Rory Williams
Rory Williams is the husband of Amy Pond. He was previously her "sort of" boyfriend and later fiancé. He became a companion of the Eleventh Doctor, but later died and was removed from time after being absorbed by the Time Field. Following the "Big Bang 2" he was restored to the timeline, marrying Amy and continuing to travel with her and the Doctor.
Biography
Early life
Rory was a childhood friend of Amelia Pond. He was privy to her tales of the "raggedy Doctor", and an unwilling participant in the dress-up games she based around her stories. (DW: The Eleventh Hour) At one point in his youth, Rory was a member of the Cub Scouts. (DWA: If You Go Down to the Woods Today)
Meeting the Eleventh Doctor
First meeting
Later in life, Rory became a nurse at Royal Leadworth Hospital, and entered into a romantic relationship with Amelia (now calling herself "Amy"). In his position as a nurse, Rory encountered strange goings-on at the Hospital's coma ward, hearing the patients chanting "Doctor", and witnessing what looked like some of them walking out in town. Rory later encountered the Doctor himself, and was quite surprised to find out he was real, and not a figment of Amy's imagination. Rory witnessed the Doctor defeat Prisoner Zero and warn the Atraxi away from Earth. (DW: The Eleventh Hour) Following the incident, Rory began to read up on scientific theories, so he could deduce the reason why the TARDIS was "bigger on the inside" (much to the Doctor's annoyance). (DW: The Vampires of Venice) He later got engaged to Amy. (DW: Flesh and Stone)
Joining the Doctor
After having his stag party crashed by the Doctor, Rory and Amy were taken on a "romantic break" to Venice. There, they encountered the Saturnynians, a race of alien fish who had taken human form in order to repopulate their species after having escaped through a crack to escape the 'silence'. While at first he was hesitant and outright scornful of how the Doctor lived, he soon came to change his views, something remarked upon irritatedly by the Doctor at first. While they were in Venice, Rory agreed to continue travelling with the Doctor after Amy asked him to do so. The Doctor wholeheartedly agreed and the three then entered the TARDIS. (DW: The Vampires of Venice)
Travels
After spending some time aboard the Doctor's TARDIS traveling with the Doctor and Amy, Rory fell victim to the same Psychic Pollen that ensnared his companions in two shared dreams, one in which the powerless TARDIS was on a collision course with a bizarre cold sun and one in which the Doctor was visiting Rory and Amy, married and settled in Upper Leadworth while expecting their first child. In both, he was the subject of some verbal abuse by the Dream Lord, a manifestation of the Doctor's darker nature, who referred to him as a "bumbling country doctor" and mocked him as a lesser rival to the Doctor for Amy's devotion. The Dream Lord demanded that Rory, the Doctor, and Amy—particularly the last—choose which scenario was real, suggesting they should allow themselves to succumb to the "deadly danger" in the scenario they believed to be a dream.
While Rory favored the Leadworth dream, expressing satisfaction with his job as a doctor and his marriage to a pregnant Amy, the Doctor believed the TARDIS dream to be reality and Amy was unsure. Although Rory's sense of unreality mounted after a number of elderly men and women in his care, secretly Eknodine inhabiting human bodies, murdered a class of school children and began pursuing the Doctor and his former companions through the town of Leadworth, he remained convinced that the cold star in the TARDIS dream could not exist—as well as being unnerved by the prospect of abandoning five years of a life he believed he had spent in Leadworth with Amy, becoming a doctor and preparing for fatherhood.
Rory and Amy were pursued to the upper floor of their house in the Leadworth dream by the marauding Eknodine. Amy's consciousness lingered in the TARDIS dream due to the Dream Lord's machinations, forcing Rory to haul her bodily up the stairs. After she awoke, Rory took a pair of scissors and snipped off a ponytail he had grown in the Leadworth dream, much to his dream wife's dismay. Shortly after the Doctor arrived through a window, claiming he was now unsure about the TARDIS dream being reality, an Eknodine in the body of Mrs Poggit followed suit. When Rory advanced on "Mrs Poggit", the Eknodine breathed a deadly vapour onto him that caused his body to disintegrate. His last words to Amy in the Leadworth dream were, "Look after our baby."
Fortunately for all three of the time-travelers, Amy did not heed Rory's advice. Now convinced the Leadworth dream was either a hallucination or a reality she did not want to live in, she "killed" herself and the Doctor by smashing their van into the front of the home she shared with Rory. All three awoke in the freezing TARDIS, where the Dream Lord apparently conceded defeat and restored power to the time machine before vanishing. The Doctor was not taken in by his darker shade's show of magnanimity, though, and decided to blow up the TARDIS after concluding that both scenarios were dreams.
Back in reality, inside the TARDIS, Rory asked how the Leadworth dream ended, having apparently lost his memory of that dream's final moments. Amy told him how she ended it and admitted she drove the van into the house not knowing for sure whether it was in fact a dream. Overwhelmed by the implication that Amy realized she couldn't live without him, Rory kissed her passionately. When the Doctor asked where he wanted to travel next, Rory demurred, saying it was "Amy's choice". (DW: Amy's Choice)
Rory was disappointed when the TARDIS took the time-travelers to Cwmtaff, Wales, in the year 2020 instead of Rio de Janeiro. When it became clear the Doctor intended to have an adventure in the tiny mining town, Rory collected Amy's engagement ring, fretting she might lose it. He placed it in a red ring box and put it on the TARDIS console. By the time he emerged from the time machine, Amy and the Doctor had left, and he was summarily accosted by Ambrose Northover and her son Elliot, who believed him to be a plainclothes detective sent to investigate the disappearance of bodies from the Cwmtaff graveyard. Rory was unnerved by the disappearances, which appeared to occur despite the ground above the graves being undisturbed. When Rory rejoined the Doctor, the Time Lord was preoccupied with the appearance of an energy barrier around the village and the impending arrival of a group of unknown attackers from below the ground. Rory was incensed to find Amy missing, and shouted in frustration at the Doctor when he admitted he had been unable to save her from being pulled underground. Rory eventually calmed down and cooperated with the Doctor to trap a Silurian warrior named Alaya, the apparent leader of the group that had kidnapped Amy, in a Meals on Wheels van. When the Doctor left Alaya in the custody of Rory, Ambrose, and Ambrose's father Tony Mack, he warned them nobody could die in this encounter without sparking a bloody war between the Silurian civilization and humankind. Alaya goaded her captors, though, announcing she knew which of the three humans would kill her and ignite the war. Rory was unnerved but defiant, and he led the other two out of the basement in which the Silurian was held. (DW: The Hungry Earth)
Death
Rory eventually made it into the Silurians' lair, where all the victims had been taken. Up in the church, Ambrose killed the captured Silurian Alaya in anger, as it had poisoned her father. He went down with Ambrose and Tony. Upon seeing this, Alaya's sister Restac grew angry and began a tirade, attacking all humans that got in her way. Rory, Amy and the Doctor made it to the TARDIS after the Silurian scientists filled the caves with poison gas to make the Silurians hibernate. They noticed a crack in the wall, the same as the one on Amy's bedroom wall. Then Restac crawled through into the room and shot at the Doctor. Rory pushed him out of the way of the beam and was hit fatally instead of him. The mysterious Time Field crack then absorbed and erased him, removing his entire life from existence and making Amy forget about him, having been a major part of her personal timeline. (DW: Cold Blood)
After his death and erasure, the Doctor felt guilty and took Amy to several places she wished. When with Vincent van Gogh and Amy, the Doctor calls them Rory and Amy, to which Amy asks "Who?". However, while she consciously held no memory of Rory, van Gogh sensed that she was grieving over a loss. (DW: Vincent and the Doctor) While in the TARDIS, Amy found Rory's ring in the Doctor's jacket pocket. (DW: The Lodger)
When the Alliance scanned Amy's mind, they used her dormant memories of Rory to create an Nestene duplicate, which, due to Amy being affected by the crack in her room, possessed Rory's actual emotions and personality. This was part of an attempt to trap the Doctor. The Auton copy believed that he was the real Rory, and managed to remind Amy Pond of himself. Once the trap was complete, the Nestenes tried to control him, but he fought back. However, he could not stop himself from shooting Amy. (DW: The Pandorica Opens) A version of the Doctor from the future came to the Auton Rory, instructing him to place Amy's body in the Pandorica, which had the ability to keep its occupants alive. Rory watched over Amy for over two thousand years, following the box wherever it went. Over time, the plastic Rory became known as the "Lone Centurion", and eventually ended as a security guard at the National Museum, where the Pandorica had been taken. The Doctor's machinations caused Amy's younger self to release her in 1996, fully recovered. When a Stone Dalek, revitalised by the Pandorica's restorative energies, attacked, Rory revealed himself, blasting it with his hand laser. He then reconciled with Amy, and joined the Doctor and River Song in attempting to avert the destruction of creation. The Doctor succeeded by throwing the Pandorica into the heart of the explosion that caused the cracks, undoing it and sealing the cracks. This meant that the real Rory was never erased, and the Alliance was never formed, thus the duplicate Rory never existed. (DW: The Big Bang)
Resurrection
After the resetting of the universe, the real Rory was brought back. He married Amy and the two briefly forgot the Doctor. They remembered him after he arrived in the TARDIS during their wedding reception, brought back by Amy's memories. Rory also seemed to have some recollection of his Being Plastic. After the Doctor nicknamed him Mr. Pond and he danced with Amy, Rory and Amy followed the Doctor to the TARDIS, and decided to once again join him on his travels. (DW: The Big Bang)
The Doctor left Rory and Amy on a honeymoon planet shortly before his TARDIS was stolen by the Claw Shansheeth. The Doctor again referred to him as Mr. Pond, which made Jo Jones think about her missing the Third Doctor after she left to be married (SJA: Death of the Doctor). The pair continued with their honeymoon on board a spaceship in the honeymoon suite, where Rory donned his auton counterpart's roman armour. The ship began to crash, and the Doctor had just under an hour to save Rory and Amy, in addition to the other 4001 people on the ship. With help from Amy and Rory, the Doctor succeeded, and the trio left for another honeymoon location. (DW: A Christmas Carol)
Personality
Rory appeared somewhat timid during his first encounter with the Doctor. He was easily intimidated by Dr Ramsden and was unsettled by the ensuing events caused by the Doctor and Prisoner Zero. Despite this, he did have the presence of mind to record evidence in order to prove that his patients were appearing outside the hospital. He also assisted Amy in attempting to clear the hospital of patients before Prisoner Zero could exploit them. (DW: The Eleventh Hour) During the events in Venice, Rory was unnerved that the Doctor actually wanted to get back into the Saturnynian stronghold. However, he was capable of bravery, as shown when he challenged Francesco in order to protect Amy, (DW: The Vampires of Venice) and later when he took a lethal Silurian energy beam meant for the Doctor. (DW: Cold Blood) It was also notable that when he saw Francesco had attacked a girl, his immediate reaction was to check the girl was all right. (DW: The Vampires of Venice) He was greatly devoted to Amy. Perhaps the greatest testament to this personality trait was when his Auton self was willing to guard the Pandorica, with Amy in it, for almost two thousand years, even knowing that he would remain conscious the entire time. (DW: The Big Bang)
Behind the scenes
- In a deleted scene from The Hungry Earth, the Doctor admits to Amy that he likes Rory a lot.
- Rory's death is very similar in nature to Jenny's (DW: The Doctor's Daughter). In both cases they died taking a shot intended for the Doctor, and in both cases the shooter was a violent member of a race that the Doctor had helped bring peace to. (Cobb and Restac respectively.)
Nametag controversy
The question of Rory's "home" time period is one that baffled fans in the aftermath of the broadcast of The Eleventh Hour. This was largely fueled by an image of Rory's Royal Leadworth Hospital identification badge, that was given an extreme closeup in the episode. This closeup plainly shows the badge to have been issued on 30th November 1990, which would seem implausible given the presence of various bits of technology in the episode, such as laptop computers and the named 2008 Blackberry phone. The existence of Facebook, Bebo, and Twitter were also mentioned; the phone had Facebook. So perplexing was this badge ID that Steven Moffat was specifically asked about it in New York by an American fan on 13th April 2010. His response was recorded and released in the podcast, Meet the Filmmaker:
I have never actually looked at Rory's name tag to be completely honest with you...it's not a signficant plot thing.
Though it seemed a genuine, spontaneous answer, Moffat had earlier enthusiastically extolled the virtues of lying to the public and press about the content of Doctor Who, in a question-and-answer session following the New York theatrical screening of The Eleventh Hour. In any event, judging by the technology in existence at the time of the Atraxi incident, it seems unlikely that the 1990 date on the name tag could be genuine. But adding fuel to the fire, 1990s cars were seen, but so were cars said to be of a 2005+ period. Flesh and Stone later had the Doctor remark that June 25th/26th 2010 was "Amy's time", meaning that the 1990 date was an error.
However, in the same latter episode, the clock in Amy's bedroom jumped from 11:59am June 25th to 12pm June 26th, twelve hours missed in one second - and it was night time outside. This was likely also a production error, and was supposed to transition from 11:59 pm to 12:00 am. In the episode Amy's Choice, Leadworth was referred to as "the village that time forgot," these things all together causing many fan theories that something has gone wrong with Leadworth involving time itself. It was discovered in The Big Bang that time was shrinking due to the cracks. This may have caused these events, although it was not explicitly stated.
Mickey comparison
Rory is comparable in some ways with the Tenth Doctor's companion, Mickey Smith. Rory, like Mickey, is the boyfriend of the main companion, and is not present during the companion's initial meeting with the Doctor. They are then present during the second adventure, getting left behind when the companion, Amy and Rose respectively, leaves with the Doctor to go travelling. Through their similar personalities and initial antagonism towards the Doctor, they are both often used for comic relief.
The number of appearances as a companion seem to be identical, as both Mickey and Rory, after the episode in which they joined the Doctor, had two on-screen adventures, the second one being a two-part story in both instances, before leaving the TARDIS in a way that they can seemingly never return, in Rory's case, dying and being erased from time and Mickey being left in a sealed-off parallel dimension, only to rejoin the Doctor for the series finale. Also, both companions have had Auton duplicates. However, while Mickey's was an imperfect copy and obviously plastic, Rory's aesthetically mimicked his human body perfectly and housed his consciousness after his human form had been erased from existence.
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