Rory Williams
- You may be looking for the Auton based on Rory.
Rory Williams was Amy Pond's boyfriend and later, husband. He became a companion of the Eleventh Doctor, died and was removed from the universe by being absorbed by the Time Field. After "Big Bang Two" he was restored, married Amy and continued to travel with her and the Doctor. During this time, his child Melody Pond (later River Song) was born. When the Doctor married River, Rory became his 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 dress-up games she based on her stories. (DW: The Eleventh Hour) He was also a friend of Mels, unbeknownst to him, their daughter. He played hide and
seek with them; he would hide for hours when they didn't look for him. (DW: Let's Kill Hitler) Rory long was attracted to Amy, which was only returned after Mels pointed it out. 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 became engaged to Amy and looked up the latest scientific theories. (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. 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 TARDIS, Rory fell victim to the Psychic Pollen that ensnared them 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 who 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 reality. (DW: The Hungry Earth / Cold Blood
The Alliance scanned the psychic imprint left by Amy and used her dormant memories of Rory to create a Auton duplicate. Due to the crack in Amy's room, it had Rory's actual emotions and personality. When the Alliance's trap for the Doctor was ready, they controlled Rory; he shot Amy. The cracks shattered the universe except for "the eye of the storm" on Earth, freeing him from the Nestene Consciousness, which now had never existed. (DW: The Pandorica Opens)
A version of the Doctor from the future had Rory free him from Pandorica and place Amy's body in it to preserve her until she could be restored to life. Rory refused the offer of a shortcut to when Amy would be healed; she needed protecting.He watched over Amy for almost two thousand years, following the Pandorica wherever it went, earning the sobriquet 'the Lone Centurion'. Near the end of the Second World War, he took 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 reboot the universe, the real Rory returned. He remembered having been an Auton after Amy recalled the Doctor 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, but usually kept 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 in the TARDIS, spending their wedding night on the ship itself, conceiving their first child that evening. (DW: A Good Man Goes to War). The Doctor left them 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 trip 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 told 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 inadvertently 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, Amy and Rory received a TARDIS-blue letter, which led them to America. There they met River Song and a the Doctor, who in fact was a Teselecta duplicate. This "Doctor" was shot by a past version of River, faking his death in front of Rory and Amy. (DW: The Impossible Astronaut, The Wedding of River Song) Amy, Rory and the older River went to a diner where they met a younger 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 Silents, aliens who had occupied Earth for centuries. (DW: The Impossible Astronaut)
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 she was speaking of him, not the Doctor. (DW: Day of the Moon)
Further travels
Following 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 members of the crew. Though he was shielded from the Siren by Amy, Rory was taken after being thrown 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 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 sympathised with the Ganger of Jennifer Lucas. She 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 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 rescue Amy and his daughter, Melody Pond, from Madame Kovarian and the Church. Rory invaded the Twelfth Cyber Legion, and asked twice for the whereabouts of his wife, destroying the other ships in the Legion as a "message from the Doctor". Soon after, he arrived on Demon's Run. He kept Kovarian from fleeing with his daughter and the Doctor's army won the fight in four minutes. However, he found the baby was not Melody, but another a Ganger; Kovarian had escaped with Melody. River Song appeared and stunned him with the news 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 had Rory to make a crop circle saying "Doctor" to catch the Doctor's attention. They found him waiting and were surprised by the appearance of their childhood friend, Mels, ordering 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, Rory slugged Hitler and locked him in a closet. Discovering Mels had been shot by Hitler, he was shocked to learn she was Melody, who regenerated into River Song.
After Mels had poisoned the Doctor, Rory and Amy followed her, only to be sucked into the shape-shifting Teselecta, which took Amy's form. While the Doctor tried to reason with their child, they made 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 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 George, a Tenza who lived in a block of flats. Amy and Rory knocked on nearly every door to find him. George used his psychic powers 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 a 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 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 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, fearing the Doctor was turning him into the Doctor himself, but later accepted the Doctor had done the right thing. (DW: The Girl Who Waited)
Amy and Rory went to the Liao Dynasty 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 Rutan 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 of the weapons to target Rutans, resulting in a stalemate. (VG: The Gunpowder Plot)
Departure from the Doctor
Rory ended up in an alien structure modelled on an 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 was killed. Rory was returned 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, he went inside and was lost for answers when the Doctor was gone when he returned. Amy explained 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 pleased 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)
In 2020, Amy and Rory travelled to Cwmtaff to wave at their younger selves. (DW: The Hungry Earth)
Alternate timeline
In a 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 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. 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. Unlike Amy, the Doctor and River, Rory probably had no memory of these events when the timeline was restored. (DW: The Wedding of River Song)
Personality
Rory was timid in his first meeting with the Doctor. He was 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 his comatose patients were strolling 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, yet, he grew in bravery. He challenged Francesco to protect Amy, (DW: The Vampires of Venice) 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 took a lethal Silurian energy beam meant for the Doctor. (DW: 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. (DW: The Big Bang) He would perform great feats of courage out of his love for Amy and 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 Amy and the Doctor. Rory was very loyal to the Doctor, whom he trusted with his life. He was devastated when it appeared the Doctor was dead, or when Idris' body died; not only was he friends with both of them, 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)
Rory once admitted he used the phrase "This is Mental" as his catchphrase. (REF: The Brilliant Book 2011)
Other information
Known family
- Mother (DW: The Rebel Flesh)
- Father (DW: Night Terrors)
- Amelia Pond - wife
- River Song (Melody Pond) - daughter
- The Doctor - son-in-law
- Augustus Pond - father-in-law
- Tabetha Pond - mother-in-law
Skills
Rory was a trained nurse. Hed knew medical procedures and how to examine bodies. (DW: The Eleventh Hour, The Vampires of Venice, The Curse of the Black Spot) As he had been a Roman Centurion, he was accomplished at fighting with a gladius. (DW: The Pandorica Opens, A Good Man Goes to War) In 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 demonstrated a good 'gun arm' on several occasions; he knocked the Doctor, Hitler and the Teselecta to the ground with single blows to their jaws. (DW: The Big Bang, 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, The Curse of the Black Spot, 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 30 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. 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, 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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