The Hippest Kids In Town

What’s the best line you’ve ever used on a girl? Because I bet it doesn’t come any where close to “I would rip apart time for you.” But then again, we aren’t all Rory Williams, nurse, husband, father, and former Centurion automaton. The Girl Who Waited was a timey-wimey love story with robots. We have seen many Amy/Rory love stories in previous episodes, and this one didn’t exactly cover any new ground, but it was put together so sublimely it was difficult to fault it. 

Tom Macrae’s script kept the action and sets minimal, allowing the acting ability of both Karen Gillan and Arthur Darvill to take centre stage. And to any of those naysayers that still claim Gillan and Darvill can’t act, well this episode proved them embarrassingly wrong. Both Gillan and Darvill were at the top of their game, and gave their best performances of the series so far. Their chemistry feels so real, their emotions so raw, they are able to tug at the heart-strings, and make us laugh at the same time. Matt Smith usually steals the show, but here he took a back-seat to the Ponds, and allowed them to shine.

Doctor Who Episode 10 Review - Killing With Kindness

Much like last week’s episode Night Terrors, this was a stand-alone episode that didn’t continue the series-arc. It did however begin to lay the ground-work for events to come, specifically in regards to how the Doctor will escape his future death. If this episode proved anything it’s that the future can be re-written.

The Doctor and the Ponds arrive at a quarantine facility, all white walls and doors, very clinical looking. The facility was built for victims of an alien plague, the “one day plague” as the Doctor calls it, because you get it, and then you die within a day. While Amy searches for her camera-phone aboard the TARDIS, the Doctor and Rory push the Green Anchor button and enter a room, inside is a table and a large magnifying glass, the door closes behind them.

When Amy tries to join them, she presses the Red Waterfall button, which takes her in to the same room but within a different time-stream. “Time’s gone wobbly” as the Doctor so eloquently puts it.

Through the looking glass, you have the ability to see in to different time-streams, so Rory and the Doctor can see Amy, and she can see them. I’m sure the Through The Looking Glass imagery was intentional, as that is a book itself that plays around with frequent changes in time and space. While only a couple of minutes have passed for Rory and the Doctor, a whole week has gone by for Amy, “Two different time-streams running parallel but at different speeds.”

“You have a choice. Sit at their bedside for 24 hours and watch them die, or sit in here for 24 hours and watch them live. Which would you choose?” This is an episode all about choices; choices regarding life and death, and Rory is the man in the middle.

The Doctor commits a small act of vandalism and steals the looking glass, locks on to Amy’s stream, and plans to use the TARDIS to smash through the time-stream, and save Amy. Amy has to hide somewhere within the facility while the TARDIS follows the signal, whilst avoiding injections from the Hand-bots.

The facility is kind of like a futuristic airport/aeroplane, with it’s own built in entertainment system, providing everything from an aquarium to a roller-coaster zone, it’s a bit like Center Parcs. There is an interface that acts as a guide, teacher, and friend.

The Hand-bots are the most persistent nurses of all time, despite having it explained to them that their medicine will kill the likes of Amy and Rory, they simply reject the statement and continue to fire needles all over the place. The only place Amy can hide from them is by the temporal engines which provide the power of the time-streams.

The garden scene looked beautiful, up until this point we were surrounded by white walls, so the sudden change of imagery was very effective. Perhaps another Through The Looking Glass reference, which also included a mystical garden.

Meanwhile Rory and the Doctor lock on to Amy’s time-stream, and things turn in to a 1990s point and click game. The Doctor controls Rory, who is equipped with some geek-chic glasses that allow the Doctor to see the action - Rory-cam. Rory has to go in to the time-stream because he is immune to the infection, it only affects species with two hearts, such as time-lords, and as the Doctor reminds us, he currently has his regeneration powers turned off. But unfortunately they have arrived too late in Amy’s time-stream, specifically 36 years too late, and Amy has grown old alone.

I was impressed by the make-up job, it wasn’t too over-the-top, it looked real. And Karen Gillan excelled as the bitter, wiser, old Amy Pond. Having spent 36 years alone, fighting Hand-bots, Amy has grown more knowledgeable, she discovered how to out-think the Hand-bots, she hacked in to the interface, and she even made her own sonic-screwdriver (probe). She lives within a make-shift room by the temporal engines, with nothing but a disarmed Hand-bot for company, whom she named Rory - her very own Wilson.

But she has also grown resentful, she claims that she hates the Doctor “I hate him more than I’ve hated anyone in my entire life.” I like it when things don’t always go quite right for the Doctor. “Don’t you lecture me, blue box man, flying through time and space on a whimsy.” Sometimes he needs to hear the truth, much like in A Good Man Goes To War, the Doctor realises the extent his existence effects others, and not always in a positive way.

Amy laughs for the first time in 36 years, and the man to make her laugh was of course Rory. It was a touching scene, and the music here was excellent, it reminded me slightly of Jon Brion’s soundtrack to Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

The Doctor has a new plan, hijack the temporal engines and use their energy to fix a point between the two time-streams and bring them together. There is only one fault in that plan, Amy doesn’t want to be saved, for her it is too late.

If the Doctor rescues the ‘past Amy’ then the ‘old Amy’ will cease to exist, the past 36 years won’t have happened, and Amy won’t allow that, instead she asks Rory to save her, meaning that ‘past Amy’ will have to wait 36 years to be rescued - essentially Rory has to choose which wife he wants to save. Now it is Rory’s turn to be angry at the Doctor, if this is the way the Doctor travels then “I do not want to travel with you!” Rory screams.

Then comes Karen Gillan’s defining moment as Amy Pond. In this monologue to herself, Karen Gillan proves she has the acting chops to stand toe-to-toe with Matt Smith, and any of the previous companions. Amy has to basically convince herself to let the Doctor and Rory save her, and to do that she utters three words “What about Rory?” It’s another scene that pulls at the heart-strings, as both Amy’s reminisce about how they fell in love with Rory, the most beautiful man they have ever met.

Old Amy agrees to be save the past Amy, but only if Rory saves her too, two Amy’s aboard the TARDIS. The Doctor tells Rory that this could be possible, that the TARDIS could sustain the paradox.

Who would’ve thought that it would be the macarena that helped rip through two time-streams? But this was the memory of Amy and Rory’s first kiss, a memory so strong that it allowed the time-streams to join together, bringing both past Amy and old Amy in to contact. “You always say at Christmas you could do with two of you,” is Rory’s positive spin on the situation.

As Rory and his wifes make a run for the TARDIS, Old Amy goes all Kill Bill with her samurai sword on the Hand-bots. Past Amy is touched by one of the Hand-bots and his put to sleep, Rory picks her up and carries her on to the TARDIS, effectively making his choice over which Amy he wants to save. Then comes a moment that seemed so cruel, but necessary, the Doctor locks the TARDIS door on Old Amy. The Doctor reasons with Rory that once they save Past Amy then the Old Amy will cease to exist, that none of this will have happened, the future would be re-written, but for Rory this doesn’t make it any easier.

Old Amy tells Rory that if he loves her then he won’t let her in, she sacrifices her “days” for her past self and for Rory, the love of her life. She gives up her 36 years so that Amy and Rory can be together, and grow old with each other. If your heart wasn’t wrenching earlier in the episode, then surely it got you here. Again, Gillan and Darvill were just superb.

Rory locks the door, and Old Amy accepts her fate, taking one last look at earth before the Hand-bots put her to sleep.

The Girl Who Waited was another Rory and Amy love story, but perfectly told and brilliantly performed. It also put in to place the idea that the future isn’t set in stone and can be re-written, which is surely foreboding for how the Doctor escapes his date with death at the end of the series.