Rory Williams
- You may be looking for the Auton based on Rory.
Rory Williams was the "sort of" boyfriend and later husband of Amy Pond. He became a companion of the Eleventh Doctor, but died and was removed from time after being absorbed by the Time Field. Following "Big Bang Two" he was restored to the timeline, married Amy, and continued to travel with her and the Doctor. During this time, his child Melody Pond (later River Song) was born. After the Doctor married his daughter, Melody (River Song), Rory became the Doctor's father-in-law.
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 the dress-up games she based on her stories. (DW: The Eleventh Hour) He was also a friend of Mels, who was, unbeknownst to him, his daughter. He often ended up playing hide and seek with them, although they would leave him hiding for hours without looking for him. (DW: Let's Kill Hitler) Rory was a member of the Cub Scouts, then Scouts and finally Explorer Scouts. He studied chemistry at university in Edinburgh. (DWAN: If You Go Down to the Woods Today)
In his late teens, Rory began working as a nurse in Royal Leadworth Hospital. (REF: The Visual Dictionary) Rory felt a long-standing attraction to Amy, which was only reciprocated after Mels pointed it out to them. Before this, Amy had believed Rory was gay, because in the ten years she had known him, he had never shown any interest in any other girl. (DW: Let's Kill Hitler)
Meeting the Eleventh Doctor
While working at the hospital, Rory noticed coma patients roaming about the village when they should have been unconscious. He helped the Eleventh Doctor defeat Prisoner Zero, then watched him warn the Atraxi away from Earth after they threatened to roast it. (DW: The Eleventh Hour) Rory later became engaged to Amy and looked up the latest scientific theories in case more aliens arrived in Leadworth. (DW: Flesh and Stone)
Travels with the Doctor
Not knowing Amy had left in the TARDIS and had spent days away from Leadworth, Rory had his stag party crashed by the Doctor, who was fetching him to make Amy focus on life outside her travels. The Doctor took the couple on a "romantic break" to Venice in 1580 as a wedding gift. There, they ran into the Saturnyns, who planned to flood Venice and repopulate it with their species. Rory defended Amy from Francesco, a Saturnyn who had taken a liking to her. 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 Doctor's TARDIS, Rory fell victim to the Psychic Pollen that ensnared Amy and the Doctor in two shared dreams. Rory escaped after the Doctor figured out what was happening and killed them in both dreams. His and Amy's 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, Rory, Amy, the Doctor and some new friends stopped the renegade Silurians that lived beneath Wales from killing humanity. However Rory was shot and killed by their military leader, Restac, when he shielded the Doctor from a fatal energy beam. He was then swallowed by a nearby crack in time, and erased from existence. (DW: The Hungry Earth, Cold Blood)
When the Alliance scanned the psychic imprint left by Amy, they used her dormant memories of Rory to create a Nestene duplicate which, due to the crack in Amy's room, possessed Rory's actual emotions and personality. When the Nestenes' trap for the Doctor was ready, they tried to control Rory; he shot Amy. The cracks shattered the universe except for "the eye of the storm" on Earth, freeing Rory from the Nestene Consciousness, which now had never existed. (DW: The Pandorica Opens)
A version of the Doctor from the future came to Rory, instructing him to free him from Pandorica and place Amy's body in it; as it was a perfect prison, it would preserve her until she could be restored to life. Rory refused the offer of a shortcut to when Amy would be fully healed as she needed protecting. Rory watched over Amy for over eighteen hundred years, following the Pandorica wherever it went, earning the sobriquet 'the Lone Centurion'. Near the end of the Second World War, Rory began to take a more discreet approach to guarding the box; he became the night guard at the museum where the Pandorica was held. In 1996, young Amelia provided the genetic material to revive Amy, but the "eye of the storm" from the cracks was closing and little time was left before the Earth ceased to exist as well. While he and Amy helped the Doctor prevent this, Rory fought a stone Dalek and met River Song.
After helping to save the universe, the real Rory was returned to a rebooted universe. He retained memories of being an Auton after Amy remembered the Doctor back into the universe from the other side of the cracks. He compared his Auton memories to a door in his head; he could open it when he wanted to, but tended to keep it shut. (DW: Day of the Moon) Rory married Amy. The Doctor would insist on calling him "Rory Pond" (DW: The Big Bang, The Rebel Flesh, The Almost People) After the wedding reception, they returned to Amy's garden where the TARDIS was parked and bade farewell to their lives in Leadworth to continue journeying with the Doctor. (DW: The Big Bang)
- In the new version of reality, the first time Amy and Rory were together in the TARDIS was during their honeymoon, despite their memories of earlier adventures with the Doctor (DW: A Good Man Goes to War)
Honeymoon
Amy and Rory honeymooned on board the TARDIS, spending their wedding night on the ship itself, apparently conceiving their first child that evening. (DW: A Good Man Goes to War). The Doctor left Amy and Rory on a honeymoon planet shortly before the TARDIS was stolen by Claw Shansheeth, but soon returned for them. (SJA: Death of the Doctor)
The couple continued their honeymoon in the honeymoon suite of a starship. The ship began to crash, and the Doctor had less than an hour to save everyone on it. With help from Amy and Rory, he did, and the trio left for another honeymoon location, which Rory was sceptical about when the Doctor said that it was a living, carnivorous planet. (DW: A Christmas Carol)
Rory began helping the Doctor maintain the TARDIS, much to Amy's annoyance. He caused the TARDIS to materialise inside itself by dropping a thermocoupling when he inadvertantly looked up Amy's skirt. The Doctor figured out how to dematerialise the TARDIS from the resulting space loop and told Amy to put on some trousers. (DW: Space /Time)
America
Soon after their honeymoon, Rory and Amy returned to Earth. They were seen by the Doctor in a shopping centre in Colchester, when the couple was approached by a little girl who wanted Amy's autograph because she was the model on an advertisement for a perfume called Petrichor. (DW: Closing Time)
At some unknown moment, Amy was replaced with a Ganger. (DW: A Good Man Goes to War)
In April 2011, they received a TARDIS-blue letter, which led them to America. There they met River Song and a 1103 year-old Doctor, who was shot and killed. They went to a diner where they met a 909 year-old version of the Doctor, who had another copy of the blue letter. During the older Doctor's request to head for "space 1969", Amy had seen one of the aliens known as Silents, who had been occupying/ruling Earth for centuries. After the Doctor started a revolution against the Silence by using their own powers against them, Rory returned to travelling on the TARDIS with Amy to keep her from telling the Doctor about his impending death. During this time Rory began to question Amy's feelings for him yet again, as she described someone she loved who "fell out of the sky" and changed her life. However, his doubts were put to rest when Amy reassured him that she was only using a figure of speech to describe him, not the Doctor. (DW: The Impossible Astronaut / Day of the Moon)
Further travels
Following a distress signal the Doctor detected in 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 soon targeted by a Siren that had been taking members of the crew. Though he was kept safe from the Siren by Amy, Rory was soon willingly taken after being thrown overboard during a storm. The Doctor figured out the "siren" was really a virtual doctor from an invisible spaceship taking up the same space as the Fancy. Rory instructed Amy in CPR and 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 outside the 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 sympathasised with the Ganger of Jennifer Lucas. The Ganger took advantage of his sympathy, tricking him into trapping the crew, the Doctor and his wife in a room with an overheated acid vat. Rory soon 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 impending explosion at the factory for a press conference about Ganger rights. Rory was stunned when the Doctor revealed that Amy was herself a Ganger, and the real Amy was elsewhere, having been replaced soon after their honeymoon. Rory vowed to find her no matter what, just as the Doctor had told Amy before destroying her duplicate. (DW: The Rebel Flesh / The Almost People)
Fatherhood
Rory helped the Doctor raise an army to save Amy and his daughter, Melody Pond, from Madame Kovarian and the Church (again dressed a Roman centurion). Rory invaded the Twelfth Cyber Legion, and asked twice for the whereabouts of his wife. Soon after, Melody was taken from Rory and Amy by the same trick as before: a Ganger. River Song told him that she was his daughter, using as proof a prayer leaf with Melody's 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)
A month later Amy ordered Rory to make a crop circle saying "Doctor" to catch the Doctor's attention. They foundhim waiting for them and were surprised by the appearance of their childhood friend Mels, ordering them at gunpoint to take her to kill Hitler. Rory locked Hitler in a closet and discovered Mels was actually their daughter, who regenerated into River Song. After she had poisoned the Doctor, Rory and Amy followed her, only to be sucked into a robot shape-shifter called the Teselecta that took Amy's form. While the Doctor tried to reason with their daughter, Rory helped Amy make the Teselecta's antibodies attack the crew. On the verge of dying (again), Rory was saved by his daughter in the TARDIS. Melody gave up her remaining regenerations to revive the Doctor. Leaving Melody/River in "the best hospital in the universe" to recover from the strain, Rory rejoined the Doctor on new adventures while Melody was left to become River Song. (DW: Let's Kill Hitler)
Further adventures
The TARDIS landed on Earth in 2010 after tracing a distress call from a Tenza named George who lived in a block of flats. Amy and Rory knocked on nearly every door to find him. He passed George's window, joking they should let the "monsters" eat him. George used his psychic powers and phobia defences 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, then being turned into one that joined the others to chase Rory and Amy. Rory was horrified to see his wife transformed into another doll. Rory 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 resort planet, Apalapucia. The planet was quarantined for the Chen7 virus. Befuddled by the security measures, Amy wound up in a faster timestream. While the Doctor hid in the TARDIS (the virus targeted beings 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, and convinced her to rescue her younger self on the condition that she also be rescued. 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 at first angry with the Doctor, stating that The Doctor turned him into the Doctor himself, but later came to accept that the Doctor had done the right thing. (DW: The Girl Who Waited)
Departure from the Doctor
Rory ended up in an alien structure modelled on an 1980's hotel with Amy and the Doctor, where a creature was feeding off the strong converted faiths of those the prison trapped for it. Rory, who had no strong faith for the creature to feed on, helped keep Amy safe until the Doctor broke her faith in him and the creature was killed. Rory was brought back to 2011 Earth to find the Doctor had bought them a new home and a luxury car Rory had longed for. Hoping to thank the Doctor with some champagne, Rory went inside and was lost for answers when the Doctor was gone when he returned. Amy explained that 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 surprised, but happy 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)
Alternate Timeline
In an alternate timeline where all time happened at once due to the Doctor not dying, Rory was a captain in a military force led by Amy, trying 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 Silence broke free, Rory, tormented and in pain due to his Eye Drive, stayed behind to hold off the Silence though it meant certain death. Amy saved him, then told him that they should get a drink and married. When the Doctor married River, Rory consented to the marriage as father of the bride even though he didn't understand what was going on. Unlike Amy, the Doctor and River, it is unknown if Rory had any memory of these events when the timeline was restored. (DW: The Wedding of River Song)
Personality
Rory was timid during his first encounter with the Doctor. He was easily intimidated by Dr Ramsden and terrified by the chaos caused by the Doctor and Prisoner Zero. Despite this, he had the presence of mind to record evidence to prove that his patients were appearing outside the hospital. He also helped Amy clear the hospital of patients before Prisoner Zero could kill them. (DW: The Eleventh Hour)
During the events in Venice, Rory was unnerved when the Doctor and Amy wanted to return to the Saturnyn stronghold. However, he grew in bravery. He challenged Francesco to protect Amy, (DW: The Vampires of Venice) and took a lethal Silurian energy beam meant for the Doctor. (DW: Cold Blood) When he saw Francesco had attacked a girl, his immediate reaction was to see if she was all right. (DW: The Vampires of Venice)
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 was not naturally brave, but could perform great feats of courage out of his love for Amy. He would go to any length when angry. He destroyed all but one of the Twelfth Cyber Legion's squadron to find where Amy was held captive (DW: A Good Man Goes to War) and 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, even trying to have civil conversations with him and helping in TARDIS maintenance. (DW: Space/Time) He put up with the occasionally troublesome natures of both Amy and the Doctor. Rory was also very loyal to the Doctor, whom he trusted with his life. He was also shown to be devastated when it appeared the Doctor was dead, or when Idris' body died, due to the fact that not only was he friends with both of them, but because he was a nurse and they were his patients.
Rory was a very fast study. 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)
Other information
Known family
- Amelia Pond - wife
- River Song (Melody Pond) - daughter
- The Doctor - son-in-law
- Augustus Pond - father-in-law
- Tabetha Pond - mother-in-law
- Frank - uncle (DWAN: Pier Head From Space)
- Jane - aunt (IDW: Spam Filtered)
Skills
Rory was a trained nurse, and knew medical procedures and how to examine bodies. (DW: The Eleventh Hour, DW: The Vampires of Venice, DW: The Curse of the Black Spot) Also, due to being a Roman Centurion, he was accomplished at fighting with a gladius. (DW: The Pandorica Opens, DW: A Good Man Goes to War) After spending 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 also demonstrated a good 'gun arm' on several occasions; he knocked Hitler and the Teselecta to the ground with single blows to their jaws. (DW: Let's Kill Hitler)
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, DW: The Curse of the Black Spot, and DW: 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 other televised companion.
- 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).
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. 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 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.
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