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. The unique moral choice at the centre of the story made it a character study of the relationship between Amy, Rory and the Eleventh Doctor.

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. As Amy steps back into the TARDIS to collect her phone, the Doctor and Rory pass through the door using one of the buttons to find a white room witha glass 'magnifying glass; Amy follows but uses the other button. She finds a similar room, 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 talk with her through the glass scope. A week has already passed for her. The Doctor and Rory soon find a faceless, white robot, who explains they are in the Two Streams "kindness facility", helping to deal with a plague, Chen7, that affects only races with two hearts. This includes the native Apalapucians and Time Lords. The robot, and others likes it, do not recognize the two as alien life forms, andtries to inject them with 'medicine' that would kill them. The Doctor warns Amy, and tells her to wait. He will rescue her. Rory and he 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 for fear of the Chen7 virus, gives Rory his sonic screwdriver, the glass scope, and a set of glasses that allows the Doctor to see, hear, and communicate with him, guiding him to find Amy.

Rory explores more of the facility, but soon is set on by more robots. He is saved by a much older Amy, a fugitive hiding from the complex's sensors. The Doctor realises that he locked onto her time stream at the wrong point, and tries to get Rory to convince the older Amy to help locate the younger one. Rory finds the older Amy bitter, having waited as the Doctor instructed. She has been alone for thirty-six years, save for the complex's computer interface, and a disarmed robot she calls Rory. The older Amy refuses to help. She knows saving the younger version of herself would mean she never existed. The Doctor detects signals from the younger Amy nearby, and Rory finds her through the glass scope, weeping. Rory sets the scope to allow the older Amy to speak to her younger self, but the older Amy repeats that she experienced this before, and hearing her future self warn about the time streams convinced her to wait out for rescue. Rory manages to convince the younger Amy to change her mind. Realising that time can be altered if you are aware of the future timeline, as Amy is, the older Amy decides to help, but demands that the Doctor take her too. This is 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 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 get to the TARDIS and safety. As they near its location, the older Amy falls back to protect the other two. Younger Amy runs into a robot and is sedated. As older Amy covers his back, Rory takes younger Amy into the TARDIS. The Doctor slams the door behind him.

The Doctor tells tells Rory that it is impossible for both Amys to exist in the same time stream. Rory must choose which Amy he wants. The older Amy and he have a tearful farewell at the shut 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 for her older self. Neither the Doctor nor Rory can 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 references 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

• 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 as being a location of a future Disneyland. (DW: Love & Monsters; [[The Stolen Earth])
• 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 Sonic screwdriver was previously reffered to as a sonic probe by the Daleks in DW: Doomsday.
• The TARDIS previously was only able to sustain a paradox by rebuilding its time rotor into a Paradox Machine in DW: 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