A Few Thoughts on the Ponds (Doctor Who)

Ah, Amy and Rory. The first companion duo to start out on the TARDIS as a couple, their lives with the Doctor were always complicated. There’s Amy’s childhood run-in with the Doctor, of course, and her subsequently “running away” with him later on. Rory’s jealousy, his worries that he can’t compete with the Doctor and that the Doctor’s devotion to Amy is less platonic than it is (silly, Rory.) And over the course of their time with the Doctor, it gets even more complicated – at times, I think, to the detriment of the characters’ narratives (spoilers for series 5-7.)

Giant, earth-shattering goings-on are nothing new for Who.  I’ve written before about new Who’s seemingly endless need to top itself with increasingly over-the-top crises at the end of each season, and I’ve also written about the show’s tendency to take the companions to intense places outside the realms of human experience and then not properly deal with it. In Amy and Rory’s case, they get their share of both. Increasingly over-the-top crisis? Oh, did I mention the universe exploding in the penultimate episode of their first season on the show? Yeah. Intense, life-altering experiences? Well, between Rory’s multiple deaths and the 2,000 years he remembers living as an Auton duplicate with the knowledge of a Roman centurion, he’s more than covered. Amy doesn’t get quite as much of that, but there is some rumbling about the fact that she grew up with a Time Crack in her bedroom, which is what uniquely positions her to be able to bring the Doctor back after he’s erased from time in the aforementioned universe-exploding incident (phew!)

With Amy and Rory, though, their most impactful developments are less about the wild sci-fi moments. Rather, they’re about the deeply-personal human moments within all those sci-fi goings-on. Chances are, you know where I’m going with this: Demons Run.

Amy gets pregnant. Before she has a chance to fully determine that, she’s kidnapped by the Silence/Madame Kovarian and replaced with a Flesh duplicate. She spends the rest of her pregnancy unaware that she’s being held in a metal coffin, her mind experiencing all that’s happening to her duplicate on the TARDIS, thinking she’s there instead. She doesn’t “wake up” to her capture until right before she gives birth, under guard on another planet, surrounded by enemies. They take her baby, convinced that the child is a “weapon” that can be used to kill the Doctor. Her best friend and husband come to rescue her and the baby, but Madame Kovarian pulls the same Flesh duplicate trick, and what Amy thinks is her recovered newborn child turns to liquid in her arms. Although Amy and Rory learn that their child grows up to be their mysterious friend River Song and thus 1) survives and 2) becomes one of “the good guys,” their child is never returned to them.

That is horrifically, heart-wrenchingly traumatizing. There’s the kidnapping, of course, and the knowledge that their baby was raised by the Silence, of all the creepy murder cults in the universe. There’s the coopting of Amy’s body (and the resulting sterilization from her experience on Demons Run, although the less said about “Asylum of the Daleks,” the better.) There’s the utter and retrievable loss of all those experiences: finding out Amy was pregnant, sharing those months together, Rory at her side while she’s in labor, seeing their child together for the first time, loving and raising her for all of her life. It’s horrible.

And yet, for the entire rest of Amy and Rory’s tenure on the show, this trauma only comes up a few times. The following episode after the Battle of Demons Run finds Amy anxiously asking the Doctor if he’s found Melody (he hasn’t, but since “[they] know who she grows up to be,” he takes that as an assurance that he will – he doesn’t.) The fact that a newly-regenerated young Melody made her way to Leadworth and spent a number of years as Amy and Rory’s “best friend” is offered as some kind of substitute, arguing that because they were always having to get her out of trouble, they “got to raise [her] after all.”

I don’t want to make it seem like all the references to Demons Run are flippant, because they’re not. There’s the “Asylum of the Daleks” stuff I don’t want to talk about, and there’s Amy’s confrontation with Madame Kovarian in the series 6 finale, in a now-aborted timeline; there, Amy states in no uncertain terms that Melody growing up to be River doesn’t change the loss of the opportunity for Amy to raise her child, and she punishes Madame Kovarian for that without mercy.

But, I mean, basically? That’s it. That’s all we see of Amy and Rory processing what happened to them and their child, and it’s stuck in the middle of various adventures in time and space. I get that Who doesn’t use a U.S.-style writers’ room, meaning that the showrunner usually handles the major arc-related episodes and outside writers are contracted to write the adventures in between. This makes it hard to tell a real, ongoing story with lingering consequences. It’s not a problem that’s unique to Amy and Rory – as I’ve said, we didn’t get much aftermath for the Bad Wolf or the Impossible Girl, either. But because their most significant experiences, while wrapped up in sci-fi, are so human in nature, I can’t help but think about how we aren’t seeing the loss of their child have more of an impact on their lives.

The first thing to ask might be, how do they keep traveling after this, but obviously the show wanted to keep them on as companions, so we’ll have to give that one a wash. But how is it not on their minds everyday for the rest of series 6, at minimum? Why do we not see Amy and Rory having incidental encounters with children on various adventures that bring up painful reactions? Why don’t they insist on continuing to look for young Melody, damn the consequences of the timeline (even if they don’t do it, they should fight with the Doctor about it)? Why doesn’t Amy’s body-stealing color future interactions for her, make her more guarded around strangers?  And in series 7, as they contemplate returning to “real life,” how do the lives of their friends around them not make them bitter about what they’ve lost? How do we not see any of this?

It’s an instance where, before writing the storyline, the show might’ve done well to think about whether they could handle writing the fallout. Because if you can’t deal with what comes next, the biggest “twist” in the world isn’t ultimately going to feel worth it.