Let’s Kill Amy Pond
WARNING: Spoilers for Season 6 of Doctor Who…Oh, and Season 6 of Buffy The Vampire Slayer for some reason.
Back when Russell T. Davies relaunched the venerable British series Doctor Who in 2005, he often cited Buffy the Vampire Slayer as a model for what he was trying to do with the show. In the past, Doctor Who had been a place for great, self-contained sci-fi stories, but, outside of a few recurring characters and baddies, there was little crucial continuity to hook in the viewer – which is odd for a show where the protagonist has survived for over 1000 years and through 11 actors. Davies took something of the Buffy “Big Bad” approach, with a series of smaller adventures leading up to a big confrontation with a major villain (typically Daleks, Cybermen, or some combination of the two). But under Davies’ watchful eye, these threats typically only reared their heads in the last few episodes. Much of the continuity, then, was based on the Doctor and his various companions, from his romance with Rose Tyler to the walking “other woman” syndrome that is Martha Jones to his bickering pseudo-sibling rivalry with Donna Noble. Ever the romantic, the Doctor entices these companions to follow him throughout time and space with the promise of grand sweeping adventure and sights they never thought they’d see. And, almost exclusively, these companions remained mostly static foils for the Doctor, allowing whatever writer was on deck that week to plop them into some grand sci-fi conceit without having to do much lip-service towards some larger developments, character-wise.
When Davies announced he’d be handing over showrunning duties to Stephen Moffat, Whovians breathed a collective sigh of relief. If Davies (and long-time fan-favorite Doctor David Tennant) had to go, at least we’d be in the hands of one of the greats. After all, this was the man responsible for some of the most acclaimed episodes during the Davies run: “Blink,” “The Girl in The Fireplace,” “Silence in The Library.” These were big, mind-bendy episodes with tons of time trickery balanced with supreme wit and a deep understanding of character.
Understandably, the master-of-mindfuckery Moffat’s first season as showrunner seemed to adhere more to a Lost model than a Buffy model. Sure, we got some great stand-alone episodes, but each was intricately built around a larger central story: the story of Amelia Pond, the Girl Who Waited for her Raggedy Doctor to come save her. Not only did we have a brand new Doctor in Matt Smith, but we had a brand new Doctor Who. Backed by a huge publicity push by the BBC stateside, Season 5 was sold as a “jumping-on point”; brand new characters, little left over from the Davies years, and a crackling chemistry between Matt Smith and Karen Gillan used to sell the story of a woman who grew up to discover that her imaginary friend was real. It was a brilliant take on the Doctor/Companion relationship and a beautifully tight season of television, with all threads pointing back to the evolution of that relationship and the recurring themes of mythmaking and storytelling. All in all, the entirety of Season 5 plays like a single Moffat episode writ large, the story Amy Pond going from childhood to adulthood, growing up and learning to put away childish infatuations to recognize true love for small-town boy Rory without ever giving up her adventurous, rebellious side.
Why, then, has Season 6 left such a funny taste in my mouth? We got some great continuity episodes, and a true classic of a stand-alone ep in the Neil Gaiman-penned “The Doctor’s Wife”. I think a big part of the problem stems from Amy Pond. Let me go on record as saying that Karen Gillan continues to play the role to the hilt, with wit, strength, and grace. I think the problem lies in the fact that, without being the focal point of the season’s narrative, I wasn’t exactly sure what role she was supposed to serve this season. If last season was about the relationship between Amy and the Doctor, then what was this season really about? And don’t tell me “The Epic Origins of River Song,” because explaining mysteries for 13 episodes does not an engaging story make (ask any Heroes fan…or, you know, watch the Star Wars prequels).
The slam bang two-part season opener presented a hell of a hook for the season, positing the question of “Who is this mystery child and how is she tied into the Doctor’s death?” But for the first half of the season, we got the same three repeated tie-ins over and over again: the date of the Doctor’s death, the inconclusive pregnancy scan, and Madame Kovarian’s eerie one-eyed mug popping up once an episode, like clockwork. Then we hit the excellent so-called mid-season finale, “A Good Man Goes To War.” Boom! The Doctor and Friends versus a mounting evil force! Bang! Stolen infants! And on top of all that, we finally get some good and juicy themes to latch on to that tied into Moffat’s oh-so-enticing questions from last year: is this grandstanding Doctor truly a hero or a menace? What price does one pay for running with the Doctor? Amy and Rory had survived all of last season remarkably unscathed; was their newborn daughter the cost of the hubris for thinking they could continue to get away with palling around on the Tardis? Also, hey! We’re gonna kill Hitler!
Only we didn’t. Perhaps I’m a victim of my own expectations. I was so excited for a half season of tracking down the Baby Pond through time and space, a Doctor driven by dedication and remorse and Amy and Rory struggling with the consequences of trading in a life of security in for bunk beds in the big blue box. Only they didn’t. And that was probably the biggest hiccup in this season. Episode 6, Amy and Rory find out they’re having a kid. Episode 7, after being with her parents just long enough for the parental bonds to take hold, young Melody Pond was cruelly ripped away and sent off to be turned into a living weapon. Episode 8, Amy and Rory find out that their child is now fully grown and getting over being a psychopath. AND THEN THAT’S IT. They’re totally cool with it! No remorse for not being there for the precious moments of their child’s upbringing, no blame thrust at each other or the Doctor, none of the typical reactions one would expect from grieving parents. I know that Moffat tried to explain this away by claiming that Amy and Rory had sort of raised their daughter in the guise of their childhood best friend Mels. Sorry about losing your baby! But here’s a troublemaking best friend (who we’ve never mentioned before!) to bail out of jail as a substitute. You’re welcome!
The show then attempted to embrace a “Keep Calm and Carry On” attitude, sweeping any messy residual emotions or consequences under the rug in favor of having more one-off adventures with the Doctor, Amy, and Rory. This attitude unfortunately resulted in making Amy and Rory, two characters we’d come to love and care for, come off as immature, even negligent parents. Every episode I was hoping desperately that we’d see some crack in the veneer, some emotional outburst to show how this tragedy has affected them, their relationship, and their relationship to the Doctor. Instead, I get an episode where Amy gripes about being left alone for 30 years…despite the fact that Rory was left to guard her for thousands of years back in season one. Suddenly strong-willed, caring, independent Amy comes off as self-absorbed; she built a robot version of Rory to keep her company but not a single mention of Melody? When Amy finally all-too-calmly kills Madame Kovarian, I think Moffat meant for it to be a surprise, an “oh wow, she’s still hung up on THAT?” when ultimately it feels like an inevitability, and even a case of too little too late.
Again, I don’t blame Karen Gillan at all for this development (and I certainly don’t blame Arthur Darvill, who really came into his own as Rory this season). She handled every beat thrown at her with aplomb; she just wasn’t given these emotions to play. I don’t even blame the writers of these individual episodes. “God Complex” and “Night Terrors” are classic Doctor Who one-offs, and “Closing Time” finally began to brush the surface of how the events of this season have worn on the Doctor. I understand that a great many of these episodes were shown out of order, with some post-“Good Man Goes To War” episodes meant for pre-“GMGTW” consumption, thus explaining why so little mention of Melody. And I imagine that splitting the season in two may have forced Moffat to deliver the big mid-season shocker that Melody Pond is in fact River Song way earlier than he had initially wanted to, radically effecting the pace of the season. So maybe the fault doesn’t lie entirely with Moffat, the showrunner.
The problem lies in trying to reconcile the desire to tell self-contained stories with an overarching season-long narrative. It’s a great impulse to want to push your characters into extreme, personal situations that test their mettle. But if those situations don’t have consequences, you’re not writing a serialized story, you’re writing a sitcom – no matter how many clues and mysteries you throw in. The end result? Shocking twists for shocking twists’ sake and a detrimental effect on your characters.
Davies very smartly dealt with this problem in a very logical and cut-throat manner: replace an actor every season. After season one, he traded in Doctor Nine Chris Eccleston with Doctor Ten Tennant. Then it was a new companion every season for the rest of his run. This was typically after some life-altering tragedy forced them to have second thoughts about hanging with the Doctor: Rose got sucked into an alternate dimension, Martha was tired of playing Rose’s sloppy seconds, and Donna had to have her memory wiped clean or risk spontaneous human combustion. Moffat even wisely called this out in “Let’s Kill Hitler”; as the Tardis cycles through images of those previous companions (possibly the most explicit acknowledgment of the Davies run we’ve gotten so far), the Doctor gripes, “There must be someone left in the universe I haven’t screwed up yet.” The Tardis responds by showing him an image of young Amelia Pond… only it stands to reason that he should have pretty solidly screwed her up at this point. And you can tell me that she just has a steelier resolve than most…but that makes her come off as flippant.
Indeed, Moffat has an unenviable task ahead of him. Gillan and Smith have undeniable chemistry; indeed, Gillan’s been on the show just as long as Smith, and more importantly, as long as many of the new Who fanbase has. For those newcomers, a big part of the draw of the show is the irrepressible rapport between Gillan and Smith as they face all sorts of interstellar baddies. As the old adage goes, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. But Moffat’s desire to incorporate Rory, River, et al into the mix and progress Gillan’s character’s storyline butts up against the freewheeling, consequence-free adventures of ol’ Bowtie and Red. It’s the tricky dilemma of serialized television: how do you provide the illusion of progress while generally keeping everything the same? He can either progress her storyline and risk damaging the chemistry that brought so many eyeballs to the show over the past two years, thus alienating his base, or he can keep telling the same stories with her over and over again. How many times are we going to have to see poor Amy Pond react to Rory’s death or talk about how they’re destined to find each other or how the Doctor will always rescue her?
OR…and this is a big “or”… he could get rid of Amy Pond. Either in a traumatic way that has a major impact on the Doctor (something akin to Tara’s death at the end of Season 6 of Buffy) or by giving her the happy resolution she deserves, thus proving to the Doctor that he doesn’t necessarily screw EVERYBODY up. Of course, this pretty drastically steps away from maintaining the chemistry of the Bowtie and Red Show, but it would provide some much needed closure for a much beloved character. And just because Amy’s no longer on the Tardis doesn’t necessarily mean she wouldn’t still be around. One of the great side effects of Davies constant cycling through companions is that it built a sprawling supporting cast for the writers to draw from. You can’t tell me you didn’t get chills when the “Children of the Doctor” stood united at the end of “Journey’s End”.
And I don’t think this is a matter of the show just returning Amy’s baby to her. Even if Moffat managed to set that up, how is he going to pull off having her gallivanting around a Dalek ship without making her seem like a negligent mother? At the end of the day, the Doctor can just continue to get older and older and continue to regenerate time and again. But at some point Amy’s story must end; just as the Doctor must remain constant, so too must his companions change – it’s part of his inherent sadness. One thing that Moffat’s always been great at is stacking hundreds of awesome batshit insane ideas on top of each other, ideas that for most other shows would take up an entire episode, making them work in conjunction with one another and thus making the Doctor seem all the more impressive for handling them all. Trust him, he’s the Doctor. But I fear that he’s already put poor Amelia Pond through so much as a character, that he’s going to either have to retire her or risk stretching her credulity as a character.
Ultimately, I have complete and utter faith that Stephen Moffat can pull this one out. Spinning plates is one of his many, many talents as a writer and I doubt that he of all people would approach the upcoming 50th anniversary of Doctor Who without a mind-erasingly brilliant, airtight plan that none of us saw coming. The constant rumors that Gillan and Darvill are looking to leave the show (or, at the very least, play reduced roles) assures me that Moffat has considered many of the concerns I’ve listed and is getting around to addressing them. And Smith has more than proven he can hold his own without Gillan both in last year’s Christmas special and his (outstanding) outings with James Corden in “The Lodger” and “Closing Time”. Heck, maybe Moffat decided to take his time on this one – spreading out this larger arc over two seasons and making me look like a complete idiot by this time next year. Nothing would please me more. He’s certainly unveiled enough new mysteries for this to be the case, between the prophesied “Fall of the Eleventh” at the Fields of Trenzinor and promising to finally answer possibly the longest running mystery in the history of television: “Doctor Who?” Here’s hoping this momentary droop will prove to be nothing more than an extended second act in Moffat’s Who opus, and the Girl Who Waited won’t have to wait for her resolution much longer.
