Live-blogging Doctor Who Season Six: "The Girl Who Waited"

ME: I’m sure this is at least the third episode called “The Girl Who Waited”.
NICK: It does seem like that, doesn’t it?

And in that spirit, we approach this episode. Stay tuned after the live-blogging for a public-service announcement.

They’re heading towards a planet that I can’t pronounce, let alone spell. But, apparently, it’s a beautiful world and a beautiful word. And it has soaring silver colonnades. Which would be nice.

But it’s mostly doors, though the Doctor has time for a bit of a bitch about Twitter and a reference to the pile of DVDs on the counter.

NICK: Ah, the domestic TARDIS.

Of course, the doors are accessible through two different buttons: Rory and the Doctor push one, while Amy pushes the other. And yet they can see Amy through some kind of giant, steampunk magnifying glass.

They’re already freaking out about this before the robot with human hands turns up.

Rory freaks out about the mildly sinister robot-with-human-hands, while Amy spends a week in her alternate room in the space between heartbeats. Two time streams, says the Doctor, running parallel but at different speeds.

Sounds like time for the credits.

Oh, after the patronising voiceover.

Back in the alternate time streams, the Doctor explains that the robots see through their hands, though, as he points out, it would be easier to give them eyes. And then Rory realises that Amy has pressed the wrong button, though no one ever told her which button to press, and the Doctor realises that they can’t follow her directly into the red waterfall room.

Basically, the planet is under quarantine, because of a plague that only affects two-hearted people. Amy’s in the infected part of the planet, while the Doctor and Rory are in an alternate time-stream that allows the families of the infected to watch their family members live out the twenty-four hours they have to live. It’s all a bit sad and strange, and I wish I had more time to cover it.

But I don’t.

The Doctor sends Amy out into the facility, just for a bit. I don’t really understand why, actually. But he has a permanent lock on Amy’s signal through the steampunk magnifying glass. And he tells Amy not to let the robots-with-human-hands give her anything, because they don’t accept that she’s an alien, so it will kill her.

So why is she going out into the complex? Did I miss the reason for that?

Anyway, Rory’s heading out to find Amy, while Amy is wandering around the facility and bonding with the interface, which allows her access to multiple entertainment facilities available to her as a resident.

Of course, that’s not going to help if that robot-with-human-hands touches her and infects her against some kind of presumably necessary Earth bacteria.

There’s much running in this scene. I like running. It saves my fingers.

Running, and creepy robots. That’s pretty much what’s happening at this stage. Until Amy leaps into some kind of—I don’t even know what that is, but the robots can’t see her as long as she’s behind that chickenwire.

Meanwhile, Rory and the Doctor are in red-waterfall time, but Rory isn’t sure that it’s the same red-waterfall time as Amy’s in.

I sure hope you’ve all seen this episode, or this live-blogging is never going to make sense.

That garden is lovely. I hope Nick learns topiary at some point. I’m certainly not going to be able to master it myself, so it’s all down to Nick.

Amy’s asking the interface where she can hide from the handbots, and realises that they can’t detect her when she’s near the temporal engines. Luckily, since two handbots turn up right then, she finds a way to disable them, and then hides near the temporal engines, leaving a note for the Doctor in the interim.

In passing, those pants are really unflattering. Karen Gillan is a lovely, slender girl, and those pants are really unflattering.

Then Rory is ambushed by someone who turns out to be his wife—but slightly older than she was when he left her behind.

He asks the Doctor what’s going on, and the Doctor says that the time-stream lock might be a bit wobbly.

This Amy knows how to make the handbots ignore her existence, how to disable them, how to make their disabling look like an accidental death. She tells Rory not to let them touch her with their hands, because it’s an anaesthetic transfer and will knock him out.

This Amy’s deeply angry. She waited for thirty-six years, alone, struggling to stop the handbots from recognising her existence. And now she hates the Doctor, more than she’s ever hated anyone else in her life.

RORY: Hey. I don’t care that you got old. I care that we didn’t grow old together.

I love Rory.

But Amy is uncomfortable around Rory: she’s reluctant to let him touch her.

NICK: She gets even more Scottish as she gets older.
ME: Something to look forward to.

In her bunker, Amy has a pet robot called Rory: she cut its hands off, so that it’s no longer a threat. She’s a strange, bitter, lonely, fascinating woman. But the Doctor’s troubled by this.

AMY: Don’t you lecture me, blue-box man, flying through time and space on whimsy. All I’ve had for thirty-six years is cold, hard reality.

Amy takes Rory to the gardens, so that the Doctor can talk to the interface. He needs Amy to wear the glasses for this.

AMY: They look ridiculous.
RORY: That’s what I told him him. Still, anything beats a fez, eh?

They laugh together, but Amy stops abruptly, because she realises that this is the first time she’s laughed in thirty-six years. Then Rory wanders off, and gets ambushed by the handbots. Amy rescues him, but tells him not to get used to it.

The Doctor says that he has a chance to fold two times together, and bring the Amy of thirty-six years ago into this present.

But Amy doesn’t like this idea.

Rory finds the sign that Amy left for the Doctor, but when he asks the current Amy why she won’t help them, she says that she’ll die. The Amy who grows old with Rory won’t be, in thirty-six years, this Amy who was trapped in the two streams. She wants Rory to take her instead.

Rory doesn’t want to take this Amy, because he can’t cope with the idea that Amy has to spend thirty-six years fighting for her life in the two streams.

RORY: You should look in a history book once in a while, see if there’s an outbreak of plague or not.
DOCTOR: That’s not how I travel.
RORY: Then I don’t want to travel with you!

Rory has a point.

Rory manages to talk to Past Amy through the steampunk magnifying glass, but Past Amy doesn’t cope well with discovering her older self in the glass. Amy talks to her past self, explaining why she won’t help Past Amy. She challenges Past Amy to try anything to convince her to change her mind.

And, of course, what changes Amy’s mind is Rory. Because Amy really loves Rory. Because Rory is adorable.

OLDER AMY: All those boys chasing me. But it was only ever Rory. Why was that?

And Amy explains just why Rory is the most beautiful man she’s ever met. And, I’ll be honest here: I was uncertain about Rory to begin with. But I absolutely adore him now. He’s a fascinating, complex, gentle, lovely character, and I didn’t think they could do that with Rory, as relatively two-dimensional as he was in the beginning.

The swelling music here is lovely.

OLDER AMY TO RORY: I’m going to pull time apart for you.
NICK AND I: Whimper.

Now we have the Doctor’s theme, because Amy plans to take her own future into her hands, to re-write her own history—on condition that they take her with them as well.

RORY: Two Amys. Can that work?
DOCTOR: I don’t know. It’s your marriage.

The Doctor says that, provided he gets rid of the karaoke bar, the TARDIS could sustain the paradox. And we’ve seen it sustain a more complex paradox, so why not?

Rory has to flip some levers, in the meantime.

DOCTOR: C’mon, Rory. It’s hardly rocket science. It’s only quantum physics.

And as both Amys think a deeply important thought—the first kiss she and Rory shared—the Doctor folds time in on itself and brings both Amys into the one time-stream.

As both Amys struggle with speaking at the same time, the TARDIS flips out over the paradox, and the Doctor tells Rory to get back the TARDIS within eight minutes.

Both Amys are pretty good at getting rid of the handbots who are chasing them, but Past Amy is a little uncomfortable with the idea of older Amy travelling with them. Older Amy says it’s fine: she’ll go travelling on her own, and come back for Christmas.

But now the doors into the gallery, where the TARDIS is parked, are jammed, and older Amy flirts a little bit with Rory as they’re trying to open them. Rory (and Past Amy) are moderately uncomfortable with this, but it’s actually strangely sad to see this bitter, lonely woman relaxing in her husband’s company.

Then the handbots attack, and though Older Amy kicks backside, the handbots still manage to touch Past Amy and anaesthetise her. Rory rushes her into the TARDIS—and then the Doctor slams the TARDIS doors in Older Amy’s face.

He tells Rory that it was all a lie: there could never be two Amys in the TARDIS.

Oh, Doctor. You’re a cold man, sometimes.

And just to make it colder, he tells Rory that it’s Rory’s choice: there can only be one Amy in the TARDIS, and he has to choose.

Oh, Rory. You’re too soft for this.

Rory talks to Amy through the door, and Older Amy realises how much she loved all the things she’s been pretending, for thirty-six years, weren’t important to her.

And just as Rory breaks, and realises that he can’t leave this woman, his wife, outside the TARDIS to die, Older Amy tells him not to open the door, if he loves her. Because, she says, she doesn’t want to die. And she’ll come in, if he lets her.

OLDER AMY: Tell Amy, your Amy, I’m giving her the days. The days with you. The days to come.
RORY: I’m so, so sorry.
AMY: The days I can’t have.

Then the handbots arrive.

AMY: Interface?
INTERFACE: I’m here, Amy Pond.
AMY: Show me Earth. Show me home. Did I ever tell you about this boy I met there, who pretended to be in a band?

And the handbots anaesthetise her, and, as she falls, prepare the injections that will kill her.

And Amy wakes in the TARDIS, and asks where her other self is. And we fade out before anyone can answer that question.

Next week: a hotel on the Isle of Wight.

And now, a public-service announcement. I’m increasingly realising that I can’t sustain the live-bloggings. They’re exhausting, and frequently take time away from work I really need to do (albeit, on a Saturday night, that’s usually marking), and I don’t want to come to resent them.

But neither do I want to abandon the weekly space for talking about Doctor Who during the season.

So, readers, what do you think? I have my own ideas about what might replace the live-bloggings next season, but what would you like to see in this space? Are you interested in talking about Doctor Who here? Or interested in seeing what other people say about Doctor Who here? If so, let me know what you’d like to see in this space once a week for the duration of the Doctor Who season.