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Rory Arthur Williams — sometimes called Rory Pond — was Amy Pond's husband. He became a companion of the Eleventh Doctor on the night before their wedding, but he died and was erased from history after being absorbed by the Time Field. Shortly before the Pandorica was opened, Rory reappeared, in a fashion, waited for Amy to come out of the Pandorica for 1,894 years and was restored to normal after the second Big Bang. He went on to marry Amy and resumed travelling with her and the Doctor. During this time, his child, Melody Pond, was born. When the Doctor married River, Rory became his father-in-law. In 2012, he was sent back in time by a Weeping Angel, and was soon followed through time by his wife. He died at age 82 some time before 2012. His gravestone stood in a graveyard in New York City.
Biography
Early life
The son of Brian Williams and his wife, Rory was born in 1989. (COMIC: The Broken Man)
He was a childhood friend of Amelia Pond and grew up in the town of Leadworth. Like much of Leadworth, he was privy to her tales of "the raggedy Doctor," and he found himself a reluctant participant in dress-up games that she based on them. (TV: The Eleventh Hour) The pair were also friends of Mels, who, unbeknownst to them, was their daughter from the future. In primary school, Rory was known as the school "freak" and "geek", with very few friends other than Amelia and Mels. Amelia made him dress as "the raggedy Doctor" at Halloween at one point during the 1990s.
While in third class, he was cast as Joseph in the school Nativity play. (COMIC: Imaginary Enemies)
Rory also had a school friend called Alec, who used to play with Rory among the branches of a willow tree in his garden, pretending it was eating them alive, the bridge of the Starship Enterprise, caves that Indiana Jones would explore or even a truck, of which they'd throw themselves out, armed to the teeth and catch bank robbers in the act. Alec disapproved of Rory's chasing after Amy and claimed that there was a "whole barrage of girls" out there. Rory was always there for Alec and when Alec had a heart attack and passed away, he supported and comforted Alec's family, all throughout Alec's sickness and death. Ever since, Rory disliked willow trees, because they reminded him of Alec. (PROSE: The Glamour Chase)
On at least one occasion, when he played hide and seek with them, he hid for hours while Amy and Mels neglected to look for him. Rory was long attracted to Amy. His feelings were returned only after Mels pointed it out when they were older. Before this, Amy had believed Rory was homosexual, because he had never shown any interest in any other girl. (TV: Let's Kill Hitler)
Meeting the Doctor
While working at the Royal Leadworth Hospital in 2008, Rory noticed coma patients roaming about the village. When he tried to show the photos he had taken of the patients with his mobile to his superior, he was ordered to take time off, as she believed he was hallucinating. He went to the park at the same time the Atraxi put Earth in a forcefield for incineration, seeing (unknown to him until minutes later) Prisoner Zero in another disguise. To his shock, he met the Eleventh Doctor and was left dumbstruck that he was real and not imaginary. Complying with the Doctor's orders, Rory helped lure Prisoner Zero out into the open and watched as it was taken away by its jailers. Rory then watched the Doctor steal an outfit from the hospital and call back the Atraxi to warn them the Earth was under his protection. (TV: The Eleventh Hour) After these events Rory became engaged to Amy and started looking up the "latest scientific theories" as preparation in case of any other alien visitors to Leadworth. (TV: The Vampires of Venice)
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 was 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 while prepared to return to Leadworth, Rory agreed to continue travelling with the Doctor, once Amy asked him to. (TV: The Vampires of Venice) They shared a room in the TARDIS, which the Doctor furnished with a bunk bed. (TV: The Doctor's Wife)
He next brought them to America, but found themselves in the fake town of Appletown. While the Doctor went off to investigate on his own, Rory and Amy met Isley and her creator, Albert Gilroy; she and the other town inhabitants were androids he made for undercover missions that killed anyone who knew their true identities. After Albert explained this and that a bomb would soon destroy them, he was killed by Isley as her Walkman was no longer blocking her programming. Running from her and the other androids, they eventually came back to where Albert's corpse was to see it was no longer there; the Doctor had altered the past, while dispersing the bomb's force to buy time. They quickly left before the bomb was left to explode. (PROSE: Nuclear Time)
They next went to Geath, only to find it was ruled by royalty instead of politicians as the Doctor originally told them. It turned out a "dragon" made of Enamour was responsible for hypnotising the populace into obeying the "king". When two different beings known as the Herald and the Regulator came to collect the dragon, claiming it belonged to either of them, Rory enlisted the help of Hilthe, who was not under the Enamour's spell, to help negotiate with the Regulator while the Herald was detained. Leaving Geath, Rory found the Enamour had subconsciously hypnotised him into stealing some objects made of it. (PROSE: The King's Dragon)
Aboard the TARDIS, Rory fell victim to the psychic pollen that ensnared them in two shared dreams; one was of travelling with the Doctor and the other was of living a peaceful (and boring) life in Leadworth. It had all been done by the Dream Lord, a manifestation of all the darkness in the Doctor's psyche brought out by psychic pollen. Killed by Eknodine in the Leadworth dream and by the Doctor in the TARDIS dream, Rory awoke in reality. He learned Amy committed suicide in the Leadworth dream as she couldn't live without him; this assured Rory that she deeply loved him. (TV: Amy's Choice)
Though the Doctor promised to take them to Rio, in 2020, they landed in Cwmtaff, Wales. Putting Amy's engagement ring in the TARDIS for safe-keeping, Rory emerged from it to be mistaken for a policeman called by Ambrose Northover to investigate bodies going missing from the graveyard. Though he tried to inform the Doctor, he found it insignificant in comparison to the arrival of Silurians, who had kidnapped, not only Ambrose's husband, Mo, and son, Elliot, but Amy as well. Capturing a Silurian, Alaya, Rory was left to guard her while the Doctor went underground to negotiate.
Ambrose was taunted by Alaya into killing her, making Rory fear for Amy's safety. The Doctor contacted him, explaining negotiations were going well, and that they should bring Alaya back. Upon handing Alaya over, her sister, Restac, attacked them, forcing them to flee to the TARDIS. Restac attempted to shoot the Doctor in revenge. Rory took the blast instead and died. A nearby crack swallowed him. Although the Doctor tried to coach Amy into keeping her memories of him, the only things left of Rory were Amy's ring and the Doctor's own memories of him. (TV: The Hungry Earth/Cold Blood)
The Last Centurion
An Auton duplicate, created as part of the Alliance's plan to prevent the Eleventh Doctor from destroying the universe, had been formed from psychic residue from the home of the Doctor's companion Amy Pond, including a children's book on Roman centurions and a photograph of Amy and her fiancé Rory Williams taken at a costume party where Rory had worn a Roman centurion costume.
The Nestene Consciousness created a fake Roman army, and included a replicant of Rory Williams. It placed them near Stonehenge in the year 102 AD as part of an elaborate trap for the Doctor. While the Auton Roman soldiers believed they were, indeed, Romans, the Auton version of Rory retained the memories and personality of the real Rory. He initially dismissed his other life as a dream.
When news came to the Roman encampment of visitors, Auton Rory volunteered to help, which led him to encountering the Doctor and Amy. He saved Amy by destroying a Cyberman, though she was knocked unconscious. The Doctor initially did not react to him, then welcomed him back, though precisely how this (Auton) Rory still existed was a mystery to the Doctor who was not aware of his nature or origins as an Auton.
Auton Rory learned he had been erased from time and Amy's memory when she did not recognise him after she woke. Encouraged by the Doctor — who returned the engagement ring that Rory had given Amy — Auton Rory set out to make her remember him. While his efforts were successful, Amy's memories returned at the precise time as the Alliance's trap began to unravel upon the Doctor. Part of this sequence involved activating the Autons (including Rory) in order to bring them under Nestene control. He urged Amy to run, but she refused, hugging him as the Auton programming activated, opening his hand and shooting Amy, causing her to die. (TV: The Pandorica Opens)
Following the Total Event Collapse all the other Autons were erased, except for the duplicate Rory who was left on Earth, the only remaining planet, weeping over Amy. It was then that the Doctor suddenly appeared in front of him to tell him that Amy wasn't quite dead and swiftly ordered him to open the Pandorica with the sonic screwdriver for the purpose of rescuing the Doctor's earlier self. A bewildered Rory followed these instructions, which led to a reunion with the earlier bewildered Doctor. Because most of the universe had been erased and the Nestenes were now non-existent, Rory's mind was fully restored and he was now in unfettered control of his actions. The Doctor confirmed this by pretending not to care about Amy's death and claiming the total collapse of the universe was more important than her, earning him a punch in the jaw from Rory.
To save Amy, the Doctor placed her in the Pandorica, where her life would be restored, though she would be in there for nearly two thousand years to complete the process. The Doctor, using a vortex manipulator, offered to take Auton Rory to retrieve Amy in the future, but the duplicate Rory refused, saying he had to make sure no harm came to the Pandorica. The Doctor admired Rory's humanity, Auton or not, and left him to his duty.
Rory watched over Amy for nearly two thousand years, following the box wherever it went and became the stuff of legend as "the Last Centurion" — a mysterious figure dressed as a Roman soldier who stood guard over the Pandorica, warning off those who would attempt to open it, a mythical sentinel whose story appeared in the folk history of a dozen civilisations. During the London Blitz of 1941, Rory was spotted moving the Pandorica out of harm's way during a bombing, but after that the Last Centurion disappeared from history and was believed killed or destroyed.
The Rory duplicate (posing as a museum security guard) was reunited with Amy in 1996, when the Pandorica was opened by a younger version of Amy, freeing her from the Pandorica. They briefly encountered a partially-restored Dalek, which Rory disabled using his wrist-gun. Along with the Doctor, who also rescued River Song, the duplicate Rory informed this present Doctor of his previous meeting in 102 AD, leading the Doctor to travel back in time to have his original encounter with the duplicate Rory. Ultimately, the Doctor piloted the Pandorica into the heart of the exploding TARDIS, which restored the universe, but also rewrote much of its history. The Doctor was removed from reality, and with him gone, the Auton version of Rory was likewise removed from history. The original, human Rory was restored, his death having never occurred. (TV: The Big Bang)
Weddings and remembrances
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, exclaiming, "I was plastic!" The Doctor himself considered the human Rory to be a continuation of Auton Rory, privately admiring his devotion to Amy over two millennia, calling him, "the Boy Who Waited". (TV: 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, when the Doctor commented that he witnessed the fall of Rome Rory reminded him that he did too. The Doctor said that the Auton Rory both was and wasn't the real Rory. (TV: Day of the Moon, PROSE: The Way Through the Woods) He never told Amy about this, making her think he didn't remember. (HOMEVID: Good Night) After the wedding, they returned to his new wife's garden, where the TARDIS was parked. They bade farewell to Leadworth to continue journeying with the Doctor, starting with the Orient Express in space. (TV: The Big Bang) The Doctor insisted on calling him "Rory Pond"; though Rory initially told him that wasn't how it worked, he quickly went along with it. (TV: The Big Bang, The Rebel Flesh / The Almost People)
Honeymoon
Amy and Rory passed their wedding night on the TARDIS, conceiving their first child. (TV: A Good Man Goes to War) The Doctor left them on a honeymoon planet. (TV: 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 towards a planet. 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 skeptical about it when told it was a living, carnivorous planet. (TV: A Christmas Carol)
Rory began helping the Doctor maintain the TARDIS, which annoyed Amy as she wasn't allowed. He made the TARDIS materialise inside itself by dropping a thermocoupling when he was distracted by a look up Amy's skirt through the glass floor. The Doctor dematerialised the TARDIS from the resulting space loop and told Amy to put on some trousers to keep a repeat from happening. During this encounter, he enjoyed witnessing Amy flirt with a future version of herself, though got a slap from her when he started fantasising about what could happen if there were always 2 Amy's on board. (TV: Space / Time)
America
Following their honeymoon, Rory and Amy returned to Earth in February, 2011. (TV: The Impossible Astronaut) Their families believed they had been in Thailand the entire time. (TV: Dinosaurs on a Spaceship) At some point, Amy was replaced with a Ganger. (TV: 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. (TV: 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 saw 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 what looked like a Silent space-time vessel while exploring tunnels under the warehouse to which the calls had led them. (TV: 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, still 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. Amy also thought she was pregnant, something which she only shared with the Doctor; Rory only found out when he overheard one of their conversations. (TV: Day of the Moon)
Further travels
All through their resumed travels with the Doctor, Rory kept reminding Amy of River's warning about telling the Doctor about his "death" could cause damage to time. (TV: The Curse of the Black Spot, The Rebel Flesh) He was unaware when she did accidentally inform the Doctor, thinking him to be his Ganger. (TV: The Almost People)
Following disturbances in time using a timey-wimey detector, the TARDIS crew finds a Weeping Angel stalking Mark Whitaker. While Amy and the Doctor follow the time-displaced Mark, Rory stays in the present to learn more about him. While the Doctor is supposed to return for him in an hour, he takes a week to come back and Rory stays in Mark's flat, briefly returning home to Leadworth to check the mail. Following the changes Mark's presence causes in time, Rory aids in keeping time on track by doing things such as trapping Mark and his wife Rebecca in a museum so they will end up together as they are supposed to. While they are in 2001 dealing with the aftermath of Mark meeting his past self, another Rory shows up from the future to reveal he was displaced in 2003 by a Weeping Angel and spent a month trapped in the past before he could catch up with them. The Doctor is able to make it safe for the two Rory's to interact and they travel to 2003 to prevent Mark from saving his wife's life which will cause a major temporal paradox and grant the Angels great power. During their efforts to defeat the Angels, the present Rory is displaced in time, but his future self reveals that following the Doctor's instructions, he set a trap for the Angels. With the help of Mark and using Rory and the Doctor's trap, they defeat the Weeping Angels and harmlessly disperse them into a video recording. One escapes, but becomes the Angel that started it all. The Doctor, Amy and Rory, after helping Mark visit his wife in the past for a final goodbye, return him to his own time where Rory hands him back his flat keys and informs him that he's out of pretty much everything. (PROSE: Touched by an Angel)
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 was in the sick bay of the ship, but the Siren didn't know how to resuscitate someone who nearly drowned. Rory instructed Amy in CPR, then had himself disconnected from the ship's life-support. He was revived shortly after. (TV: The Curse of the Black Spot)
While listening to the Doctor brag about a past adventure, Rory and Amy were there when he received a Time Lord distress call from a bubble universe. However, it turned out to be a trap; a malevolent entity known as House siphoned the TARDIS Matrix into a human body, trapping the Doctor in its universe while it possessed the TARDIS to leave for N-Space. Trapped inside at the time, Rory and Amy kept House entertained by running for their lives. Rory helped the Doctor get back into the TARDIS by lowering the shields. The embodied soul of the TARDIS, who never got the hang of names, called Rory "the pretty one" 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". (TV: 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. (TV: The Rebel Flesh) 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; the others had died, or stayed to destroy Jennifer's ganger. The gangers who escaped were made permanently human when they travelled in the Doctor's TARDIS.
Rory was stunned when the Doctor revealed Amy was a ganger and the real Amy was elsewhere, having been replaced some time after their honeymoon. Rory vowed to find her, just as the Doctor told Amy before destroying her duplicate. (TV: 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, while the other ships in the Legion were destroyed as a "message from the Doctor". Soon after, he arrived on Demons Run. He kept Kovarian from fleeing with a baby while the Doctor's army won the fight in four minutes. However, the baby was not Melody, but another a Ganger; Kovarian had replaced her. Melody had already been taken from the asteroid. Rory also fought the Headless Monks alongside Jenny, Vastra, Strax and Lorna Bucket, Rory coming out of it unharmed. River Song appeared and stunned him with the news that 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. (TV: 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, where 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 poisoned the Doctor. Rory and Amy followed her when she left, only to be sucked into the shape-shifting Teselecta, which took Amy's form. While the Doctor tried to reason with their child, they stopped the Teselecta from hurting her by making 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. (TV: 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 while searching for him. George unknowingly used his psychic powers to drop Rory and Amy into the doll house in his closet. Rory believed they had died again, and then he met the child's landlord, who was running from the peg dolls. The landlord was caught and turned into a doll in front of him. 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 with a mop. The dolls were stopped when George's father helped him overcome his fear and Amy, along with the others, was restored. (TV: 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 time stream. 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 by convincing Rory he should not open the door for her. 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. (TV: 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. (GAME: The Gunpowder Plot)
They next visited a jungle planet with a high-speed evolutionary pattern, where he encountered a primitive tribe who had been created from the DNA of Rory, making them look and think like him. (COMIC: Planet of the Rorys)
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 to find the Doctor had bought them a new home and a red E-Type Jaguar that Rory had wanted. Hoping to thank the Doctor with some champagne, he went inside, and was confused that the Doctor was gone when he returned. Amy explained the Doctor was saving them from more dangerous adventures with him. (TV: The God Complex)
After time was restored from the alternate timeline created at Lake Silencio 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, but confused by his wife's joy until River explained that the Doctor was still alive. (TV: The Wedding of River Song)
Life abnormal
Rory and Amy always made sure there was a place at their table for their son-in-law at Christmas. They were always ready to pretend to not know he survived. In 2013, the Doctor joined them for Christmas dinner. (TV: The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe)
The Doctor stayed in contact with him and Amy, often leaving messages or stopping by. During one of his messages, they toasted glasses of wine to him. The Doctor visited them in the middle of the night, having accidentally landed too far in their past while seeking their help. He wished them good night and left. At another time, the Doctor accidentally left an Ood with them. They uncomfortably let it act as their butler until the Doctor returned and took it back to Ood Sphere. (WC: Pond Life) During this time, Rory and Amy tried to have more children, but they found that Amy was sterile due to something done to her on Demons Run. (TV: Asylum of the Daleks)
Travelling on and off
Amy broke up with Rory, and began seeking a divorce. As they finalised it, the Daleks took Amy, Rory, and the Doctor to the Parliament of the Daleks. There, they were asked to save the Daleks from the insane Daleks from the Dalek Asylum by switching off the planet's defences so it could be destroyed. They were fired into the planet. Rory found himself in a different part of the Asylum from Amy and the Doctor, and was nearly killed by the Daleks there. When he reunited with Amy and the Doctor, he found that Amy had lost her protective bracelet, and was slowly being converted into a Dalek puppet by the Asylum's nanocloud. After learning that Amy had only separated from him because he couldn't have children with her, Rory offered himself to the nanogenes to buy time for the Doctor. However, the Doctor, whom Amy assumed didn't need protecting from the nanocloud, had already given Amy his bracelet to protect her from the nanocloud. They reconciled. The converted Dalek Oswin erased knowledge of the Doctor from the Daleks' pathweb and lowered the Asylum's defences. At the last moment, the Doctor and his companions teleported into the TARDIS and escaped the Daleks. Amy and Rory returned home. (TV: Asylum of the Daleks)
Ten months after their last adventure, the Doctor materialised the TARDIS around Amy, Rory, and Rory's dad, Brian, who were repairing a light in Amy and Rory's living room. The Doctor took them, Queen Nefertiti of Egypt and John Riddell, a big game hunter from 1902, to 2367 to investigate a ship that was headed straight to Earth and would reach it in six hours. Upon entering, they immediately found it contained dinosaurs.
After looking at the main engines of the ship, the Doctor, Rory, and Brian were taken to Solomon by his robots. Solomon had killed all the Silurians on this Silurian Ark and forced the Doctor to repair his legs so he could make off with the cargo. Discovering he had a few hours until the Indian Space Agency launched missiles at the ship and unable to pilot the ark, Solomon took the most valuable thing on the ship identified by his IV system, Nefertiti. The Doctor magnetised the ark, trapping Solomon's ship inside. The Doctor released it once he put the signal of Silurian Ark inside Solomon's ship. The ISA missiles destroyed Solomon. Rory and Brian, who possessed the same gene chain, were able to pilot the ark to safety with the parallel pilot compartments. The Doctor returned everyone home. (TV: Dinosaurs on a Spaceship)
Attempting to take his in-laws to Mexico's Day of the Dead festival, the Doctor ended up in 1870 Mercy, Nevada. Kahler cyborg Kahler-Tek, also known as the Gunslinger, had put Mercy under siege and cut off their supply deliveries. Tek was after scientist Kahler-Jex, whom the townsfolk had taken in, but Tek wouldn't risk the lives of the innocent townsfolk by following Jex into Mercy. With the help of the town's marshal, Isaac, who had disguised himself as Jex, Rory distracted Tek so the Doctor could reach Tek's ship. (TV: A Town Called Mercy)
Travelling fully once more
The Doctor discovered a strange occurrence on Earth during Amy and Rory's time; black cubes had appeared all over Earth. Since they seemed harmless and he lacked the patience to stick around, the Doctor left after only a few days and Amy, Rory, and Brian continued examining the cubes. Amy and Rory had started struggling over the choice over life with the Doctor or life on Earth. Rory committed to working as a hospital nurse full-time, something he wouldn't have done before. The Doctor returned on the Ponds' anniversary, and got them side-tracked on a trip for seven weeks. They found a Zygon ship had been buried under the Savoy Hotel and Amy accidentally got married to King Henry VIII.
After this trip, he missed the Ponds, and decided to stay to watch the cubes with them. A year after the cubes appeared, they finally activated, behaving in an unusual manner. When the cubes released an electric pulse that stopped the hearts of a third of humanity, Rory followed some "orderlies" carrying Brian away through a portal inside the hospital to a Shakri ship. The Doctor traced the cubes to the Shakri, who wished to wipe out the "plague" of humanity before they could colonise space. He awakened Rory and Brian on board. The Doctor reversed the electric pulse, restarting the hearts of those affected, blowing up the Shakri ship in the process. On Brian's urging, the Doctor took his in-laws back as full-time companions, as travelling with him was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. (TV: The Power of Three)
In 2012 Manhattan, Rory was transported back in time to 1938 by the Weeping Angels while he was looking for coffee. There, he met River Song and the Weeping Angel collector Grayle. Grayle had River held in place and he sent Rory downstairs, where baby Weeping Angels displaced him in space to Winter Quay. The Doctor, River, and Amy caught up with him and they saw his future self die. The Doctor realised that the Angels took over Manhattan and transported people into the past, trapping them in the Quay and feeding off of their time energy. Amy and Rory escaped the Angels to create a paradox big enough to destroy them. The Doctor reached the roof in time to witness Rory and Amy throw themselves off in order to create the paradox causing Rory to have never been taken by the Angels. The paradox worked, and the Angels were destroyed.
The Doctor, Rory, Amy, and River ended up in the graveyard in New York in 2012 with all of them alive. Relieved, they decided to go on a family outing, but before they entered the TARDIS, Rory found a gravestone with his name and was sent into the past by a surviving Angel. Amy, devastated, allowed the Angel to touch her, sending her back to Rory. The Doctor was unable to follow her at the risk of an even more catastrophic paradox. (TV: The Angels Take Manhattan)
Life after the Doctor
After departing from the Doctor, Amy and Rory lived out their lives together, with Rory possibly becoming a full medical doctor at some point. (COMIC: Imaginary Enemies)
By 1969, Rory had introduced several innovations to the medical community, including the Williams Wonder Beds. He had a habit of telling people he was trained as a nurse in the Second World War. In a conversation with Chrissie Allen, he instead said the Spanish Civil War. (PROSE: Summer Falls and Other Stories)
Rory died at the age of 82; Amy was buried beside him. Their graves were visited by their younger selves, River, and the Doctor in 2012, whereupon Rory and Amy were sent back in time by an Angel. (TV: The Angels Take Manhattan)
Undated events
At some point, Rory was taken to the Black Archive by UNIT to have his record as a companion of the Doctor taken. His memories of the visit were subsequently erased and he was sent on his way. (TV: The Day of the Doctor)
Alternate timelines
In a timeline where all time happened at once (created when River refused to shoot the Doctor), 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 which he happily agreed to. 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. (TV: The Wedding of River Song)
In an alternate timeline, Rory was sent back in time by the Weeping Angels and spent the rest of his life trapped in the Winter Quay where he eventually died of old age after having his temporal energy fed off of by the Angels. This timeline was negated when the current Rory and Amy jumped off the roof of the Quay, negating this future and killing all but one of the Angels, which later sent him back as well as Amy Pond. (TV: The Angels Take Manhattan)
Personality
Rory was humble, loyal, protective, and a bit sarcastic at times. He was timid in his first meeting with the Doctor. He was easily cowed 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. (TV: The Eleventh Hour)
Rory also showed significant compassion and empathy. This sometimes put him in danger, as when he sympathised with Jennifer Lucas and when his first instinct was to help the broken, insane Daleks of the Asylum. (TV: The Rebel Flesh, The Almost People, Asylum of the Daleks) He was often found caring for others, sometimes as a nurse, and sometimes just as the TARDIS crew member who stopped to help newcomers acclimate. (TV: The Impossible Astronaut, Dinosaurs on a Spaceship)
Because of how many times that he nearly died, (TV: The Impossible Astronaut, The Curse of the Black Spot, The Doctor's Wife, The Almost People, A Good Man Goes to War, Let's Kill Hitler, Night Terrors, The Girl Who Waited, The Wedding of River Song, Asylum of the Daleks), or did die and come back in some way, (TV: Cold Blood, The Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang, The Angels Take Manhattan) Rory was overconfident about coming back from death. (TV: The Angels Take Manhattan)
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. (TV: The Vampires of Venice) When he saw Francesco had attacked a girl, his immediate reaction was to see if she was all right. (TV: The Vampires of Venice) He took a lethal Silurian energy beam meant for the Doctor, albeit pointlessly as the Doctor would have disabled it with the sonic. (TV: 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. (TV: 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 (TV: A Good Man Goes to War) and as an Auton, punched the Doctor when he was grieving over shooting Amy. (TV: The Big Bang) Although he remained aghast at the risks he was forced to take, his reflexive behaviour was heroic. (COMIC: Rory's Story) He was shown to be devoted to Amy his whole life to the point that she thought him gay as he never showed interest in other girls. Amy failed to pick up on the fact that this was because Rory was in love with her and he was so horrified at the idea she thought him gay and not in love with her, Rory ran off as Amy finally understood the truth. (TV: Let's Kill Hitler)
At first, Rory was jealous of Amy's infatuation with the Doctor and uneasy at her obsession with him when she was little, (TV: The Vampires of Venice, Amy's Choice) and, unlike her, was completely faithful, not even wanting a stripper at his stag party. (PROSE: The King's Dragon) However, after the Dream Lord's challenge, (TV: 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. (TV: 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. (TV: The Hungry Earth) He was devastated when it appeared the Doctor was dead (TV; The Impossible Astronaut) and when Idris' body died; not only were they his friends, he was a nurse and they were his patients. (TV: 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. (TV: 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. (TV: 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. (TV: Let's Kill Hitler)
Rory was a film buff, preferring older ones such as those of Laurel and Hardy and the 1930s Rock Quasar films starring Rick "Crusty" Cobbe. (TV: The Impossible Astronaut; COMIC: Rock Quasar and the Mudslugs of Gurrn)
Other information
Skills
Rory was a trained nurse. He knew medical procedures and how to examine bodies. (TV: The Eleventh Hour, The Vampires of Venice, The Curse of the Black Spot) He carried nursing supplies in his pockets in case someone was injured. (TV: Dinosaurs on a Spaceship) He eventually used his medical knowledge and keen bedside manner to become an inventor of medical technologies, including creating the acclaimed hospital beds called the Williams Wonder Beds. (PROSE: Summer Falls and Other Stories)
As he had been a Roman Centurion, he was accomplished at fighting with a sword. In two millennia guarding the Pandorica, Rory became a very skilled warrior. In the attack on Demons Run, he survived the battle with the Headless Monks. He also used a gun in this battle, shooting down Headless Monks from a distance and then wielding his sword when they got close. (TV: The Pandorica Opens, A Good Man Goes to War) Rory was also able to knock the Doctor, Hitler and the Teselecta to the ground with single blows to their jaws. (TV: The Big Bang, Let's Kill Hitler) He also demonstrated proficiency with a slingshot.(GAME: The Gunpowder Plot)
Deaths
Rory died six times.
- He was killed by a Eknodine in a dream created by the Dream Lord. Amy and the Doctor committed suicide in the dream and were returned to another dream, in which Rory was still alive. The Doctor then killed all three of them in the dream by blowing up the TARDIS, having figured out that the Dream Lord had created two dreams. (TV: Amy's Choice)
- He was killed by the Silurian Restac. Soon after, his body was consumed by the Time Field and he was erased from time. However, due to Amy's subconscious memories of him, he was resurrected as an Auton duplicate. (TV: Cold Blood, The Pandorica Opens)
- His duplicate was erased from history when the Doctor restarted the universe and the real Rory was brought back to life. However, the Auton Rory lived on in the real Rory, as he remembered the 2000 years he spent waiting. (TV: The Big Bang)
- He drowned after being thrown off a pirate ship and was only kept alive by an alien robot doctor. Amy was able to resuscitate him. (TV: The Curse of the Black Spot)
- Rory and Amy both sacrificed themselves to kill the Weeping Angels since Rory had already seen himself die and by throwing themselves off a roof, he and Amy created a paradox which was poison to the Angels. The paradox cancelled the timeline so Amy and Rory both came back to life. (TV: The Angels Take Manhattan)
- Rory and Amy both died of old age after being sent back in time by a surviving Weeping Angel. This time they both died permanently. (TV: The Angels Take Manhattan)
Auton Duplicate
As part of the trap set up by The Alliance, an Auton duplicate of Rory was made, which retained all of Rory's memories up to his death. However, he initially dismissed these memories as a mere dream, until he later met the Doctor again, who was as unsure of what was going on as he was.
As an Auton duplicate with free-will, Rory was capable of living well beyond the duration of a human, possibly possessing the ability to live forever, and didn't age. He was also armed with a wrist-gun and possessed far greater strength than that of a human, allowing him to move the Pandorica, which contained Amy, out of harm's way. However, he didn't heal, meaning any damage he took was permanent, and was vulnerable to radio signals. He also possessed superior hearing to humans, allowing him to hear River Song's voice through the noise made by the Doctor's TARDIS burning up.
Once the universe was reset, Rory was human again, though retained his memories of when he was an Auton. (TV: The Pandorica Opens, The Big Bang)
Behind the scenes
The Brilliant Book 2012
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 send 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.
- The Brilliant Book 2011 also contains a deeper, non-narrative based history of the Auton duplicate Rory's life:
- At some point, Rory had farmers remove the Pandorica for a nobleman from the Roman town of Isca. In preparing for the journey, Rory wrote, "FRAGILE" and "THIS WAY UP", on the Pandorica. Rory assisted King Harold in the Battle of Hastings during the Norman conquest of England, evidently as his top general. Rory befriended Samuel Pepys. During the Great Fire of London, Rory saved the infant daughter of Pepys's baker. Afterward, Rory bade farewell to Pepys and travelled to the city.
- During the 19th century, Rory became the inspiration for political cartoonists.
- In 1934, Rory released many leaflets that showed him and Adolf Hitler with the message, "DON'T LISTEN TO HITLER. HE'S RUBBISH".
The Doctor: His Lives and Times
- Rory's stag party took place at the Horse & Jockey, "anytime from about 6pm."
- At age ten, Rory described having a chiropractor as an imaginary friend who could appear at any point in history and give someone a rub if they were in pain.
P.S.
P.S., a cancelled DVD extra, gave some additional details about what happened to Amy after the events of The Angels Take Manhattan. Despite the fact that the scene was released by the BBC, however, it can't be taken as necessarily valid, any more than any other deleted or unfinished scene.
Amy and Rory arrived again in New York City, circa 1938. Once they had a house, Rory bought a spade and took up gardening like his father. In 1946, Rory and Amy adopted in infant whom they named Anthony Brian Williams.
After many years, Rory finally decided to write his dad a letter, which he left for Anthony to deliver one week after he and Amy left Great Britain and their home era for the last time. According to both his letter to Brian and Amy's afterword in their daughter's novel, they were happy and enjoyed a good life despite their circumstances.
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 fuelled by an image of Rory's Royal Leadworth Hospital identification badge, that was given an extreme close-up in the episode. This close-up 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, the events of Flesh and Stone and The Big Bang, date Amy's wedding as taking place on the 26 June 2010. When Amy leaves with the Doctor at the end of The Eleventh Hour she tells him that it's been two years since she last saw him, placing the scene with Rory's nametag firmly in 2008. The badge is never seen again, and it's never again implied that Rory was working in the Royal Leadworth Hospital as far back as 1990, suggesting that Moffat was telling the truth. The graphics on the ID page were simply erroneous and a production error.
Other matters
- Rory and his Auton duplicate are part of a small number of companions that have been duplicated and/or recreated from memories; in the novel Interference, the Eighth Doctor's companion Fitz Kreiner was abducted and apparently killed by Faction Paradox. The Doctor eventually "replaced" him with Kode, a biomass duplicate created from others' memories of the original Fitz, "perfecting" the duplicate by allowing him to be shaped by the Doctor and the TARDIS' own "perceptions" of Fitz. In the TV story Rose an Auton duplicate of Mickey Smith was made. Sarah Jane Smith was also once duplicated as a Kraal android. (TV: The Android Invasion)
- According to volume 71 of The Complete History, though not made clear in the episode, the scene in Henry VIII's bedroom in The Power of Three was intended to show the TARDIS trio returning to get Rory's mobile phone charger after Rory had left it behind before A Town Called Mercy.
- Rory was dubbed in German by Rainer Fritzsche and in Italian by David Chevalier.