Doctor Who: The Girl Who Waited

[Quatermass]

So, nobody posted a thread on last week's episode, which was this week's episode for us Aussies, so I might as well.

Great episode in terms of story concept and realisation, but quite frankly, I felt virtually no sympathy for the older Amy, if only because Rory managed to do better than her at the whole 'isolated for a long time' thing. Some people think that the Doctor was being such an alien SOB for making Rory abandon the older Amy, but frankly, laws of time aside, I feel she deserved to be erased from existence.

Still, that being said, Karen Gillan actually shows that she can act quite well. It's more the writing of older Amy that's the problem. If she was made a little more sympathetic rather than a cold-hearted unrepentant temporal artefact bitch, this episode would have been virtually perfect.

Other opinions? I just know that someone is going to say that my opinion of older Amy is too harsh, and that I can understand. Just don't use the older Rory from The Doctor's Wife as an example, as I have a good rebuttal.

 

[Tonyblack]

Older Amy wasn't nice, but that was understandable as she'd become so bitter. It's one thing to keep telling yourself that they are coming to rescue you, but I suspect that would soon seem like a stale excuse.

You've got a friend with a time machine after all. Is it too much to ask that he turned up to rescue her just after she got trapped? That's what time machines are supposed to be able to do.

No, I think it's understandable that she's like that and I think that the right decision was made to leave her. After all, she'd cease to exist or ever HAVE existed. To rescue that version of her would have preserved that timeline along with all the suffering she went through.

I thought it was a good episode. A lot of people on another board were making comments like - how come her clothes and boots were still in good order and how come, if she had no access to food, she got so fat in the face? But I think those are all pointless arguments. She's fat in the face because she's got a load of latex stuck to it to make her look older.

 

[Quatermass]

Older Amy wasn't nice, but that was understandable as she'd become so bitter. It's one thing to keep telling yourself that they are coming to rescue you, but I suspect that would soon seem like a stale excuse.

You've got a friend with a time machine after all. Is it too much to ask that he turned up to rescue her just after she got trapped? That's what time machines are supposed to be able to do.

And as we all know, the TARDIS is broken. And mad. Amy should know that by now.

Look, Rory had to live through, what, 2000 years, guarding a box containing his dying wife, he was an Auton Replica of the Rory who died and got erased from existence, and the Doctor hadn't told him how Amy would survive. It's amazing that Rory himself didn't go bat-sh** (he does hint in this current series that he does suppress his memories of that time to prevent himself from going bat-sh**).

Maybe understandable that older Amy was bitter, but seriously, it could have been written a lot better. As it was written, she comes across as completely unlikeable until the very end. In my opinion, anyway.

Of course, this coming from someone who acts like an angry, bitter, and half-senile old man.

(I am waiting for someone to say, 'only half?')

No, I think it's understandable that she's like that and I think that the right decision was made to leave her. After all, she'd cease to exist or ever HAVE existed. To rescue that version of her would have preserved that timeline along with all the suffering she went through.

Of course. That, and the whole paradox thing.

Actually, the Doctor had to deal with more than one thing like this before. In the novel The Ancestor Cell (which depicts the end of Gallifrey in a very different Time War, years before the TV series came back), the Doctor is confronted by the original version of a companion, Fitz Kreiner, whom he accidentally left behind, and was travelling with a clone. Although Kreiner was bitter and had joined an evil group called Faction Paradox, he also was, by the time of The Ancestor Cell, sick of hating the Doctor. This coming from someone who had to be thousands of years old by that point (it's complicated).

BTW, if you can get it, I highly recommend The Ancestor Cell. Dark as hell, but one of the best Doctor Who novels of all time.

I thought it was a good episode. A lot of people on another board were making comments like - how come her clothes and boots were still in good order and how come, if she had no access to food, she got so fat in the face? But I think those are all pointless arguments. She's fat in the face because she's got a load of latex stuck to it to make her look older.

They also mention in the story proper that the time streams keep her from getting hungry or thirsty.

From a conception point of view, it's a brilliant story. And certainly more original than last week's episode, the good but flawed Night Terrors. But Amy, as a companion, is irritating enough already. 36 years older, and she has not improved. Although I guess that it makes me prefer the original in comparison.

 

[Quatermass]

On another note, I am eagerly anticipating the next story, The God Complex. House of Leaves meets The Shining, it seems.