apparently this is an all-Rory, all-the-time blog now
So here I am, sitting in the box office and kicking back during Act I of tonight's show, keeping on with my rewatch of Doctor Who. I just finished the second Flesh episode and started "A Good Man Goes to War," and two thoughts IMMEDIATELY popped to mind.
1 Is not actually about Rory, I AM SORRY, I HAVE ALREADY LED YOU ASTRAY. The Flesh arc ends with the Doctor getting the proof he needs both to prove that a Flesh!person is 100% able to fool even the people who love them best into thinking they are with the Real Deal, but also to block the transmission to the Flesh!Amy. I never really thought about it before, but MY GOD, the morality of his choice to destroy Flesh!Amy is QUITE dodgy, isn't it? We just spent a two-episode arc exploring the idea that, when you make a perfect copy of a person down to their memories and emotions and DNA, it is immoral to dispose of them cavalierly. You have created a Person. And then the Doctor tells us that, given what they've just experienced, he's going to do it as humanely as possible, but he is going to end Flesh!Amy's life. And that's what it is, isn't it? On the one hand, Flesh!Amy was created absolutely 100% WITHOUT Amy's consent and it was a horrible, horrible transgression by the eyepatch lady. The Doctor decided the time had come to reveal that he knew what was going on so that they could stop it and also come to terms with the deception- ALL of them, including Prime!Amy. Real Amy. But the other hand is the inevitable termination of a life to do so, an act which wiped out a version of Amy Pond. She wasn't the "real" Amy, but we JUST SAW that that didn't matter. Presumably, had everything not turned horribly, horribly awry at the end of that arc, best case scenario was that all the originals AND the gangers would have survived and they would have sorted things out. But not Flesh!Amy. She didn't get that chance, through no fault of her own. And that's a little unsettling. You know me- I love my grey-area-dwelling Doctor, but damn. That's cold.
2 OKAY, NOW IT IS RORY TIME. So "A Good Man Goes to War" begins with this monologue of Amy's to baby Melody, the point of which is a promise. The transcript I just dug up tells me that she says:
Because there's someone coming. I don't know where he is, or what he's doing, but trust me, he's on his way. There's a man who's never going to let us down, and not even an army can get in the way. He's the last of his kind. He looks young, but he's lived for hundreds and hundreds of years. And wherever they take you, Melody, however scared you are, I promise you, you will never be alone. Because this man is your father. He has a name, but the people of our world know him better as the Last Centurion.
Now on the one hand, this is Moff YET AGAIN teasing the part of the audience that wants this to be an Amy/Doctor story. I remember watching this and my eyebrows going through the ROOF when she tells him that this mythic man is Melody's father, and even KNOWING it was surely somehow about Rory, not really understanding how the claim worked until she named him "The Last Centurion." And, if I'm honest, it's a little too much narrative sleight of hand for me- the audience is being DELIBERATELY misled and it doesn't work as neatly as Moffat thinks it does.
I adore the idea that on Earth, the legends of the Last/Lone Centurion in the Earth That Never Was loomed that large... But no one on our Earth knows the Lone Centurion because the Pandorica never actually happened? So even if some elements of the story remain in our consciousness, surely it's not as clear as it was for the Doctor Who audience.
But honestly, that level of nitpicking has never been something I'm interested in, bc that's not what Moff is interested- he loves the big, mythic idea and the fiddly details aren't nearly as important next to That.
So what I really, REALLY love about this speech being about Rory is that none of it, not one bit of it, is about the Doctor. Amy has SO MUCH FAITH in Rory that she knows he will reach her and rescue her, no matter what. Maybe the Doctor will help, but if he can't? RORY WILL BE THERE FOR HER ANYWAY. Her beautiful, gangling nerdy nurse husband loves her so deeply that he will protect her for 2000 years, and he will cross all of space and time to bring her home. He doesn't have magic powers or a blue box. He doesn't have the ability to regenerate, and he's no longer made of plastic and superdurable. He is a man, an ordinary man, who happens to be so loving and loyal and brave that none of those things matter. He will do whatever it takes to save her, and that is a rock-solid certainty for her.
All of the Doctor's companions generally have the certainty that when they are in peril, the Doctor will come for him- it's part of the bargain they implicitly strike when they step inside the TARDIS (and it's what makes the first Twelve episode with Clara so powerful). But to Amy? That bargain PALES in comparison to what she has with Rory, so much so that she doesn't even mention the Doctor. All of her speech and what it promises is infinitely more powerful because it's about a normal man, not a Time Lord. Rory will risk so much more than the Doctor COULD to save her, and he will never fail her trust.
Amy has never needed the Doctor, or depended on the Doctor, or trusted the Doctor, as much as she has Rory. And by god, he will live up to her belief in him even when her clay idol of the Raggedy Man crumbles before her. Rory Williams is an ordinary man, a nurse, a husband, a friend, and the Lone Centurion. He is going to save his wife- and she knows it.
1 Is not actually about Rory, I AM SORRY, I HAVE ALREADY LED YOU ASTRAY. The Flesh arc ends with the Doctor getting the proof he needs both to prove that a Flesh!person is 100% able to fool even the people who love them best into thinking they are with the Real Deal, but also to block the transmission to the Flesh!Amy. I never really thought about it before, but MY GOD, the morality of his choice to destroy Flesh!Amy is QUITE dodgy, isn't it? We just spent a two-episode arc exploring the idea that, when you make a perfect copy of a person down to their memories and emotions and DNA, it is immoral to dispose of them cavalierly. You have created a Person. And then the Doctor tells us that, given what they've just experienced, he's going to do it as humanely as possible, but he is going to end Flesh!Amy's life. And that's what it is, isn't it? On the one hand, Flesh!Amy was created absolutely 100% WITHOUT Amy's consent and it was a horrible, horrible transgression by the eyepatch lady. The Doctor decided the time had come to reveal that he knew what was going on so that they could stop it and also come to terms with the deception- ALL of them, including Prime!Amy. Real Amy. But the other hand is the inevitable termination of a life to do so, an act which wiped out a version of Amy Pond. She wasn't the "real" Amy, but we JUST SAW that that didn't matter. Presumably, had everything not turned horribly, horribly awry at the end of that arc, best case scenario was that all the originals AND the gangers would have survived and they would have sorted things out. But not Flesh!Amy. She didn't get that chance, through no fault of her own. And that's a little unsettling. You know me- I love my grey-area-dwelling Doctor, but damn. That's cold.
2 OKAY, NOW IT IS RORY TIME. So "A Good Man Goes to War" begins with this monologue of Amy's to baby Melody, the point of which is a promise. The transcript I just dug up tells me that she says:
Because there's someone coming. I don't know where he is, or what he's doing, but trust me, he's on his way. There's a man who's never going to let us down, and not even an army can get in the way. He's the last of his kind. He looks young, but he's lived for hundreds and hundreds of years. And wherever they take you, Melody, however scared you are, I promise you, you will never be alone. Because this man is your father. He has a name, but the people of our world know him better as the Last Centurion.
Now on the one hand, this is Moff YET AGAIN teasing the part of the audience that wants this to be an Amy/Doctor story. I remember watching this and my eyebrows going through the ROOF when she tells him that this mythic man is Melody's father, and even KNOWING it was surely somehow about Rory, not really understanding how the claim worked until she named him "The Last Centurion." And, if I'm honest, it's a little too much narrative sleight of hand for me- the audience is being DELIBERATELY misled and it doesn't work as neatly as Moffat thinks it does.
I adore the idea that on Earth, the legends of the Last/Lone Centurion in the Earth That Never Was loomed that large... But no one on our Earth knows the Lone Centurion because the Pandorica never actually happened? So even if some elements of the story remain in our consciousness, surely it's not as clear as it was for the Doctor Who audience.
But honestly, that level of nitpicking has never been something I'm interested in, bc that's not what Moff is interested- he loves the big, mythic idea and the fiddly details aren't nearly as important next to That.
So what I really, REALLY love about this speech being about Rory is that none of it, not one bit of it, is about the Doctor. Amy has SO MUCH FAITH in Rory that she knows he will reach her and rescue her, no matter what. Maybe the Doctor will help, but if he can't? RORY WILL BE THERE FOR HER ANYWAY. Her beautiful, gangling nerdy nurse husband loves her so deeply that he will protect her for 2000 years, and he will cross all of space and time to bring her home. He doesn't have magic powers or a blue box. He doesn't have the ability to regenerate, and he's no longer made of plastic and superdurable. He is a man, an ordinary man, who happens to be so loving and loyal and brave that none of those things matter. He will do whatever it takes to save her, and that is a rock-solid certainty for her.
All of the Doctor's companions generally have the certainty that when they are in peril, the Doctor will come for him- it's part of the bargain they implicitly strike when they step inside the TARDIS (and it's what makes the first Twelve episode with Clara so powerful). But to Amy? That bargain PALES in comparison to what she has with Rory, so much so that she doesn't even mention the Doctor. All of her speech and what it promises is infinitely more powerful because it's about a normal man, not a Time Lord. Rory will risk so much more than the Doctor COULD to save her, and he will never fail her trust.
Amy has never needed the Doctor, or depended on the Doctor, or trusted the Doctor, as much as she has Rory. And by god, he will live up to her belief in him even when her clay idol of the Raggedy Man crumbles before her. Rory Williams is an ordinary man, a nurse, a husband, a friend, and the Lone Centurion. He is going to save his wife- and she knows it.