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Rory Williams (often acknowledged as Rory Pond) was Amy Pond's boyfriend and later husband. He became a companion of the Eleventh Doctor, died and was removed from the universe after being absorbed by the Time Field. After "Big Bang Two" he was restored, married Amy and resumed travel with the Doctor and her. During this time, his child, Melody Pond (later known as River Song), was born. When the Doctor married River, Rory became his father-in-law.
- You may be looking for the Auton based on Rory.
Biography
Early life
Rory was a childhood friend of Amelia Pond. Like much of Leadworth, he was privy to her tales of the "raggedy Doctor" and a reluctant participant in dress-up games she based on them. (DW: The Eleventh Hour) He was also a friend of Mels, unbeknownst to him their daughter from the future. On at least one occasion when he played hide and seek with them he hid for hours and they didn't look for him. Rory was long attracted to Amy. His feelings were returned only after Mels pointed it out. Before this, Amy had believed Rory was gay, because he had never shown any interest in any other girl. (DW: Let's Kill Hitler)
Meeting the Doctor
While working at the hospital in 2008, Rory noticed coma patients roaming about the village. He helped the Eleventh Doctor defeat Prisoner Zero, then watched him warn the Atraxi away from Earth after they had threatened to roast it. (DW: The Eleventh Hour) After these events Rory became engaged to Amy and started looking up the "latest scientific theories". (DW: Flesh and Stone)
Travels with the Doctor
In 2010, not knowing Amy had left in the TARDIS and spent days away from Leadworth, Rory was surprised when the Doctor unexpectedly popped out of a cake at his stag party and disheartened to learn Amy had tried to kiss the Doctor. The Doctor took the couple on a "romantic break" to Venice in 1580 as a wedding gift. They ran into Saturnyns who planned to flood Venice and repopulate it with their species. Rory defended Amy from Francesco, a Saturnyn who wished to convert her into a "fish from space". The Doctor defeated the Saturnyns and Rory agreed to continue travelling with the Doctor after Amy asked him to. (DW: The Vampires of Venice)
Aboard the TARDIS, Rory fell victim to the Psychic Pollen that ensnared them in two shared dreams. He escaped after the Doctor killed them in both dreams. Amy and his relationship was cemented by her realisation she really loved him and would not live without him when he died in one of the dreams. (DW: Amy's Choice)
Following a failed attempt to visit Rio, in 2020, Rory, Amy, the Doctor and some new friends stopped renegade Silurians who lived beneath Cwmtaff in Wales from killing humanity. Rory was shot and killed by their military leader, Restac, when he shielded the Doctor from a fatal energy beam. He was swallowed by a nearby crack in time and erased from reality. (DW: The Hungry Earth / Cold Blood)
The Alliance scanned the psychic imprint left by Amy and used her dormant memories of Rory to create an Auton duplicate. (DW: The Pandorica Opens)
- For more information on Rory as an Auton, see Rory Williams (Auton).
After his Auton self helped reboot the universe almost wiped out by the Time Field, the real Rory returned and married Amy in June 2010. He remembered having been an Auton after Amy had recalled the Doctor from the other side of the cracks. (DW: The Big Bang) He compared these memories to a door in his head; he could open it when he wanted, but usually kept it shut. (DW: Day of the Moon) After the wedding, they returned to Amy's garden, where the TARDIS was parked. They bade farewell to Leadworth to continue journeying with the Doctor. (DW: The Big Bang) The Doctor would insist on calling him "Rory Pond". (DW: The Big Bang, The Rebel Flesh / The Almost People)
- In the new version of reality, the first time Amy and Rory were together in the TARDIS was on their honeymoon, despite their memories of earlier adventures with the Doctor. (DW: A Good Man Goes to War)
Honeymoon
Amy and Rory passed their wedding night on the TARDIS, conceiving their first child. (DW: A Good Man Goes to War) The Doctor left them on a honeymoon planet (SJA: Death of the Doctor)
The couple continued their holiday in the honeymoon suite of a starship in the 44th century. The ship began to crash onto the planet Ember. The Doctor had less than an hour to convince Kazran Sardick of Sardicktown to unlock the cloud belt, allowing the ship to safely land. Rory showed Kazran a hologram of the crashing ship. The cloud belt was opened when Abigail Pettigrew's singing calmed the ice, and the ship safely landed.
The trio left for another honeymoon location, but Rory was sceptical about it when told it was a living, carnivorous planet. (DW: A Christmas Carol)
Rory began helping the Doctor maintain the TARDIS, which annoyed Amy. He made the TARDIS materialise inside itself by dropping a thermocoupling when he inadvertently looked up Amy's skirt. The Doctor dematerialised the TARDIS from the resulting space loop and told Amy to put on some trousers. (DW: Space / Time)
America
After their honeymoon, Rory and Amy returned to Earth. (DW: The Impossible Astronaut) Amy was replaced with a Ganger. (DW: The Almost People)
In April 2011, they received a TARDIS-blue letter which led them to America. There they met up with River Song and the Doctor, who was (unbeknownst to them) a Teselecta duplicate. This "Doctor" was shot by a past version of River, faking his death in front of Rory and Amy. (DW: The Impossible Astronaut, The Wedding of River Song) After his apparent death, the group spoke briefly to Canton Delaware. Rory, Amy and the older River went to a diner where they met a younger version of the Doctor with his own invitation. During the older Doctor's talk about "space 1969", Amy had seen one of the Silents, aliens who had occupied Earth for centuries.
They arrived in the White House in April 1969, where they met Richard Nixon and a younger version of Canton. The Doctor, his companions and Canton went to Florida to track the mysterious phone calls Nixon was getting. Rory and River found a Silent timeship while exploring tunnels under the warehouse to which the calls had led them. (DW: The Impossible Astronaut)
After three months on the run, the Doctor started a revolution against the Silence by using their own powers against them. Rory and Amy returned to travelling on the TARDIS, concerned about the Doctor's impending death. During this adventure, Rory questioned Amy's feelings for him yet again because she described someone she loved who "fell out of the sky" and changed her life. However, his doubts were put to rest when Amy told him she had meant him, not the Doctor. (DW: Day of the Moon)
Further travels
Answering a distress signal from the 17th century, the TARDIS crew ended up on the pirate ship Fancy, where they were accused of being stowaways. Rory was accidentally cut by a cutlass wielded by Amy and targeted by a Siren who had been taking crew members. Though Amy shielded him from the Siren, Rory was taken after being washed overboard during a storm. The Doctor figured out the "siren" was a virtual doctor from an invisible spaceship in the same space as the Fancy. Rory instructed Amy in CPR, then had himself disconnected from the ship's life-support. He was revived shortly after. (DW: The Curse of the Black Spot)
Following a false distress signal from a bubble universe, Rory and Amy were trapped in the TARDIS by a malevolent entity known as House, who planned to escape to the main universe in the TARDIS and strand the Doctor with his TARDIS's matrix in a human body. Rory helped the Doctor get back into the TARDIS by lowering the shields. The soul of the TARDIS thought Rory was "pretty" and communicated instructions to him telepathically instead of Amy as the Doctor intended. Rory also heard the TARDIS talking about something he would need to know in the future: "The only water in the forest is the river". (DW: The Doctor's Wife)
After surviving a solar tsunami in the 22nd century, the TARDIS crew were caught in a clash between human workers and their ganger clones used for the dangerous parts of the job. Rory sympathised with the ganger of Jennifer Lucas. She took advantage of him, tricking him into trapping the crew, the Doctor and Amy in a room with an overheating acid vat. Rory learned the truth and returned with the reformed gangers to free everyone. After escaping the deranged Jennifer ganger, the crisis was resolved by saving one of the workers and two gangers from the factory's explosion. Rory was stunned when the Doctor revealed Amy was a ganger and the real Amy was elsewhere, having been replaced soon after their honeymoon. Rory vowed to find her, just as the Doctor had told Amy before destroying her duplicate. (DW: The Rebel Flesh / The Almost People)
Fatherhood
Rory and the Doctor raised an army to rescue Amy and his daughter, Melody Pond, from Madame Kovarian and the Church in the 52nd century. Rory invaded the Twelfth Cyber Legion and asked twice for the whereabouts of his wife, destroying the other ships in the Legion as a "message from the Doctor". Soon after, he arrived on Demon's Run. He kept Kovarian from fleeing with his daughter while the Doctor's army won the fight in four minutes. However, the baby was not Melody, but another a Ganger; Kovarian had escaped with his daughter. River Song appeared and stunned him with the news she was his daughter, using as proof a prayer leaf with her name written in the language of the Gamma Forest, translated by the TARDIS. The Doctor left Rory and Amy to be returned to their home era by River while he looked for the infant Melody. (DW: A Good Man Goes to War)
After waiting "all summer", Amy had Rory make a crop circle saying "Doctor" to catch the Doctor's attention. They found him waiting and were surprised by their childhood friend, Mels. She ordered them at gunpoint to help her escape the police and take her to kill Hitler. The TARDIS landed in Berlin and accidentally crashed into the Teselecta, Rory slugged Hitler and locked him in a closet. Discovering Mels had been shot by Hitler, he also learned she was Melody, who regenerated into River Song.
River had poisoned the Doctor. Rory and Amy followed her, only to be sucked into the shape-shifting Teselecta, which took Amy's form. While the Doctor tried to reason with their child, they made the Teselecta's antibodies attack the crew. On the verge of dying again, Rory was saved by his daughter in the TARDIS. Melody gave her remaining regenerations to revive the Doctor. Leaving her in "the best hospital in the universe" to recover from the strain, Rory and Amy rejoined the Doctor while River was left to find her own way. (DW: Let's Kill Hitler)
Further adventures
The TARDIS landed on Earth in 2011 after tracing a distress call from George, a Tenza who lived in a block of flats. Amy and Rory knocked on nearly every door to find him. George used his psychic powers to drop Rory and Amy into the doll house in his closet. Rory believed they had died again, only to find another person, running from the peg dolls, who was turned into one. It joined the others to chase Rory and Amy. Rory then saw his wife transformed into a doll. He met up with the Doctor and George's dad, Alex, to hold them off. The dolls were stopped when George overcame his fear and Amy, along with the others, was restored. (DW: Night Terrors)
The Doctor took Rory and Amy to a holiday planet, Apalapucia. The planet was quarantined for the Chen-7 virus. Befuddled by the security measures, Amy wound up in a faster timestream. While the Doctor hid in the TARDIS because the virus targeted humanoids with two hearts, Rory went to retrieve her. He met his wife nearly forty years into her future, hiding from the robotic medical staff lest their medicine kill her. He convinced her to rescue her younger self on the condition she also be saved. The Doctor forced Rory to choose between the past and future Amys at the last moment; the TARDIS could not sustain such a paradox. The older Amy sacrificed herself. Rory was angry with the Doctor at first, fearing he was turning Rory into the Doctor himself, but later agreed the Doctor had done the right thing. (DW: The Girl Who Waited)
Amy and Rory went to the Liao Dynasty China in the 13th century, where the guards of the Liao Palace attacked them for taking food. After the TARDIS took off, it collided with a Rutan ship. The ship crashed on the future site of the Houses of Parliament, putting the occupants in stasis until 1605, when it sent a distress call. The TARDIS responded to its call and landed in London. Beneath Parliament, Amy and Rory discovered Guy Fawkes and Robert Catesby plotting to blow up Parliament and kill King James I. The Rutan Lady Winters was in their ranks. Amy and Rory followed the trail to the Rutan ship and helped find the power rods to let the ship take off. They were also caught in a conflict between Sontarans and Rutans over the Rutans' two doomsday weapons. The Doctor reprogrammed one to target Rutans. Rory handed the Sontaran-targeted weapon to the other party, causing a stalemate, as each race was at risk of destroying themselves. (VG: The Gunpowder Plot)
Departure from the Doctor
Rory ended up in an alien structure modelled on a 1980s hotel with Amy and the Doctor, where a creature fed off the faith of those the prison trapped for it. Rory, who had no strong faith for the creature to feed on, kept Amy safe until the Doctor broke her faith in him and the creature died. Rory and Amy were returned to Earth some time before they had left to find the Doctor had bought them a new home and a red E-Type Jaguar that Rory had longed for. Hoping to thank the Doctor with some champagne, he went inside and was confused when the Doctor was gone when he returned. Amy explained the Doctor was saving them from more dangerous adventures with him. (DW: The God Complex)
After time was restored and the Doctor had "died", River dropped by Rory and Amy's house from just after her adventure with Amy in the Byzantium. Rory was pleased by River's visit and confused by his wife's joy until River explained that the Doctor was still alive. (DW: The Wedding of River Song)
In 2013, the Doctor joined Rory and Amy for Christmas. (DW: The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe)
In 2020, Rory and Amy returned to Cwmtaff to wave to their younger selves. (DW: The Hungry Earth)
Alternate timeline
In a timeline where all time happened at once due to the Doctor not dying, Rory was a captain in a military force led by Amy. They tried to restore the timeline without killing the Doctor. Unlike Amy and River, he had no memory of the correct timeline. He was attracted to Amy, who was looking for him but didn't recognise him. The Doctor tried to get them together, but Rory saw right through it. When the Silents broke free, tormented by his Eye Drive, he stayed to hold them off, though it meant certain death. Amy saved him, then told him they should get a drink and married. When the Doctor married River, Rory consented to the marriage as the bride's father, even though he didn't understand what was going on. Unlike Amy, the Doctor and River, Rory probably had no memory of these events when the timeline was restored. (DW: The Wedding of River Song)
Personality
Rory was timid in his first meeting with the Doctor. He was hectored by Dr Ramsden and terrified by the chaos surrounding the Doctor and Prisoner Zero. He still had the presence of mind to record evidence his comatose patients were strolling outside the hospital. He also helped Amy clear the hospital of patients before Prisoner Zero could kill them. (DW: The Eleventh Hour)
In Venice, Rory was unnerved when the Doctor and Amy wanted to return to the Saturnyn stronghold, yet he grew in bravery. He challenged Francesco to protect Amy. (DW: The Vampires of Venice) When he saw Francesco had attacked a girl, his immediate reaction was to see if she was all right. (DW: The Vampires of Venice) He took a lethal Silurian energy beam meant for the Doctor. (DW: Cold Blood)
Rory was stubbornly devoted to Amy. Perhaps the greatest testament to this was his willingness as an Auton to guard Amy in the Pandorica for almost two thousand years. (DW: The Big Bang) He would perform great feats of courage out of love for Amy and go to any length when angry. He destroyed all but one of the Twelfth Cyber Legion's ships to find where Amy was held captive (DW: A Good Man Goes to War) and as an Auton, punched the Doctor when he was grieving over shooting Amy. (DW: The Big Bang) Although he remained aghast at the risks he was forced to take, his reflexive behaviour was heroic.
At first, Rory was jealous of Amy's infatuation with the Doctor and uneasy at her obsession with him when she was little. (DW: The Vampires of Venice, Amy's Choice) However, after the Dream Lord's challenge, (DW: Amy's Choice) Rory became more comfortable with the Doctor's presence in their lives, trying to have civil conversations with him and helping in TARDIS maintenance. (DW: Space/Time) He put up with the occasionally troublesome natures of Amy and the Doctor. Rory was very loyal to the Doctor, whom he trusted with his life. (DW: The Hungry Earth) He was devastated when it appeared the Doctor was dead and when Idris' body died; not only were they his friends, he was a nurse and they were his patients. (DW: The Doctor's Wife)
Rory was a quick learner. When confronted with the necessity of riding a motorcycle for the first time to follow River Song, he sourly noted that it was "one of those days" and did so. (DW: Let's Kill Hitler) He was one of the few people to not freak out on entering the TARDIS for the first time, remarking he had done some reading on the theory. (DW: The Vampires of Venice) When he was put inside the Teselecta he concluded it was a miniaturisation ray simply because they were smaller and it was a ray. (DW: Let's Kill Hitler)
Other information
Skills
Rory was a trained nurse. He knew medical procedures and how to examine bodies. (DW: The Eleventh Hour, The Vampires of Venice, The Curse of the Black Spot) As he had been a Roman Centurion, he was accomplished at fighting with a gladius. (DW: The Pandorica Opens, A Good Man Goes to War) In two millenia guarding the Pandorica, Rory became a very effective warrior. In the attack on Demon's Run, he survived the battle with the Headless monks while two experienced soldiers, Strax and Lorna Bucket, were killed. (DW: A Good Man Goes to War) Rory demonstrated a good 'gun arm' on several occasions; he knocked the Doctor, Hitler and the Teselecta to the ground with single blows to their jaws. (DW: The Big Bang, Let's Kill Hitler)
Personal life
Rory drove a mini. (NSA: Paradox Lost)
Behind the scenes
- In a scene deleted from The Hungry Earth, the Doctor admits to Amy that he likes Rory a lot.
- Rory's first 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 (Restac and Cobb respectively).
- Coincidentally Rory temporarily "dies" in some manner in three consecutive episodes of Series 6. (DW: Day of the Moon, The Curse of the Black Spot, The Doctor's Wife) Totalling up, his temporary deaths come to six. The other three 'deaths' occurred in DW: Amy's Choice, DW: Cold Blood, and the erasure of his Auton duplicate's existence in DW: The Big Bang (in addition, earlier in that episode, Amy mourns him when the museum documentary concludes he died in the Blitz). This means he has died more than any televised companion save Jack Harkness.
- Incidentally, every time Rory "dies" in a given story, he dies in at least one adjacent story as well.
- Additionally, in the story immediately following DW: The Doctor's Wife, Rory is the only character for whom a version doesn't die; at least one version of every other character has an on-screen death, including the Doctor and Amy (DW: The Rebel Flesh/The Almost People).
- In The Wedding of River Song, Silents call Rory, "the man who dies and dies again."
- The Brilliant Book 2012, a book that contains non-narrative information, offers other pieces of Rory's history, including:
- When Amy and Rory went to see Romeo and Juliet in 1605, Rory met King James I and upon informing him of their friendship with the Doctor, almost got himself and Amy arrested. They escaped to the wine cellar in their hotel. Amy then sent the Doctor a letter, informing him of their situation and that they would be hiding in empty wine barrels.
- At their next destination, Amy and Rory had a picnic in the Gardens of Zul-Thep in the year 3104. However, their picnic was interrupted by a swarm of giant, talking, human-hating bees attracted to Amy's jam. Rory sent a telemessage to the Doctor to pick them up before the giant bees could hurt them.
- The Doctor sent the Ponds to meet Wyatt Earp. However, Rory upset Earp, nearly getting shot, in turn upsetting Rory. To make matters worse, aliens appeared and Rory had an accident with a cactus. Amy sent a telegram to the Doctor, asking that he pick them up and bring salve for Rory's injury.
- During their beach holiday on Drago14, the beach was attacked by acid-spitting land squids, damaging Rory's Terry Pratchett book. After the attack, Amy and Rory went to get acid-proof suits and Amy found a brochure for The Thrasymachus in the travel agent shop next to the acid proof shop. Amy had Rory send an Instant Message to the Doctor about the cruise and told Rory to sent the Doctor their love.
- Escaping to the TARDIS, the Doctor decided he and his companions had to become renegades to give the Silents a false sense of security. The plan included Canton and the FBI hunting them down on a nationwide search. He reluctantly sent River and the Ponds on their own nationwide search to find information about the Silents. He gave them cryotosis podlets for when Canton would pretend to kill them.
- Rory travelled to Oklahoma, Texas and California. He started missing his wife by the time he reached his first destination. During his time in Texas, Rory realised the aliens he was searching for resembled The Scream and deduced that they were behind its repeated thefts.
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 30 November 1990, which would seem implausible given the presence of various bits of technology in the episode, such as laptop computers and the 2008 model smart phone. Bebo and Twitter were 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 13 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 significant 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. This led some fans to continue to think of the ID badge as having some hidden plot significance.
However, later episodes like The Pandorica Opens and The Big Bang proved that Moffat was telling the truth. The graphics on the ID page were simply erroneous.
