Amy Pond
Amelia Jessica "Amy" Williams (nee Pond) was the first companion of the Doctor in his eleventh incarnation. She was the girlfriend and later wife of human nurse Rory Williams and the mother of River Song. When River married the Doctor, Amy became his mother-in-law. Amy died aged 87 in 1993 after allowing a Weeping Angel to send her back in time so she could be reunited with her husband, who had been touched by the Angel. She was buried with her husband in an graveyard in New York.
AMELIA POND HAS DIED
Personality
Amy was adventurous and reckless, with a dry wit and a stubborn streak. She had a difficult childhood being an orphan raised by her aunt. Her parents had been wiped from existence by the Time Field in her childhood bedroom. She felt abandoned by the Doctor. She was rarely open with her feelings and often mistrustful and wary. She held people she cared for at arm's length, as she did in her early relationship with Rory (TV: Let's Kill Hitler, The Eleventh Hour, The Vampires of Venice) and the Doctor when he returned. (TV: The Eleventh Hour) Amy had jokes made about her Scottish heritege by mostly the Doctor and Rory (TV: The Eleventh Hour, A Good Man Goes to War, Let's Kill Hitler), or even herself. (TV: The Beast Below, Victory of the Daleks, Asylum of the Daleks)
As a child, Amelia was stoic and able to care for herself. She prayed to Santa Claus for help with the crack in her wall and was unsurprised to meet the Doctor. She lusted for the adventure of travel with him. When he did not return, she grew into a cynical and aggressive young woman. (TV: The Eleventh Hour)
Amy was often flippant in the face of danger (TV: Asylum of the Daleks), with the exeption of her traumatic experience in the forest aboard the Byzantium. She traded barbs with Rosanna Calvierri when facing a forcible blood replacement and cracked jokes while confronting apparent doom on the TARDIS. (TV: Flesh and Stone, The Vampires of Venice, Amy's Choice)
Amy was flirtatious. In Leadworth, she worked as a kissogram. She was attracted to the Doctor, (TV: The Eleventh Hour) Vincent van Gogh (TV: Vincent and the Doctor) and the Roman soldiers at Stonehenge. (TV: The Pandorica Opens) She once tried to seduce the Doctor. (TV: Flesh and Stone) Rory claimed she only passed her driving test on her first go because of a revealing skirt. (TV: Space) She had no problem being naked in front of the Doctor after a mutation into a butterfly-woman was reversed. (COMIC: Supernature) She apparently began sleeping like this after being left behind by the Doctor in The God Complex. (WC: Pond Life)
Amy was troubled and lonely. She was often left alone by her aunt Sharon, who refused to deal with her fear of the crack in her wall. After meeting the Doctor, she was obsessed with her "Raggedy Doctor" and refused to believe he was imaginary, biting psychiatrists when they tried to convince her otherwise. Mels, a school troublemaker, her close friend and daughter, once pointed out she often misbehaved in school. Despite this, she was a protective, maternal figure for Mels, leading her - while regenerating into River Song after being revealed as Melody Pond - to remark, "You got to raise me after all." (TV: Let's Kill Hitler)
Amy loved her husband, Rory, passionately and called the Doctor her best friend. (TV: Day of the Moon) She felt he could fix anything. (TV: The God Complex) Despite her tough exterior, Amy could not always hide her emotions and was devastated when faced with the loss of loved ones such as Rory, Melody, the Doctor and Vincent van Gogh. She broke down in tears when the Doctor left her on Earth with Rory. (TV: The God Complex, The Vampires of Venice, Vincent and the Doctor, et al.) Once she discovered that something done to her at Demons Run made her sterile and unable to give birth to any more children, Amy tried forcing Rory out of her life to give him a better chance at having children with someone else. (TV: Asylum of the Daleks)
In her time on the TARDIS, Amy was heroic, saving the lives of the Doctor, Rory, River and others. She was willing to remain in the clutches of enemies to let her friends escape. (TV: The Time of Angels, Day of the Moon) Her mind, altered by her growing up with a crack in space and time in her bedroom wall, restored erased beings to the universe (TV: The Big Bang) using only her memories. She knew time could be rewritten and hoped there was a way to rewrite it to avoid the Doctor's death. (TV: The Impossible Astronaut, The Wedding of River Song). She could remember alternate timelines. (TV: The Wedding of River Song, Night and the Doctor: Good Night)
Amy showed a ruthless streak. In an alternate timeline, Madame Kovarian was being killed by her eye drive and had gotten it most of the way off; she asked Amy to help her because it was what the Doctor would do. Amy said, "He's not here" and put Kovarian's eye drive back on, killing her for having stolen her baby from her. She was conflicted about this later. (TV: The Wedding of River Song)
Amy's worst fear was being "the girl who waited", which stemmed from her childhood of waiting for the Doctor to take her with him in the TARDIS. This fear continued into her adulthood when she became worried about a day where the Doctor may disappear from her life forever, and she would continue to spend her life waiting for a return that would never come.(TV: The God Complex, Dinosaurs on a Spaceship)
During her adventure aboard the Silurian Ark, Amy told the Doctor that she had quit her recent job, who comments that she had already quit the job before. She admitted that she can not settle down because she was always listening for the TARDIS to materialise nearby to take her and Rory away. (TV: Dinosaurs on a Spaceship)
Other information
Skills
Amy proved skilled at swinging and using a sword. (TV: The Curse of the Black Spot) She could also pick a lock with only a hair-pin. (TV: The Beast Below) Amy could tell what others were thinking the more she knew them; when the Doctor was making silent movements, she could tell what he was thinking. (TV: Asylum of the Daleks) Amy was able to easily find information in a complex computer system on the Silurian Ark, which aided the Doctor in finding out where the ship came from and was going to. (TV: Dinosaurs on a Spaceship)
Despite taking jobs based around her physical appearance (first that of kissogram, later model) Amy is known to be highly intelligent, able to solve intricate mysteries using observant analysis and even, on one occassion, to single-handedly build her own sonic screwdriver (TV: The Girl Who Waited, The Beast Below).
Deaths
Although not as well known for it as Rory, Amy has died several times.
- Amy committed suicide in a dream after Rory was killed and woke up in another dream in which she died again when the Doctor blew up the TARDIS to return them to reality. (TV: Amy's Choice).
- Amy was accidentally killed by the Auton duplicate of Rory but was revived by the Pandorica. (TV: The Pandorica Opens, The Big Bang)
- Amy's Flesh avatar was killed by the Doctor so that Amy's mind could return to her real body. (TV: The Rebel Flesh)
- An older version of Amy died so that the younger version of her could stay with Rory. (TV: The Girl Who Waited)
- Amy and Rory sacrificed themselves to create a paradox in order to kill the Weeping Angels, but woke up in a graveyard since they had destroyed the timeline of that event in order to defeat most of the Angels. (TV: The Angels Take Manhattan)
- Amy was sent back in time by a Weeping Angel and died of old age a few years after Rory. This time her death was permanent. (TV: The Angels Take Manhattan)
Appearance
Amy Pond was tall and long-legged, inspiring the Doctor to introduce her to the President of the United States as "Code name 'the Legs'". (TV: The Impossible Astronaut) She had coppery red hair, freckles and green eyes. She frequently wore short skirts, often with opaque or coloured tights or leggings. She liked to paint her fingernails in different colours, most often red. She was considered by many to be very beautiful since she worked as a kissogram and later a model and attracted the attention of Rory Williams, whom she married, Vincent van Gogh, who said she was cute and suggested that they have a dozen children together and John Riddell, who said he was glad to be fighting with her at his side, although since she was married to Rory he did not actually flirt with her. (TV: Vincent and the Doctor, Dinosaurs on a Spaceship)
Behind the scenes
What's Amy's married name?
Following her wedding in The Big Bang, Amy's actual last name was a matter of speculation. Throughout most of series 6, the Doctor continued to call her "Pond" leaving open the possibility that she didn't necessarily take Rory's last name. His lone use of "Amy Williams" in The God Complex — at a time when he was trying to make her see her life through a more "real" lens — suggested, but did not confirm, that she actually was "Amy Williams". Similarly, the Doctor had taken to referring to Rory as "Rory Pond", meaning the continued use of "Pond" in reference to Amy may have been erroneous also. However, speculation ended with Asylum of the Daleks, where she was definitively shown signing her legal name to a divorce document as "Williams". In The Angels Take Manhattan, her gravestone says Amelia Williams.
Played by two actors
Amy is the first companion in Doctor Who history to have two concurrent recurring portrayers: Karen Gillan and Caitlin Blackwood [unless Jack Harkness and The Face of Boe are confirmed to be one and the same]. The two are first cousins, although they didn't meet until the read-through for The Eleventh Hour. Though Blackwood and Gillan are physically similar, they have different eye colours: Gillan has green eyes, while Blackwood's are blue. John Leeson and David Brierley both voiced K9 Mark II but not concurrently. Sydney Wade portrayed Melody Pond in a consecutive pair of episodes alongside Alex Kingston.
While several companions have been portrayed by one or more juvenile actors in flashbacks and visits to earlier points in their timelines; including Rose Tyler in both infancy and youth, Mickey Smith, Jack Harkness, Sarah Jane Smith in both infancy and youth, Adelaide Brooke, River Song in infancy, youth, adolescence and young adulthood, and Rory Williams (Father's Day, Adam, The Temptation of Sarah Jane Smith, Whatever Happened to Sarah Jane?, The Waters of Mars, A Good Man Goes to War); Amy is the only companion whose role was originated by her juvenile actor and subsequently taken over by her regular adult actor, or who was invited to travel with the Doctor as a child.
Controversies
After the premiere of The Eleventh Hour, Amy was criticised as too sexy for a family programme like Doctor Who. Piers Wenger, a series 5 executive producer, said, “The whole kissogramme 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."[1]
Earlier in 2010, Amy's red hair was used to defuse the so-called "Ginger controversy" that erupted in early January 2010 due to misinterpretation of a statement made by the Eleventh Doctor on his regeneration. Pointing out the programme's history of employing red-headed actors, the BBC noted that Amy was the second consecutive main TV companion to have red hair. [2]
Other matters
- Amy is the second televised companion to have a Scottish accent and only the third regularly-appearing Scots character in series history, after Jamie McCrimmon and the Brigadier.
- Amy is the second companion in the new series pursued romantically by a real historical figure. She was proposed to by Vincent van Gogh. William Shakespeare made amorous advances to Martha Jones.
- The Brilliant Book 2012, a non-narrative source, said that Amy and Rory's other unchronicled honeymoon destinations included meeting William Shakespeare in 1605, having a picnic in the bee-infested Gardens of Zul-Thep in 3104, and encountering Wyatt Earp and a cactus in an adventure involving acid-spitting land squids on Drago14. It also claimed that Amy became a renegade to give the Silents a false sense of security, travelling to North Dakota, South Dakota, Washington and Idaho to find more about them. It also says that to prepare for when Canton tried to "kill" her, she was given cryotosis podlets to feign death.
Footnotes
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