I thought about replying to this for so long, because Rory is pretty much my...third? second? favourite fictional character of All Time and I didn't want to come across as one of Those Fans. But! (meep)
Doctor Who is so...odd in that it's constantly extorting the values of living in a fantasy world while knowing it can never commit to them, because the companions always have to leave because that's how the show works. So it has to take these girls, invite them into a beautiful, fantastical world...and then chew them up and spit them out. (See: Donna, and to some extent Rose.) So Amy got a nice intro into space-and-time travel, but then the narrative spun round to "no, Amy, get out while you can". Where Rory's, "we have to grow up sometimes" came from, I guess. He was her anchor.
Which is why I like him, because he essentially took on the female role in the Amy/Rory relationship: he did the waiting while Amy (later on) did the more proactive stuff, he was constantly fridged or almost-fridged to give Amy character moments, he functioned as her reward. He's very insecure and awkward a lot, but I don't think he ever, ever sought to control Amy (the closest he came was when he told the Doctor to stop hugging her, but I think that may have been because the Doctor was hugging her instead of answering the many questions Rory still had regarding his new baby daughter...or it's a callback to Mickey's same line in Journey's End, I dunno.)
And he never got to make a major choice at all really- he doesn't choose TARDIS travel until Amy tells him to come, he doesn't choose to die, he doesn't choose to end up in the Roman era, he doesn't choose to be dropped off the TARDIS (neither does Amy, true, but Rory doesn't even get an explanation!) he literally can't choose between two versions of his wife and Amy does it for him, etc. Whereas Amy does get to choose, and she always chooses Rory. (I like to think Angels Take Manhattan was just Amy's Choice on a larger scale, even their baby is there.)
Basically, I disagree that it turned into Rory's story- he spends a lot of time being the thing that motivates Amy rather than the other way around. He gets the odd heroic moment (A Good Man Goes To War for example) but Amy gets the heroic moments that actually change things. It's Amy who does the narration, Amy who gets to have the relationship with River, and - I liked this so much - it's Amy who gets to write her own story. She tells the Doctor what to tell her. emphasizing her own achievements as well as her relationships. For all that people use the shot of Amy at the graveyard crying as the last shot of her in the show, it's actually the shot of her hands superimposed over the Doctor reading her last letter- her typing her own story out, nails painted a bright flamboyant pink, wedding ring shining on her finger. Giving hope to both the Doctor and her younger self.
That being said, I do really wish the gravestone had said 'Pond' rather than 'Williams', especially since Steven Moffat outright said once that Rory took Amy's last name. Dammit.
Here's the thing: I loved Rory when he was constantly fridged because he was a male character that was being forced to function in that role and it was great. But past series 5 I just can't stand him or any of the writing except Neil Gaiman's episode. I'm glad that you like him so much, but the more people explain to me why they like him the more I hate him. It's all fantastically offensive to me and I hated it so much that I just dismissed it all as trash and so I don't actually have any specifics to debate about because it makes me that mad to watch the show anymore. I always find Amy choosing Rory as incredibly contrived because it makes no sense outside of "well... she has to. That's how it works." The entirety of Angels Take Manhattan still has me flamingly pissed off and I'd have to rewatch all of NuWho to explain why and I honestly dislike it so much I'm not going to subject myself to it. It's weird for me to even try and fight about it because I genuinely hate everything about NuWho except series 5, but I love 5 so much that it's hard for me to just stand up and say "I HATE DOCTOR WHO!" It's just that the way they use Rory thereafter, for me, directly subverts everything I loved so much about that ONE series.
Basically: I'm glad that you love Rory so much. Kudos and good luck.
I just thought it was really ham-handed with it's morality tales (I understand it's supposed to be a kid's show but UGH) and Ten especially got on my nerves. I mean with series 1 they were still trying to figure out what the show was going to be, so I can forgive most of that but with Ten? Bleargh. And then we throw in Rose (who just never grew on me) and what happened to Donna and I was ready to give up on the whole thing.
Now Jack Harkness!! Jack I adore. (I definitely go more for the morally ambiguous characters over the firmly absolutely right ones, but the moping with Ten goes overboard.) So for me it was like Torchwood 1-2 and then DW 5 and the rest I just despise.
I recently started watching Classic Who, though, and I find I like it a lot! But I'm also a big fan of really campy old science fiction things.
Doctor Who is so...odd in that it's constantly extorting the values of living in a fantasy world while knowing it can never commit to them, because the companions always have to leave because that's how the show works. So it has to take these girls, invite them into a beautiful, fantastical world...and then chew them up and spit them out. (See: Donna, and to some extent Rose.) So Amy got a nice intro into space-and-time travel, but then the narrative spun round to "no, Amy, get out while you can". Where Rory's, "we have to grow up sometimes" came from, I guess. He was her anchor.
Which is why I like him, because he essentially took on the female role in the Amy/Rory relationship: he did the waiting while Amy (later on) did the more proactive stuff, he was constantly fridged or almost-fridged to give Amy character moments, he functioned as her reward. He's very insecure and awkward a lot, but I don't think he ever, ever sought to control Amy (the closest he came was when he told the Doctor to stop hugging her, but I think that may have been because the Doctor was hugging her instead of answering the many questions Rory still had regarding his new baby daughter...or it's a callback to Mickey's same line in Journey's End, I dunno.)
And he never got to make a major choice at all really- he doesn't choose TARDIS travel until Amy tells him to come, he doesn't choose to die, he doesn't choose to end up in the Roman era, he doesn't choose to be dropped off the TARDIS (neither does Amy, true, but Rory doesn't even get an explanation!) he literally can't choose between two versions of his wife and Amy does it for him, etc. Whereas Amy does get to choose, and she always chooses Rory. (I like to think Angels Take Manhattan was just Amy's Choice on a larger scale, even their baby is there.)
Basically, I disagree that it turned into Rory's story- he spends a lot of time being the thing that motivates Amy rather than the other way around. He gets the odd heroic moment (A Good Man Goes To War for example) but Amy gets the heroic moments that actually change things. It's Amy who does the narration, Amy who gets to have the relationship with River, and - I liked this so much - it's Amy who gets to write her own story. She tells the Doctor what to tell her. emphasizing her own achievements as well as her relationships. For all that people use the shot of Amy at the graveyard crying as the last shot of her in the show, it's actually the shot of her hands superimposed over the Doctor reading her last letter- her typing her own story out, nails painted a bright flamboyant pink, wedding ring shining on her finger. Giving hope to both the Doctor and her younger self.
That being said, I do really wish the gravestone had said 'Pond' rather than 'Williams', especially since Steven Moffat outright said once that Rory took Amy's last name. Dammit.
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Basically: I'm glad that you love Rory so much. Kudos and good luck.
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But oh god, I'm so curious now. What happened with series 1-4? Was it the treatment of women/people of colour, or were you a Classic fan or...?
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Now Jack Harkness!! Jack I adore. (I definitely go more for the morally ambiguous characters over the firmly absolutely right ones, but the moping with Ten goes overboard.) So for me it was like Torchwood 1-2 and then DW 5 and the rest I just despise.
I recently started watching Classic Who, though, and I find I like it a lot! But I'm also a big fan of really campy old science fiction things.
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I really want to watch Classic Who! Well, more of it. I've only seen a few with Hartnell. :)
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