Rory Williams
Rory Williams was the "sort of" boyfriend and later husband of Amy Pond. He became a companion of the Eleventh Doctor, but later died and was removed from time after being absorbed by the Time Field. Following the "Big Bang 2" he was restored to the timeline, married Amy and continued to travel with her and the Doctor.
Biography
Early life
Rory was a childhood friend of Amelia Pond. He was privy to her tales of the "raggedy Doctor", and an unwilling participant in the dress-up games she based around her stories. (DW: The Eleventh Hour) At one point in his youth, Rory was a member of the Cub Scouts. (DWA: If You Go Down to the Woods Today)
Meeting the Eleventh Doctor
First Meeting
Whilst working as a nurse at Royal Leadworth Hospital, Rory witnessed the Doctor defeat Prisoner Zero and warn the Atraxi away from Earth. (DW: The Eleventh Hour) He later got engaged to Amy. (DW: Flesh and Stone)
Travels with the Doctor
After having his stag party crashed by the Doctor, Rory and Amy were taken on a "romantic break" to Venice. There, they encountered the Saturnynians, who planned to flood Venice. The Doctor defeated the Saturnynians and Rory agreed to continue travelling with the Doctor after Amy asked him to do so. (DW: The Vampires of Venice)
After spending some time aboard the Doctor's TARDIS, Rory fell victim to the same Psychic Pollen that ensnared his companions in two shared dreams. Rory escaped the trap after the Doctor figured out what was happening. (DW: Amy's Choice)
Rory, Amy, the Doctor and some friends later succeeded in stopping the Silurians that lived beneath the Earth from attempting to kill humanity. However Rory was shot by the military leader Restac when he protected the Doctor from a fatal energy beam. Rory was then swallowed by a crack in time causing Amy to forget that he had existed. (DW: The Hungry Earth, Cold Blood)
When the Alliance scanned Amy's mind, they used her dormant memories of Rory to create an Nestene duplicate, which, due to Amy being affected by the crack in her room, possessed Rory's actual emotions and personality. Once the Nestenes' trap for the Doctor was complete, the Nestenes tried to control him, which caused him to shoot Amy. (DW: The Pandorica Opens)
A version of the Doctor from the future came to Rory, instructing him to place Amy's body in the Pandorica, which had the ability to keep its occupants alive. Rory watched over Amy for over two thousand years, following the box wherever it went. After the Doctor succeeded in saving the universe and closing the cracks in time, the real Rory was never erased. Despite this Rory somehow still remembered his experiences as an Auton.
The real Rory was brought back and he married Amy. The Doctor then arrived at the wedding and took them to the TARDIS for more adventures. (DW: The Big Bang)
Further Travels
After the wedding, Amy and Rory went on a long honeymoon on board the TARDIS. The Doctor left Amy and Rory on a honeymoon planet shortly before the TARDIS was stolen by Claw Shansheeth. (SJA:Death of the Doctor) The couple continued their honeymoon on board a spaceship in the honeymoon suite, where Rory donned his auton counterpart's Roman armour. The ship began to crash, and the Doctor had just under an hour to save Rory and Amy, in addition to the other 4001 people on the ship. With help from Amy and Rory, the Doctor succeeded, and the trio left for another honeymoon location. (DW: A Christmas Carol)
At some point, Rory began helping the Doctor fly the TARDIS, much to Amy's annoyance. However, he accidently caused the TARDIS to materalize inside itself after dropping a thermocoupling. The Doctor was able to figure out how to demateralize the TARDIS from the resulting space loop. (DW: Space /Time)
After their honeymoon, Rory and Amy returned to Earth and bought a house together. In April 2011, they received a TARDIS-blue letter, which led the couple to America. When the 1103-year-old Doctor was shot, Rory helped hold Amy back when she tried to help the Doctor. The group later returned to the diner, where they encountered a 909-year-old version of the Doctor who possessed another blue letter. When Canton Delaware entered the TARDIS, it was left to Rory to explain it. When River investigated a set of underground tunnels, the Doctor sent Rory with her. Soon after, Rory encountered a group of Silence then immediately forgot about them. (DW: The Impossible Astronaut) Afterwards, the Doctor had the group split up to find out all they could about the Silence. After three months, Rory allowed Canton to hunt down and 'kill' him, so he could be brought to the Doctor along with others. When the Doctor infiltrated NASA, Rory joined him, disguised as an aide to President Nixon. When they came to find Amy, they found that she had been taken by the Silence, and that the recording device in her wrist had been removed. Through the device, Rory hears Amy telling someone she loves him, and how her life hasn't been the same since he 'dropped out of the sky', leading him to believe she is talking to the Doctor. After Amy is rescued, she assures Rory that she was talking about him. Rory then uses the recording device to eavesdrop as Amy tells the Doctor why she told him that she was pregnant instead of Rory, until she calls him out and tells him that everything is fine. (DW: Day of the Moon)
When the TARDIS materialised on a pirate ship, the team found themselves labeled as "stowaways", and made to walk the plank. Amy grabbed a cutlass, and made to force the pirates to let Rory and the Doctor go. In the ensuing scuffle, Rory was cut, drawing the attention of a "Siren", who was targeting the crew. While attempting to use a storm to move the ship out of the area, Rory was knocked overboard, almost drowning until the Siren captured. When the Doctor and Amy followed, they found that the Siren was a medical program for an alien ship, and was keeping Rory alive. On learning that he would still drown upon being disconnected, Rory still elected to be removed, trusting that Amy would save him, which she did. (DW: The Curse of the Black Spot)
Personality
Rory appeared somewhat timid during his first encounter with the Doctor. He was easily intimidated by Dr Ramsden and was unsettled by the ensuing events caused by the Doctor and Prisoner Zero. Despite this, he did have the presence of mind to record evidence in order to prove that his patients were appearing outside the hospital. He also assisted Amy in attempting to clear the hospital of patients before Prisoner Zero could exploit them. (DW: The Eleventh Hour) During the events in Venice, Rory was unnerved that the Doctor actually wanted to get back into the Saturnynian stronghold. However, he was capable of bravery, as shown when he challenged Francesco in order to protect Amy, (DW: The Vampires of Venice) and later when he took a lethal Silurian energy beam meant for the Doctor. (DW: Cold Blood) It was also notable that when he saw Francesco had attacked a girl, his immediate reaction was to see if she was all right. (DW: The Vampires of Venice) He was greatly devoted to Amy. Perhaps the greatest testament to this personality trait was when his Auton self was willing to guard the Pandorica, with Amy in it, for almost two thousand years, even knowing that he would remain conscious the entire time. (DW: The Big Bang)
Behind the scenes
- In a deleted scene from The Hungry Earth, the Doctor admits to Amy that he likes Rory a lot.
- Rory's death is very similar in nature to Jenny's (DW: The Doctor's Daughter). In both cases they died taking a shot intended for the Doctor, and in both cases the shooter was a violent member of a race that the Doctor had helped bring peace to. (Cobb and Restac respectively.)
- Coincidentally Rory temporarily "dies" in some manner in three consecutive episodes of Series 6 (DW: 'Day of the Moon', DW: 'The Curse of the Black Spot', and DW: 'The Doctor's Wife'). Totalling up his temporary deaths to five (the other two coming from DW: 'Cold Blood' and DW: 'Amy's Choice') meaning he has died more than any other televised companion.
Nametag controversy
The question of Rory's "home" time period is one that baffled fans in the aftermath of the broadcast of The Eleventh Hour. This was largely fueled by an image of Rory's Royal Leadworth Hospital identification badge, that was given an extreme closeup in the episode. This closeup plainly shows the badge to have been issued on 30th November 1990, which would seem implausible given the presence of various bits of technology in the episode, such as laptop computers and the named 2008 Blackberry phone. The existence of Facebook, Bebo, and Twitter were also mentioned; the phone had Facebook. So perplexing was this badge ID that Steven Moffat was specifically asked about it in New York by an American fan on 13th April 2010. His response was recorded and released in the podcast, Meet the Filmmaker:
I have never actually looked at Rory's name tag to be completely honest with you...it's not a signficant plot thing.
Though it seemed a genuine, spontaneous answer, Moffat had earlier enthusiastically extolled the virtues of lying to the public and press about the content of Doctor Who, in a question-and-answer session following the New York theatrical screening of The Eleventh Hour. In any event, judging by the technology in existence at the time of the Atraxi incident, it seems unlikely that the 1990 date on the name tag could be genuine. But adding fuel to the fire, 1990s cars were seen, but so were cars said to be of a 2005+ period. Flesh and Stone later had the Doctor remark that June 25th/26th 2010 was "Amy's time", meaning that the 1990 date was an error.
However, in the same latter episode, the clock in Amy's bedroom jumped from 11:59am June 25th to 12pm June 26th, twenty-four hours missed in one second - and it was night time outside. This was likely also a production error, and was supposed to transition from 11:59 pm to 12:00 am. In the episode Amy's Choice, Leadworth was referred to as "the village that time forgot," these things all together causing many fan theories that something has gone wrong with Leadworth involving time itself. It was discovered in The Big Bang that time was shrinking due to the cracks. This may have caused these events, although it was not explicitly stated.
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