Amy Pond
Amelia "Amy" Jessica Pond was a young Scottish woman who was the first companion of the Doctor in his eleventh incarnation. She was also the girlfriend and later wife of Rory Williams and mother of Melody Pond, later revealed to be River Song.
Biography
Early life
Amelia Jessica Pond was born in Scotland in the year 1989. She was later orphaned and moved to England to live with her aunt in Leadworth. It was later revealed that her parents were swallowed by the crack in her room. (DW: The Big Bang).
After the universe was restarted by The Doctor (DW: The Big Bang), events were corrected, and there were never any cracks in time. Consequently Amy still grew up in Leadworth and was never orphaned, because her parents were never swallowed by the crack in her room. Despite living so long in an English village, Amy did not lose her Scottish accent.
Meeting the Doctor
Amelia first met the Doctor at Easter in 1996 after his TARDIS crash-landed in her backyard from damage sustained from his regeneration. The Doctor offered to take her traveling with him, but first had to keep the TARDIS' engines from phasing, requiring a quick trip into the future. The Doctor told Amelia he would only be five minutes, but he ended up taking twelve years. During the interim, Amelia became obsessed with her "Raggedy Doctor", creating dolls, comics and dress-up games around him, convincing her friend Rory into dressing up like him. Her Aunt Sharon sent her to four psychologists, whom she ended up biting after they tried to make her think the Doctor wasn't real. Reaching adulthood, Amelia took on the name "Amy", became Rory's girlfriend, and took a job as a kissogram. (DW: The Eleventh Hour)
Amy passed her driving test first time round, though it may have been due to the fact she wore a revealing skirt on the day of the test to seduce her examiner. (DW: Space)
Eventually, Amy met the Doctor again. Although distrustful of him at first, she eventually helped the Doctor to defeat Prisoner Zero and warn the Atraxi to never come back to Earth. While waiting for another two years for the Doctor to return after he took the TARDIS to the moon and back to break in the new engines, Amy got engaged to Rory and was due to be married on the 26th of June 2010. The night before the wedding, the Doctor returned to keep the promise he made to Amelia on Easter 1996 and took her on as his newest companion on the condition that she be returned before the following morning, not telling the Doctor she's getting married. (DW: The Eleventh Hour)
Travels with the Doctor
Amy's first trip in the TARDIS was to Starship UK in the 33rd century. There, she accidentally discovered the ship's secret--it was actually piloted by a Star Whale, opting to forget about it via the ship's voting booth and leaving a message for herself to get the Doctor off the ship before he could make a terrible choice. After meeting Liz 10 and once again learning the truth abouth the ship, Amy released the Star Whale from its position of slavery and proved that it came to earth voluntarily because it couldn't stand to hear children screaming across the depths of space. It was a kind creature, and the last of its species - much like the Doctor, as Amy points out to him. This experience strengthens her bond with the Doctor, as she demanded his trust to prevent him from making the awful mistake of turning the Star Whale into a vegetable, and earned forgiveness for trying to keep him from knowing the truth. When leaving the Starship, the Doctor received a phone call from Prime Minister Winston Churchill, asking for help with a tricky situation.(DW: The Beast Below)
Following Winston's call, the Doctor and Amy then set off for war-torn London in 1941, where they met Winston Churchill and his sceintific advisor Edwin Bracewell. However, the "Ironsides" that Bracewell had given to Winston to assit in the war were actual two Daleks, which the Doctor forced into revealing their true nature by constantly yelling their true name and his when his patience reached its limits. Amy helped the Doctor out when he headed to the Dalek's spaceship, where they recreated pure Daleks from a lone surviving Progenitor, by convincing Edwin not to commit suicide after learning he was a dalek-created android and modifiy spitfires to go into space and destroy a dish on the Dalek ship that was keeping night-time London lit "like a christmas tree". Upon the Dalek's departure from the WW2 era, Amy helped the Doctor deactivate the detonation of the oblivion continium inside Bracewell by convincing him that he was human. However, a perplexing thing occured around this time; Amy had no idea who the Daleks were despite their invasion in 2008. (DW: Victory of the Daleks)
Soon after, Amy and the Doctor met River Song for the first time in Amy's perspective and defeated an army of Weeping Angels. During this time, Amy nearly died under the power of one of the Angels, who took an alias given by the Doctor, Angel Bob. It was around this time Amy realised that the Crack from her wall was "following" her and would erase anything it came into contact with from history. Amy speculated that River was the Doctor's wife in his future, but had her question neither denied nor confirmed. She later had the Doctor return her home to explain that the following day was her wedding day and, perhaps out of pre-marriage jitters, fail in an attempt to seduce him. She then learned that she was the latest companion for the Doctor after tricking him to unlock visual records of his past TARDIS companions before he adamantly suggested retrieving Rory. (DW: The Time of Angels / Flesh and Stone)
The traveling couple
After learning that Amy was getting married, the Doctor responded by collecting Rory from his bachelor party and took Amy along with him on a trip to Venice, 1580 as a wedding gift because he knew how much time travel with him can cause his companions to become blind to the things in their normal lives. They then stopped a group of Saturnynians from flooding the city and repopulating it. Amy was nearly converted into a half Saturnynian by Rosanna and her son Francesso, but saved by Rory and the Doctor. Amy then asked Rory to continue traveling with her and the Doctor, to which he agreed. (DW: The Vampires of Venice)
Soon after, the TARDIS crew found themselves trapped between two realities by the malevolent being known as the Dream Lord. The Doctor defeated the Dream Lord after he worked out his reality puzzle was just a dream and the situation brought Amy and Rory closer together as she realised she couldn't live without him when he died in one of the dreams. Thus did it prove that Amy made her choice of which man she wanted to love. (DW: Amy's Choice)
In Cwmtaff, Wales, Amy witnessed the resurrection of a group of Silurians after a failed attempt to reach Rio. Amy tried to help create an alliance between humans and the Silurians with their leader and a fellow human, but this chance was ruined by a bloodthirsty Silurian commander and Ambrose Northover killing Alaya. When fleeing through the tunnels to the TARDIS, Amy noticed another crack and was horrified when Rory died after taking a shot meant for the Doctor from the Silurian, Restac. To her anguish, Amy watched as the crack absorbed Rory and her memory of him vanished as, unlike the clerics, he was part of her personal history. (DW: The Hungry Earth, Cold Blood) Amy was then left with no memory of him and was then taken to several nice places by the Doctor as his way of apologizing. (DW: Vincent and the Doctor)
Unknowing sorrow
Unknowing of the Doctor's intentions, Amy was still being taken to a number of nice places that she requested when she arrived in Paris 2010 to visit the Van Gogh exibit. There, the Doctor noticed that there was an evil face in once of the paintings and Amy ends up heading into the past where she meets Vincent Van Gogh in person and constantly turns down his romantic proposals. However, after having to defeat a blind Krafayis, Amy, along with the Doctor, took Vincent to his exhibit in 2010 were they have the exibit curator, Dr Black, talk about the positive things that people now think about him to inspire him, hoping to stop his suicide in the past. Though Amy thought that Vincent would live longer due to their interference, Amy was proven wrong as no new paintings existed, but the Krafayis no longer existed in the painting and Vincent's sunflower painting was now dedicated to her. While taking with Vincent during her time with him, Amy was shown to subconsciously remember Rory as she was crying and he could hear her "song of sadness". (DW: Vincent and the Doctor)
After that, the TARDIS materialised in a park in Chesterfield but it dematerialised, leaving the Doctor stuck in Chesterfield, while Amy was trapped in the TARDIS. Amy spent a time in the TARDIS before the Doctor solved the problem of what caused the TARDIS problems landing, which ended up being someone's failed attempt to build a TARDIS. She also found her wedding ring that the Doctor had been hiding in his pocket after Rory's death/erasure, giving her a lot of confusion. (DW: The Lodger)
Amy and The Doctor later visited "Space Florida" a week prior to the events of the Doctor's temporary erasure from the universe. (DW: The Big Bang)
Restarting the universe
Following a trip to Planet One to translate the diamond cliffs, Amy and the Doctor met River Song again (who Amy learns will keep meeting them in backwards order of their adventures) and became involved in a trap for the Doctor involving an Alliance of the Doctor's enemies. During this time, Amy is almost converted into a Cyberman by the remnants of a Cybersuit left at the Pandorica. After meeting Rory again, who had been recreated as an Auton, Amy's subconscious memories of him resurface, but she is fatally shot by Rory as the Nestene Conciousness was controlling his actions. (DW: The Pandorica Opens)
However, following a series of paradoxical events, the Doctor placed Amy in the Pandorica to keep her alive and he set out to restore the universe after
his TARDIS had exploded and caused the cracks in time. Amy was healed by her younger self providing the genetic material the Pandorica needed to fully revive her. After the Doctor succeeded in restoring the universe, he was erased from time, but left a psychic impint in her mind so that she would remember him.
Amy then woke up, on the morning of her wedding, with everything as it should be. Her mother and father never got swallowed by the crack in her bedroom and therefore existed. Amy had her wedding with Rory and was temporarily given River's diary so that she would remember the Doctor and bring him back into the universe from the otherside of the Cracks; having the one crack in her wall all her life gave her the ability to bring things back if she remembered hard enough. After remembering the Doctor back into existence and finishing her wedding, Amy, along with Rory and the Doctor go on another adventure following a call from "[Her] Majesty" detailing an Egyptian goddess loose on the Orient Express -- in space. (DW: The Big Bang)
Honeymoon
The Doctor left Amy and Rory on a honeymoon planet (a planet on a honeymoon with an asteroid) shortly before his TARDIS was stolen by the Claw Shansheeth of the 15th Funeral Fleet, temporarily stranding him until he retrieved it with the help of old companions. (SJA: Death of the Doctor)
Some time later, Amy and Rory were still on their honeymoon when they got caught in a cloud shell above a planet. Amy donned her policewoman outfit again, and helped the Doctor in his Christmas Carol-like story as the Ghost of Christmas Present. Eventually, all ended well, and she and Rory continued on their honeymoon.
At this point, The Doctor suggested a Moon that was actually made of Honey (although it was neither real honey nor really a moon) as a prospective honeymoon destination. He further commented that although there were some lovely views, it was however, technically alive and slightly carnivorous. (DW: A Christmas Carol)
At one point, nearing the end of their honeymoon, the Doctor's TARDIS materialized inside itself after Rory unintentionally caused it to do so while helping the Doctor conduct routine maintenence. However, the Doctor was able to figure out how to dissolve the resulting space loop by using it to their advantage, This caused an embarassing moment for both Amy and Rory due to how he caused the mistake. (DW: Space / Time)
As A Ganger
After their honeymoon, Amy and Rory returned to Earth. During this time, they got their own house and a pregnant Amy was kidnapped by Madame Kovarian and the Church at an unknown time. Amy was replaced with a Ganger synchronized to her senses so that she couldn't tell she had been removed from her time. (DW: A Good Man Goes to War)
Following this, the Doctor began cropping up in insignificant historical events, as if trying to get their attention. Eventually, the pair received an invitation and met the Doctor in America. The Doctor was killed on a beach by an astronaut. His companions burned his body, using the gasoline provided by an old Canton Everett Delaware III. Amy, Rory and River then returned to the diner and met a younger version of the Doctor, who had also received a letter. Amy was shocked to see him alive and well, but accepted that he was a younger Doctor than the one they had seen shot. Following the request of the older Doctor, Amy had the Doctor set course for Space 1969 and Canton Delaware III.
After landing the TARDIS in the oval office, Amy went to the bathroom. While there, she encountered a Silent, whom she had seen in 2011 right before the Doctor had been shot by the astronaut. It told her that she must tell the Doctor what he must and must not know. Knowing that she will not be able to remember the Silent after taking her eyes off it, Amy uses her camera phone to take a picture of it. Before she can leave to try informing the Doctor of what happened, Amy sees an innocent woman blown to ashes by the Silent.
Following the Doctor's finding the location the child calling Richard Nixon, Amy began talking with River about the possibility of killing the astronaut in the past to keep it from killing the future Doctor. Amy kept thinking this while the Doctor examined stolen NASA equipment in the room, declaring that it must have been stolen because it is "cooler" than earth technology. While River and Rory investigated the Silence's lair below the warehouse, Amy, Canton - who had tagged along since Nixon originally assigned him to the case - and the Doctor hear the child calling for help. Amy follows the Doctor, insisting that she must tell him something. Soon finding Canton out cold after he raced ahead, Amy tells the Doctor that she is pregnant. Right after someone in an astronaut suit enters, and thinking that it is the same person that will kill the Doctor, Amy grabs Canton's gun and fires a shot before realising that the child they were looking for was in the suit.
Amy then began traveling the USA to mark how many of the Silence existed on the earth while Canton put on a farce of the Doctor being a prisoner in Area 51. After spending three months travelling, Amy was eventually "shot" by Canton and brought to Area 51.
After rescuing River from her jump off a skyscraper, Amy had a nanorecorder placed in her palm to record messages if a Silent was encountered. Under the pretense of being an FBI agent, Amy was sent with Canton to investigate Graystark Hall children's home. Amy encounters a room of Silence sleeping like bats on the ceiling, but soon finds the little girl's bedroom. Examining the several pictures, Amy is greatly confused as to why there is a photo of herself happily holding a baby. Suddenly, the little girl in the astronaut suit walked into the room and begs Amy to help her. However, before she could help, Amy is caught by two Silence while the girl escapes from the astronaut suit and flees.
Much later, Amy had awoken in the Silence's lair to be cryptically told she "will help bring the silence" before the Doctor, River and Rory had arrived and shown the moon landing footage had been tampered with by the Doctor to have a recording of a Silent telling its viewer to kill any of its species on sight. While River is in a shoot-out with the Silence, Amy is freed by the Doctor and runs into the safety of the TARDIS along with her husband.
After delivering River back to Stormcage, Amy tells the Doctor that she would be worried if she had become pregnant during part of her and Rory's travels in the TARDIS because there might be some kind of serve birth defect like having multiple heads or worse. (DW: Day of the Moon) Unbeknownst to Amy, the Doctor repeatedly scans her on their adventures to confirm if she is pregnant. (DW: Day of the Moon, The Curse of the Black Spot, The Rebel Flesh)
Landing in the 17th century, Amy helped the Doctor stop a Siren from kidnapping the entire crew of a pirate ship. It was later revealed that the Siren was really a virtual doctor from an invisible spaceship that toke up the same space as the Fancy and its crew decided to comandere the ship for themselves to see the stars. During this time, Amy proved herself capable with a sword in a fight with pirates when she fought them to keep the Doctor and Rory from walking the plank. However, while she slept on the Fancy, Amy awoke to notice the woman once again looking through a hatch, but this time directly at her. (DW The Curse of the Black Spot)
Amy was later trapped inside the TARDIS by House, who planned to use the TARDIS to escape the bubble-universe. During this time, Amy's love for Rory was toyed with by House, using the TARDIS's temporal nature to put on illusions to cause anguish as she was falsely lead to believe Rory was aging rapidly and died. Amy was saved by the Doctor, who used the soul of the TARDIS to expel/kill House. (DW: The Doctor's Wife)
In the 22nd century, Amy became involved in the revolution of the Gangers and twice saw the Eye Patch Lady. However, the Doctor dismissed her worrying about it as a "time memory." After the Doctor prevented the revolution, Amy learned that she was not actually with them, but was a Ganger herself. The Doctor then stopped the signal after promising to find her and Amy awoke in her real body on Demons Run to find herself full-term pregnant with Madame Kovarian, the Eye Patch Lady, (literally) watching over her. Being instructed to push, Amy began to give birth. (DW: The Rebel Flesh/The Almost People)
Known Family
- Tabetha Pond (mother)
- Augustus Pond (father)
- Sharon (aunt)
- Rory Williams (husband)
- Melody Pond, later to become River Song (daughter)
- The Doctor(possible son-in-law as her daughter may be married to The Doctor)
Personality
As a child, Amelia was seen to be brave and not frightened easily even when alone. She prayed to Santa Claus to help her with the crack in her wall, and thus was not surprised to meet the Doctor when he first arrived. She was both repulsed and amused by the Doctor's immediate demand for food, and wished to travel with him shortly after their meeting. In her later life Amelia had started going by the name Amy and became very feisty but she showed signs that deep down, she was still the young Amelia Pond she had been during her first meeting with the Doctor. She was very cynical and skeptical due to him breaking his promise to be "back in five minutes" and returning twelve years later. (DW: The Eleventh Hour)
During her early travels with the Doctor, Amy romanticised him as a hero who could save anyone. She often remained flippant in the face of danger, with the exception of her terrifying ordeal in the forest aboard the Byzantium, exchanging barbs with Rosanna Calvierri even when facing a forcible blood replacement and cracking jokes while confronting apparent doom on the TARDIS. (DW: Flesh and Stone, The Vampires of Venice, Amy's Choice) Yet after Rory appeared to die in her arms during a lucid dream caused by psychic pollen, she realized the Doctor was not the omnipotent being she had assumed he was. (DW: Amy's Choice)
Amy could be seductive at times and tried to seduce the Doctor on one occasion despite the fact that the next day was her wedding day. (DW Flesh and Stone) Rory also claimed that she only passed her driving test on her first attempt because she was wearing a revealing skirt at the time, indicating that she may have seduced her driving instructor into giving her her licence. (DW: Space)
As a child, Amy was obsessed with her "Raggedy Doctor" and refused to believe that he was simply an imaginary friend. Even after the Doctor was erased from history, Amy still remembered him and managed to bring him back into her universe. (DW: The Big Bang) She also once referred to the Doctor as her best friend. (DW: Day of the Moon)
Amy loved her husband, Rory, but she also had a habit of playfully insulting him, calling him names such as "Stupid Face". Despite her tough exterior, Amy did not try to hide her emotions and was devastated when the Doctor and Rory died. She also had enough knowledge about time to know that it could be rewritten and hoped that there was a way to rewrite time in order to avoid the Doctor's death. (DW: The Impossible Astronaut)
Appearance
Amy Pond was tall and long-legged (inspiring the Doctor to introduce her to the President of the United States with the code name "the Legs"). She had bright red hair, a characteristic which is comented on throughout the series, freckles, and green eyes.
Her finger nails were usually painted in widely varying colours. Contrasting with the past main series companions of the new series, she seems to prefer wearing short skirts to trousers. Karen Gillan has described Amy's clothing style as "thrown together" and expressed that it is true to the common trends in people of Amy's age and generation. According to the 2010 visual dictionary, Amy loves to experiment with clothes from the TARDIS wardrobe and has a great sense of fashion.
Behind the scenes
- Amy is the second consecutive main TV companion to have red hair after Donna Noble. This fact was noted by the BBC when it issued a statement in response to the so-called 'Ginger controversy' that erupted in early January 2010 due to misinterpretation of a statement made by the Eleventh Doctor after his regeneration.[1]
- Amy Pond is the first televised companion with whose adolescent self the Doctor has had significant onscreen experience. Nevertheless, she is far from unique in having been portrayed onscreen in her youth.
- Amy Pond is the second character with an aquatic-themed name to be created by show-runner Steven Moffat, following River Song. This is not a coincidence, however, as it is later revealed that River is Amy's daughter, and that "River" is translated from "Pond". Other writers, however, have employed "liquid" names; non-Moffat characters like Ocean Waters, Jackson Lake, and Adelaide Brooke have also appeared in the televised Doctor Who universe.
- Amy is the second televised companion to have a Scottish accent, and only the third regularly-appearing Scots character in series history, after both Jamie McCrimmon and the Brigadier. Since neither Frazer Hines nor Nicholas Courtney are themselves Scottish, Gillan is the first Scottish actor/actress to play a recurring Scot in the history of the programme.
- Following the premiere of The Eleventh Hour, the character of Amy Pond was criticized by a number of viewers for being "too sexy" for a family program such as Doctor Who. In response, Piers Wenger, the executive producer for Series 5, stated, “The whole kissogram thing played into Steven’s desire for the companion to be feisty and outspoken and a bit of a number. Amy is probably the wildest companion that the Doctor has travelled with, but she isn’t promiscuous. She is really a two-man woman and that will become clear over the course of the episodes."[2]
- Amy Pond is the first series-long BBC Wales companion who wouldn't consider London their hometown. That said, Jack Harkness, who has nearly been in as many episodes as a full series, isn't from Earth at all. However, she is only the second BBC Wales companion, after the short-lived Adam Mitchell, to have met the Doctor in a place other than London. Debatable, as Donna Noble met the Doctor inside the Tardis before taking her back to London.
- Amy is the second companion in the new series who has been pursued romantically by a real historical figure, she was proposed to by Vincent van Gogh. Previously, William Shakespeare made romantic advances towards Martha Jones.
- Steven Moffat has dismissed the fan theory that River Song is a future version of Amy. (DCOM: The Time of Angels)
- Amy has a fondness for Romans. Karen Gillan, who plays Amy, also played a Roman priestess in the episode The Fires of Pompeii.
- Caitlin Blackwood who plays the younger version of Amy is the cousin of Karen Gillan, although the two did not meet until the readthrough of DW: The Eleventh Hour.
Footnotes
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