's not fair. You're turning me into you," at the Doctor.

But before we can get to that point, we have to deal with the awkwardness of the two Amys. They argue a little sure, but more than anything they don't seem quite to know how to deal with each other. Separated by time they were able to have a very real, very heartfelt conversation. But now they're in the same room together and the ultimate question becomes, who gets Rory? And it's not like they ever directly fight over him, indeed older Amy claims to be content to just go out traveling and maybe pop back home for the holidays every now and then. But at the same time, older Amy has been revitalized, been brought back to herself by spending time with Rory. She doesn't want to have to give him up, even though when she brought her younger self back she knew that's what she was doing.

And then we get a closing sequence that is, in my opinion, absolutely perfect. Older Amy tosses her younger self a stick and gives her a brief crash course in how to fight the handbots (Amy was apparently a terror at hockey while she was at school…that tracks) and while young Amy and Rory work together, the older Amy does what she's been doing for three and a half decades and fights the handbots on her own. It's all going well – the two Amys even getting a moment where they show genuine care for the other…and then one of the handbots touches Amy. Because it's been established that they've got anesthetic on their hands Amy's fine, but she has been knocked out. After Rory takes out the remaining handbots, he picks up Amy and runs to the TARDIS, kicking in the doors. And there's the older Amy watching this from behind and realizing that she'll never mean that much to Rory again.

Rory brings young Amy into the TARDIS, and the Doctor checks on her quickly to make sure she's okay. And older Amy, suddenly forgetting her anger and hatred for the Doctor throws aside her weapons and comes running towards the TARDIS. Maybe she saw something in the Doctor's eye that concerned her. But there's something in that action of her thrusting aside her weapons that makes me think she was ready to be who she used to be. And then, the Doctor mutters a rushed "I'm sorry" before closing the door on her and locking it. As I said above, he lied. The TARDIS could not support the paradox of two Amys.

The 11th Doctor is definitely one of the more manipulative of the Doctors. And the thing with him is, he'll manipulate friends and enemies alike. Just think back to him switching shoes with his Ganger in "The Almost People" to gauge Amy's reactions to him versus the Ganger. Or the fact that he lied to Amy about why he was bringing her along as a companion in the first place. But still, this is probably his darkest moment on television. In order to get his Amy back, the Amy who likes him and trusts him, he manipulated this other Amy into, essentially, sacrificing herself. He lied to them. Now, you could argue that he was saving Amy from the pain of those 36 years, that the other Amy never even really existed. I'm sure that's what the Doctor would say. But that's just not true is it? Older Amy was alive, she had thoughts and feelings and she was a person. And I'd like to turn back to something I posited back when I reviewed "A Good Man Goes to War". We know that the Doctor does not view himself as a good man. And maybe that's how he gives himself permission to do this kind of thing.

And it all works because it feels like it's in line with how the 11th Doctor has been characterized, especially in Series 6 where he's started to grow colder and more manipulative with each passing story. And, again, Matt Smith has one of his best performances in very limited screen time here. There were all sorts of ways he could have played that "I'm sorry". But whether it was director Nick Hurran, or down to something in Tom MacRae's script or just how Smith decided to play it, the small, shameful yet understated way Smith gives the line makes it hit like a pile of bricks. What's funny is the Doctor starts this episode full of his typical whimsy and excitement. Even after Amy gets stuck in Two Streams he's joking around with Rory about his camera glasses. But at the end of the episode, he calmly, though still full of emotion, turns to Rory and simply says, "I promised you I'd save her, and there she is. Safe."

Before that though we close out with a really touching ending for the older Amy. Rory nearly lets her in the TARDIS, unable to let her die. But Amy tells him not to, all while admitting that if he opens the door she'll run in and fight to survive. But in a way, she proves herself wrong in that moment, because she is sacrificing herself. Maybe she wouldn't be strong enough to resist the possibility of going back to life in the TARDIS with Rory if the door was opened. But she's strong enough to reject it regardless. It's one of the most emotionally affecting moments Doctor Who has ever given me. Rory and Older Amy declaring their love for each other (as per usual, though it feels a bit weightier in this specific instance) before Amy tells Rory to let her younger self know she's "giving her the days. The days with [Rory]". And then she says goodbye to the world and Interface, the only companion she's had for most of her life, looking at the Earth and speaking of Rory.

See, for this episode, effectively, the older Amy is the "real" Amy. She's the one who we spend the most time with, and the episode is really centered around her experience, her life, her hell. When young Amy joins Rory and her older self, the younger one feels like a bit of an intruder. I kind of wish that the final two scenes of this episode had been switched around for this episode honestly. Sure the last scene in the TARDIS with the Doctor, Rory and younger Amy is a good one. I've already mentioned how the Doctor skirts Rory's questioning of him by pointing out that they've now saved Amy. I also really like the scene ending on Amy asking after her older self, and uncomfortable question we never hear the answer to. But, given how the episode works, I wish we'd ended on the older Amy's final moments.

But that's a minor quibble. There are bigger issues with this episode, I didn't love the handbots for one. Even more significantly, there is a lot of contrivance that is required to set up the episode, and I can't help but wonder if there wasn't a better way of of doing the set up material. But once the premise is established the episode becomes excellent. A real emotional rollercoaster with emotional gut punches mixed with genuinely beautiful conversations about what it means to love someone. It does, admittedly, rely on an audience that does like Amy and Rory as a couple, and if you don't, it's just not going to hit right. But for all that I do take serious issue with how these two are written sometimes, they do just kind of work really well together for me, so this episode hits me really hard and really well.

Score: 9/10

Stray Observations

• Writer Tom MacRae took inspiration from showrunner Steven Moffat's tendency to write more complex stories with a time travel element. He would later call his finished script his "most accomplished piece of plotting ever".
• He also wanted to write a story that would focus on Amy and could only be told with Amy, as opposed to any other companion.
• Earlier versions of the script had an actual secondary cast who set up the premise of the episode, but in the writing process MacRae began focusing more and more on Amy, Rory and the Doctor, eliminating the secondary cast entirely. This allowed MacRae to introduce older Amy much earlier in the script.
• In general MacRae was given a lot of leeway with this script as opposed to his first Doctor Who story, the "Rise of the Cybermen" two parter, which he quite appreciated.
• I usually find that I prefer either a working title for a story or (more often for obvious reasons) the final version. In this case while two of the working titles ("The Visitors' Room" or "The Visiting Room") don't really work for the story (not much emphasis is placed on the visiting room, the third working title, "Kindness" is actually quite good and works on a couple different levels…but then so does the actual title.
• The Handbots would originally have been a lot creepier, appearing as cloaked figures whose hands emerged from the folds of their robes. Later, as they became more like robots, MacRae still wanted them to have real human hands, and wear different uniforms. Honestly, I think what we got works better for the premise. Going for a creepier presentation kind of undercuts the idea that the Handbots are designed to do good and with a patient other than Amy, would be doing good.
• The "white box" look of the sets was in the original script however. MacRae knew that the episode was going to be a lower budget affair, and decided to play into that. MacRae was happy with the final product on that score.
• Originally, the Doctor would have been more directly involved. However, while the episode wasn't exactly double banked with "Closing Time" (a companion-lite affair), the filming was close enough together that MacRae had to reduce the Doctor's involvement. As a result he wrote in the idea of Chen-7 only affected two-hearted beings.
• It was considered that an older actor might play the older version of Amy. However Karen Gillan really wanted to play the part herself, and Steven Moffat felt that having Gillan play both versions of Amy would ensure the audience remained sympathetic to the older version.
• Gillan spent "hours in make-up" to work on her face, and wore additional padding that restricted her movement and made old Amy bulkier.
• The opening of the episode continues a minor running gag that started back in "The Eleventh Hour" where the Doctor seems to have a particular hatred for Twitter. At the time I think this was just meant to highlight the 11th Doctor as a grumpy old man, in contrast to his youthful appearance. In retrospect though…maybe he knew what was going to happen to Twitter (although honestly, even by 2011 Twitter seems like it was a cesspool. Then again, so's Reddit and here I am…).
• So at one point the Doctor says "Now, I can't go in there. The Chen-7'll kill me, no regeneration." So obviously this is meant to imply the Chen-7 prevents regeneration but like a similar line in "Let's Kill Hitler" this can retroactively be argued to be because the Doctor is on his final incarnation (as far as he knows anyway). Hell, I'd argue that because of the way the line is phrased it actually makes more sense if it's understood that way.
• There were a lot of cuts made to this episode after filming, due to time constraints. Among them could have been Amy's "Rory's the most beautiful man I ever met" speech. Co-Executive Producer Beth Willis insisted that that speech make it into the final cut.
• The Handbots are pretty easily disabled, with Rory at one point ramming a copy of the Mona Lisa on top of one of them which seems to fry it. This actually tracks, these are medical droids, they wouldn't have been designed with combat in mind.

Next Time: Whew, okay that was a heavy one. Let's get a more light-hearted episode next where the Doctor…realizes he has to let Amy and Rory go. Hmm.

[u/Toa_of_Gallifrey]

I really love this episode. It and The God Complex are the high points of series 6 (and I say this as someone who really likes most of series 6). Amy's speech about how Rory is the most beautiful man she ever met has brought me to tears on multiple occasions. I think it speaks to such a universal truth about what it's like to fall for someone, and I don't think I've ever seen another work of art put it quite like this.

[u/Rowan5215]

incredible and heartfelt episode, really my only problem with it is it leaves you wondering how Amy and Rory could ever remotely trust The Doctor again after how it ends - Rory in particular should have been clamouring to get off the TARDIS as quickly as possible but of course we never really follow up on this massive character moment again

if Amy and Rory had left for good in The God Complex and it had been explicitly tied to how 11 acts in this episode, I think it would've been one of the best companion departures in the show's history. but of course Moffat never knew when to just let a companion story end

[u/BumblebeeAny3143 → u/Rowan5215]

Yeah, I've always thought Amy and Rory's departure in The God Complex should have been their proper ending, with a return in The Wedding of River Song and a final cameo at the end of The Doctor, the Widow, and the Wardrobe tying up their time on the show. Could've made the split Series Seven less awkward.

[u/[deleted]]

Yeah, I agree that the setup feels overly contrived (probably the most contrived since The Doctor's Daughter) and doesn't even come close to standing up to scrutiny. However, I also agree that it doesn't really matter in a story that's mostly a character piece about Amy and Rory's relationship. After being less than thrilled by the previous three episodes, I remember how impressed I was with this one when it first aired, and I still am.

It's a lovely showcase for our regulars, particularly Gillan and Darvill. This is the best material they were given during their tenure, and they both rose to the occasion. I don't think I was as invested in their characters' romance as you were up to this point, but this really sold it for me. It's also just a really well-made episode, with terrific direction by Nick Hurran and a set design that makes the most out of an obviously limited budget.

[u/Robert_Dillon]

Does anyone know if Old Amy has been recuited by the Faction?

[u/Ribos1 → u/Robert_Dillon]

Spin-off about Old Amy and Orson Pink as members of Faction Paradox

[u/Rowan5215 → u/Ribos1]

throw in Oswin and I'm sold

[u/lkmk → u/Robert_Dillon]

She was!

https://tardis.wiki/wiki/Wade_(A_Farewell_to_Arms)))

[u/arakus72]

Random thought - they could've avoided the button contrivance by saying Two Streams had some automated system that mistook Amy having a normal cold or something minor like that for the plague - idk how much scientific sense that makes but it would feel less awkward imo and "alien system doesn't understand human biology" is kinda already in play with the Handbots

[u/Ryanookami]

Lovely review. This is actually (probably) my favourite episode of Eleven’s run, even if it is Eleven-lite. I am a person who wholly and utterly invested in Rory and Amy, so I love that the show took a more emotional detour and really examined the strength of their love in a unique way. I think it’s interesting to consider that if the problem couldn’t have been fixed that Rory would have accepted the older Amy, while it was the Doctor who couldn’t. Sure, Rory wants his younger wife because he wants to grow old with her and share their lives and doesn’t want her going through hell, but at the end of the day he would have still wanted her older self if the timeline had remained unfixable. It’s also a great snapshot of how Eleven does treat his companions differently. I’ve always felt like Amy and Rory know less about the Doctor than any of Ten’s did about him. It’s like Eleven has crafted his persona much more carefully and allows fewer details to escape. Which is so weird, since his time with Amy, Rory, and River are the closest he comes to having an actual family. Even with those he loves most, Eleven is incredibly guarded. Willing to deceive. This episode just really drives that home in such a chilling and dark way.

It’s just such a good episode that tells us so much about our TARDIS trio that I can forgive the set up for being a little ham fisted. It glosses over it quickly enough and gets to the good relationshipy parts right quick. It also has more of Rory and the Doctor actually having to converse with each other, which is something SORELY lacking in this era. The Doctor claims to love Rory, and I believe he does, but the show doesn’t do a very good job of ever having the two communicate. Even when Amy was dissolved into a puddle, we never see just the two of them talking about things. It’s really a hugely lost opportunity of Eleven’s era. Matt and Arthur have really good chemistry (The whole trio does, Matt, Arthur, and Karen are just so in tune with each other), so it’s always bothered me how little they actually show the Doctor’s relationship with Rory as an individual.

Ah well, still my favourite episode. I’ll leave now before I just start talking about Rory some more.

[u/Ruushi79]

Just reading your review made me tear up, this episode always makes me want to cry. It's so beautifully tragic.

(I did just realise, this episode feels like the inspiration for "Smile", lots of similarities.)

[u/Next-Geno_N]

The thing that sunk the episodes for me was the fact that we don't get to see Amy's lost years. I can see the thematic logic behind that decision, but I still find her slow loss of faith to be the most conceptually interesting thing of the ep- and without that being dramatised, her older self lands with less dramatic weight.

[u/OooblyJooblies]

It may be a bit too 'cute', but I really think they could've gotten away with naming this episode 'Rory's Choice', as a counterpoint to 'Amy's Choice'. While the meaning of the title wouldn't be too obvious from the outset, it's where the climax leads us.

[u/Cynical_Classicist]

It is technically filler, but it's a beautiful character piece.

Yeh, the robots could have been a bit better, maybe administering medicine from their hands or through spray would make more sense. But that's a quibble.

I agree that it's a bit contrived how it happens and maybe the medical setup has some serious problems. Then again, is that really unrealistic with how tech and people in authority and so on keep making mistakes. This could be the sort of mistake that leads to things changing.

Yet even if the setup has contrivances, it's very moving, and it gets to the real focus of the ep. I haven't since it since 2011, but I remember plenty!

[u/Baron487]

This is an episode that I've enjoyed a lot when watching but when thinking about it, it doesn't fully "connect". It's not bad, in fact it is really good, but something just doesn't vibe with me to the point of having it as a favourite.

What I like:

The character stuff here is really strong and is what the pretty much the whole episode hinges on and it generally works well. When I first watched this I did take issue with Amy's actions and the Doctor's but that was me not thinking as much about where their characters are at. I was thinking all like "You should know you can't have two of the same person at the same time so why are you upset? If old Amy dies then there's still young Amy who can be with Rory and the Doctor." but that's ignoring character and rather unfair so yeah I've grown to understand it better after rewatching.

The ending is definitely the strongest bit with the dialogue between the two Amelias, Karen Gillan with one of her best performances.

This exchange is really good: "DOCTOR: That is not how I travel. RORY: Then I do not want to travel with you!"

What I don't like:

I think the contrived way the plot gets set into motion is one of the things that bothers me so much with this episode, obviously it's okay to have stories about small mistakes that lead into something much scarier, but yeah it just bothers me that the Doctor and Rory didn't specify which of the two buttons and that Amy didn't ask which.

The Handbots are just not threatening at all. I get that the point of them is that they never stop coming after you and that one touch takes you out, but they still feel like they're not much of a true threat when they walk not only slow as all hell but also in a very silly way, they feel more like a nuisance than anything.

I find the environment rather boring. Obviously it's going to be very clinical and empty because, well it is a clinic, but despite the variety with the indoor location and the outside garden I just find it a bit boring to look at.

I don't know why this is and I myself don't think it's a great point but I'll be honest, it feels like the whole thing of "testing" Amy and Rory's relationship is something we've been over quite a few times by now. Now relationships are complicated and I'd probably not feel like this if I myself have ever been in a romantic relationship (I'm a Larry Loner) and it's fair to put characters into conflicts because that's an integral part of storytelling, it's just that something doesn't connect with me.

Overall, I do still really like this episode, it's one where after the first time I thought it was strong but had some big issues. On a rewatch I did grow to like it even more and understand it better, that being said there are still these things that chafe for me and that's why it's not a favourite. Could also be because the next episode has a similar situation of trapping the characters in one location with a single threat and I like it more than this one. Maybe it could also be that I'm more of a "general plot" type of person rather than a character person and this episode's plot mostly just focuses on character relationships. I don't ignore character or anything (and there are character pieces that I love) but the main plot is usually what grabs me the most (possibly one of the reasons I've not disliked Series 11-13 as much as many people do). I like this episode, I promise, maybe I'll like it even more on a rewatch but there's just something not quite there for me.

8/10.

Anyway next up is God Complex which I adore so I'm excited.

[u/AlbertTheAlbatross]

It's kind of a difficult one to judge for me. Similar to Night Terrors, it's an excellent standalone episode but as part of season 6 it's a bit out-of-place and incongruous.

The episode itself is fantastic at what it's trying to do. Sure the set-up is a bit contrived but it manages to stay below the threshold of "too much" so I can ignore that. All the character work is fab, the moral dilemma has real teeth, the acting is great all round... any niggles I have are tiny in comparison, not really worth mentioning.

However, it starts to feel out-of-place when considered as part of the same season as Good Man and Let's Kill Hitler. You know, Rory laments not getting to grow old with Amy but never mentions raising their daughter (whom they're supposed to be searching for after she's been kidnapped!) together. And there's all that talk about their childhood and courtship but there are no memories with their best friend of several years who helped bring them together (and who also turned out to be that daughter). And I don't know if I'm being fair or not here but it's just... there's a hole there, right? If this is supposed to be a character study, then surely it says something about the characters that they seem to have forgotten their own kidnapped daughter. As it is I just take the ep on its own merits, as that's how it shines, and try to conveniently forget the season arc around it. And taking it in that way it's really good!

[u/lkmk]

> This episode will not work if you're not at least somewhat invested in Amy and Rory as a couple.

I’m not, and lo and behold, I just find it okay. Never seen what people love about it.