The Girl Who Waited (TV story)

The Girl Who Waited (TV story)

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The Girl Who Waited
Doctor:	[[doctor::Eleventh Doctor]]
Companion(s):	Amy Pond Rory Williams
Main enemy:	Handbots
Main setting:	Apalapucia
Key crew
Writer:	Tom MacRae
Director:	Nick Hurran
Producer:	Marcus Wilson
Release details
Story number:	220
Release number:	Series 6
Premiere broadcast:	10th September 2011
Format:	1x 45 minutes episode
Production code:	6.10
Confidential:	[[confidential::What Dreams May Come|What Dreams May Come]]

The Girl Who Waited (TV story) was the tenth episode in the sixth series of Doctor Who. It was a Doctor-lite episode and centred around Amy's relationship with Rory.

Synopsis

Amy is trapped in a quarantine facility for victims of an alien plague on Apalapucia – a plague that will kill the Doctor in a day. The Doctor can use the TARDIS to smash through time and break in, but then Rory is on his own. He must find Amy and bring her back to the TARDIS before the alien doctors can administer their deadly medicine. Rory is about to encounter a very different side to his wife. Can he rescue Amy before she is killed by kindness?

Plot

The Doctor takes Rory and Amy to the planet Apalapucia, supposedly a top holiday destination, but they arrive in a clinically white room, its only exit a door with two buttons that open it. As Amy steps back into the TARDIS to collect her phone, the Doctor and Rory pass through the door using one of the buttons; Amy follows later but by using the other button. Both groups find a similar white waiting room with a glass scope in the center of it, but no sign of the others.

When the Doctor realizes that Amy hasn't joined them, he discovers that she has ended up in a second, faster time stream, but is able to communicate to her through the glass scope, finding a week has already passed for her. The Doctor and Rory soon find a faceless, white robot in the room, who explains they are in the Two Streams "kindness facility", which is assisting in dealing with a plague known as Chen7 that affects only races with two hearts, including the native Apalapucians and Time Lords. The robot, and others likes it, do not recognize the two as alien life forms, and attempts to administer injections that would be fatal to them. The Doctor warns Amy of this, and tells her to wait, as he will rescue her. He and Rory race back to the TARDIS with the glass scope, using it to lock onto Amy's time stream to effect her rescue. The Doctor, forced to stay in the TARDIS, due to the Chen7 virus, provides Rory with his sonic screwdriver, the glass scope, and a set of glasses that allows the Doctor to see, hear, and communicate with Rory, guiding him to find Amy.

Rory explores more of the facility, but soon is set on by more of the robots, when he is saved by a much older Amy, now a fugitive hiding from the complex's sensors. The Doctor realises that he locked onto the wrong time stream of Amy, and tries to get Rory to convince the older Amy to help locate the younger one. Rory finds the older Amy has become bitter, having waited as the Doctor instructed, and otherwise has been alone for 36 years save for the complex's computer interface, called "Interface", and a disarmed robot she has come to call Rory. The older Amy refuses to help, knowing that by saving the younger version of herself, she would cease to exist. The Doctor detects signals from the younger Amy nearby, and Rory finds her through the glass scope, crying to herself. Rory sets the scope to allow the older Amy to speak to her younger self, but the older Amy reiterates that she experienced this before, and hearing her future self warn about the time streams convinced her to wait out for rescue. However, Rory manages to convince the younger Amy to change her mind, and realising that time can be altered (if you are aware of the future timeline, which Amy is), the older Amy decides to help, but demands that the Doctor take her too, a difficult but not impossible task for the TARDIS. The Doctor agrees, and as Rory reroutes a control panel that maintains the facility's time streams, the Doctor helps the two Amys to synchronize their thoughts, letting the two exist at the same time.

With these changes, the Doctor's glasses fail, and Rory and the two Amys must race through groups of the robots to make it to the TARDIS to safety. As they near its location, the older Amy falls back to protect the other two, but younger Amy runs into a robot and is sedated. As older Amy covers his back, Rory takes younger Amy into the TARDIS, upon which the Doctor slams the door behind him, telling Rory that it is impossible for both Amys to exist in the same time stream, and to make a choice of which Amy he wants. He and the older Amy have a tearful farewell at the TARDIS door before Older Amy tells Rory to move on without her, and is taken by the robots. As the Doctor pilots the TARDIS away, Amy wakes up and asks "Where is she", obviously meaning her older self; although the Doctor and Rory cannot answer her.

Cast

• The Doctor - Matt Smith
• Amy Pond - Karen Gillan
• Rory Williams - Arthur Darvill
• Check-in girl - Josie Taylor
• Voice of Interface - Imelda Staunton
• Voice of Handbots - Stephen Bracken-Keogh

Crew

Executive Producers   Steven Moffat, Piers Wenger and Beth Willis

General production staff Production Executive - Julie Scott Line Producer - Diana Barton Associate Producer - Denise Paul Production Manager - Phillipa Cole Location Manager - Nicky James Location Assistant - Geraint Williams Unit Manager - Rhys Griffiths Production Co-ordinator - Claire Hildred Assistant Production Co-ordinator - Helen Blyth Production Assistant - Charlie Coombes Production Secretary - Scott Handcock Production Accountant - Dyfed Thomas A/Production Accountant - Kristina Raschboeck Script department Script Editor - Caroline Henry Script Executive - Lindsey Alford Camera and lighting department 1st Assistant Director - William Hartley 2nd Assistant Director - Heddi-Joy Taylor-Welch 3rd Assistant Director - Janine H Jones Assistant Director - Danielle Richards Script Supervisor - Elaine Matthews Camera Operator - James Leigh Focus Pullers - Steve Rees, Jonathan Vidgen Grip - Gary Norman Assistant Grip - Owen Charnley Camera Assistants - Simon Ridge, Matthew Lepper, Elliot Hale Gaffer - Mark Hutchings Best Boy - Pete Chester Electricians - Ben Griffiths, Bob Milton, Stephen Slocombe, Alan Tippetts	Art department Supervising Art Director - Stephen Nicholas Assistant Art Director - Jackson Pope Production Buyer - Ben Morris Petty Cash Buyer - Helen O'Leary Set Decorator - Julian Luxton Props Buyer - Adrian Anscombe Decorator/Buyer - Kate Wilson Concept Artist - Richard Shaun Williams Design Assistant - Dan Martin Handbot Design - Robert Allsop & Associates Graphic Artist - Christina Tom Standby Props - Phil Shellard, Helen Atherton Standby Carpenter - Will Pope Standby Art Director - Amy Pickwoad Standby Rigger - Bryan Griffiths Store Person - Jayne Davies Props Master - Paul Aitken Props Chargehand - Rhys Jones Dressing Props - Tom Belton, Kristian Wilsher Props Driver - Medard Mankos Props Makers - Alan Hardy, Penny Howarth, Nicholas Robatto Construction Manager - Matthew Hywel-Davies Construction Chargehand - Scott Fisher Practical Electrician - Albert James Graphics - BBC Wales Graphics Draughtsman - Julia Jones Costume department Costume Supervisor - Cat Lovett Assistant Costume Designer - Samantha Keeble Costume Assistants - Jason Gill, Yasemin Kascioglu, Frances Morris	Make-up and prosthetics Make-up Supervisor - Pam Mullins Make-up Artists - Vivienne Simpson, Allison Sing Prosthetics - Millennium FX Movement Stunt Co-ordinator - Crispin Layfield Assistant Stunt Co-ordinator - Gordon Seed Stunt Performers - Belinda McGinley, Stephanie Carey Casting Casting Associate - Alice Purser General post-production staff Post-production Supervisor - Nerys Davies Post-production Co-ordinator - Marie Brown Assistant Editor - Becky Trotman On-line Conform - Mark Bright On-line Editor - Jeremy Lott Special and visual effects Visual FX Producer - Beewan Athwal VFX Editor - Cat Gregory Colourist - Mick Vincent Sound Sound Recordist - Bryn Thomas Dubbing Mixer - Tim Ricketts Sound Maintenance Engineers - Jeff Welch, Dafydd Parry Dialogue Editor - Darran Clement ADR Editor - Matthew Cox Supervising Sound Editor - Paul McFadden Sound Effects Editor - Paul Jefferies Foley Editor - Jamie Talbutt

Not every person who worked on this adventure was credited. The absence of a credit for a position doesn't necessarily mean the job wasn't required. The information above is based solely on observations of the actual end credits of the episodes as broadcast, and does not relay information from IMDB or other sources.

References

• Twitter, and a Disneyland on the planet Clom are mentioned
• The title, The Girl Who Waited is a reference to the Doctor's nickname of Amy, given because she waited for him for so long when they first met. (DW: The Eleventh Hour, The Big Bang)

Story notes

• This was allegedly called The Green Anchor, but this was later denied by the writer.
• The episode's original title was The Visitors' Room. This changed to The Visiting Hour and later, the one-word title, Kindness. Despite many reports to the contrary, there was no late change to the adventure's title and at no point was it ever called The Green Anchor.

Ratings

• UK Overnight: 6.0 million

Myths

The episode was going to be called The Green Anchor. This was proven false and was also denied by the writer.

Production errors

If you'd like to talk about narrative problems with this story — like plot holes and things that seem to contradict other stories — please go to this episode's discontinuity discussion.

Continuity

• Clom is mentioned. (DW: Love & Monsters)
• Rory mentions the Doctor's fez. (DW: The Big Bang)
• Amy previously met past/future versions of herself in DW: The Hungry Earth/Cold Blood, The Big Bang, and Space/Time.
• The TARDIS' ability to sustain the paradox of a person in two different points of their timestream was previously shown in Father's Day as the TARDIS was unable to maintain the paradox of Rose Tyler touching her infant self. The TARDIS previously was only able to sustain a paradox by rebuilding it's time rotor into a Paradox Machine, as shown in The Last of the Time Lords.

Home video releases

This episode will be released on DVD and Blu-ray shortly after the airing of episode thirteen.

External links

to be added