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Doctor Who/Recap/S32/E10 The Girl Who Waited: Difference between revisions
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The Doctor lands the TARDIS, claiming to Amy and Rory that they have arrived at Apalapucia, a futurist holiday resort. But on opening the door, they find themselves in a clinically white room, a single door in front of them. Amy returns to the TARDIS to retrieve her phone, while the Doctor and Rory step ahead and examine the door, which has a panel with two buttons. Rory hits the green top one, revealing yet another clinically white waiting room behind it. They enter it, the door closing behind them. Amy, by now, has left the TARDIS, and, figuring them to have gone through the door, hits the [[Oh Crap|second]] [[Red Pill, Blue Pill|red button]] and enters the room.
Neither party sees the other, causing both to freak out. The Doctor observes a strange lens in the middle of the room. On activation, it allows them to see Amy. They try to have Amy leave the room, but the button on her side doesn't work, and when Rory tries to leave and enter via the second button, Amy's not to be found. The Doctor and Rory are surprised by the appearance of a white, faceless robot with human hands. The Doctor asks the Handbot about the situation and discovers that Apalapucia is in quarantine. It's facing the Chen7 plague that affects beings with two hearts. They're in the Two Streams treatment facility for plague victims and their loved ones. Through the lens, Amy is yelling at them, because she's been there [[Cube|for a week now]]. She doesn't need food or sleep or water. She's just very, very scared.
The Doctor, in a panic, realizes that Amy has found herself in an accelerated time stream. It allows an infected being to live out their full life within the short period that it takes for the plague to kill them. Their loved ones can see that full life unfolding rapidly from the observation rooms though a time lens. When the Handbot fails to recognize them as alien and tries to administer a vaccine, the Doctor warns Rory to stay away, knowing the dose would be fatal.
The Doctor quickly tells Amy, through the lens, to stay away from the Handbots, because their disinfectant might seriously harm her human biology. He sonics the lens off the stand. He also tells her to wait for them, as they will be there soon. The Doctor and Rory race back to the TARDIS, and the Doctor fiddles with the lens mechanism to use it to lock onto Amy's time stream out of thousands occurring simultaneously in the facility.
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After a brief tussle with the TARDIS controls, the Doctor provides Rory with his sonic screwdriver, the lens, and a pair of glasses. The glasses are a camera, wired to relay what Rory sees and hears back to the TARDIS, since the Doctor (having two hearts) cannot venture inside without becoming infected himself. Rory tries to follow Amy's footsteps, but he's soon surrounded by Handbots, ready to sedate him...
...until they are attacked by a swordsman and deactivated. Rory looks to his savior. It's Amy, but a much older and much angerier Amy. When she realizes the Doctor can hear her, she reveals that it's been 36 years. 36 years of hell. The Doctor immediately warns Rory that if they option to save the older Amy, they will be unable to go back to rescue the younger version without creating a time paradox. Rory tries to convince Amy to help find her younger self, but she adamantly refuses. She no longer wants to be rescued. She wants to be left the hell alone. Rory is a memory long gone, and the Doctor is her personal devil. If her younger self were to be rescued, she would die, and 36 years would have been for nothing. She tells Rory to just go away. The Last Centurion tries to explain to his wife that age, pain and years of loneliness ''really'' aren't unfamiliar to him.
Rory follows the older Amy into the bowels of the facility, discovering where she has hidden herself from detection. There, her own companion is a (literally) disarmed Handbot, which she has drawn a dorky face on and named "Rory". She also built herself a sonic screwdriver (which she calls a "probe", because ''fuck'' the Doctor's terms), which the Doctor is pretty damn impressed with. Again, the Doctor tries to gain Amy's help but she flatly refuses. He's the one who left her there. He's the one who abandoned her for 36 years. He's the one who didn't check if the planet would be dangerous before landing. "That's not how I travel," he tries to protest, which earns him an extremely painful [[What the Hell, Hero?]] from Rory.
Rory uses the lens to discover younger Amy, in the same room but 36 years prior, sobbing to herself. Rory tries to convince the older Amy to say something to her younger self, but the older Amy can only remain pessimistic, remembering herself on the other end of this conversation and being told there would be no hope. Older Amy just doesn't want to die. And when the time comes for younger Amy to be on the other end of this talk, 36 years from now, she'll say the same thing. But [[Arc Words|time can be rewritten]]. Younger Amy finally convinces her older self to help, not for herself, but for Rory's sake. The revelation sparks a change in the older Amy and she agrees, but only on one condition: the Doctor must rescue ''both'' Amys. Older Amy can live her own life. She can visit the Ponds on Christmas, she can be distant, she can be independent, she'll think of a way to make it work. The Doctor frets, worried about that being too much stress on the TARDIS, but ultimately agrees.
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== Tropes ==
* [[Acting for Two]]: Older and younger Amys.
* [[Action Girl]]: Older Amy is kicking ass and taking names.
* [[Action Survivor]]: Older Amy; it's kind of a necessity when you're trapped in an empty facility and hunted non-stop by robots that will unintentionally kill you.
* [[Apocalypse How]]: Apalapucia is under planet-wide quarantine thanks to the plague.
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* [[Bizarre Alien Biology]]: The robots can kill you with kindness if you have the wrong biology. The reason the Doctor is stuck on the TARDIS is because Chen 7 only affects two-hearted races.
* [[The Blank]]: The Handbots.
* [[Bottle Episode]]: Almost everything is white rooms; Karen Gillan [[Acting for Two|Acts For Two]] and the TARDIS fizzes a bit, plus there are robots and a quick shot of a garden, but there is nothing beyond that.
* [[Break the Cutie]]: Rory really gets put through the wringer in this one. Amy too in those thirty six years, although we only see the end result.
* [[Call Back]]: Older Amy and Rory's conversation as they lean on each side of the TARDIS's door seems to be a parallel to the wall scene in "Doomsday," especially given Rory's earlier line, ''"This isn't fair. You're turning me into you!"''. Older Amy's line ''"Amy Pond in the TARDIS with Rory Williams."'' also echoes Mickey's ''"That's the Doctor, in the TARDIS, with Rose Tyler."'' line from "The Age of Steel" (a line itself later reprised in a deleted scene from "Journey's End").
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* [[Companion Cube]]: Rory the Handbot, the eternally faithful pet. Even young!Amy is surprised that the other Amy didn't call it the Doctor or their favorite cat, Biggles.
* [[Continuity Nod]]:
** The check-in girl makes a reference to "Disneyland [[Doctor Who
** [[Doctor Who/Recap/S32
** The [[What the Hell, Hero?]] quote is reminiscent of what [[Doctor Who
** Rory calling the Doctor out on his actions at the end of this episode seemed pretty remiscent of Steven Taylor doing the same, some [[Doctor Who/Recap/S3
** Amy [[Doctor Who/Recap/S32
** Amy's husband is [[Doctor Who/Recap/S31
* [[Cranial Processing Unit]]: Stab a robot in the head, it dies. Or hit it with a painting. Y'know, whatever's on hand.
* [[Cruel Mercy]]: Unfortunate and unintended; the Apalapuchian mercy traps Amy in a time-shifted paradise. Not to mention that anyone who is immune to Chen 7 will be killed by the Vaccine.
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* [[Improvised Weapon]]: The Mona Lisa.
* [[Inherently Funny Words]]: Apalapucia.
** It also sounds remarkably like some butcherings I've heard of "Appalachia" from people who've never heard how it's pronounced before.
* [[Insistent Terminology]]: Older Amy insists on calling everything what it is. "Sonic screwdriver" is too whimsical. It's a ''probe''.
** Also, useful as it is, she doesn't want to be reminded of the Doctor.
* [[Jade Coloured Glasses]]: {{spoiler|Older Amy. Thirty-six years of absolute solitude, constant danger, and waiting for a rescue that never comes will have that effect.}}
* [[Just Following Orders|Just Following Programming]]: The handbots aren't ''trying'' to hurt anyone, it's just that their medicine isn't made for humans and would be lethal to Amy. This is the second time this season [[Doctor Who/Recap/S32
* [[Just for Pun]]: To make him harmless, {{spoiler|Older Amy}} disarmed Rory the Handbot. ''Literally.''
** 'armless, rather?
* [[Katanas Are Just Better]]: Older Amy certainly wields one very well.
** Justified in that it's improvised weaponry, and thus probably something she pulled off a display wall in the museum.
** Or given that she's in an adventure park, she could have grabbed one because they were intended to be used for entertainment purposes.
* [[Kick the Dog]]: When Old!Amy and Rory first meet, she bluntly tells him that he didn't save her. He looks understandably crushed.
* [[Lampshade Hanging]]: The creepy robots see with their creepy hands. The Doctor wonders, "Why not just give them eyes?" {{spoiler|The reason for that is because [[Body Horror|the head is where the syringe guns are kept]].}}
* [[Let's Get Dangerous]]: Rory, once again. And Amy has decided to become concentrated badass.
* [[Literal Metaphor]]: Don't worry, Amy disarmed the robot.
* [[Loss of Identity]]: Older!Amy argues that she would rather be saved now as opposed to the past, since time would be rewritten and she would more-or-less die.
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* [[Running Gag]]:
** "Glasses are cool".
** The (in)famous fez gets mentioned again.
* [[Sadistic Choice]]: Rory can only choose to save one of his wives; the young, cheerful Amy he set out to protect, or the older, bitter Amy who is desperate to not be abandoned again. {{spoiler|In the end, he chooses the younger one, at Older Amy's behest.}} See [[What the Hell, Hero?]] below for the quote that sums it up.
** For bonus points, {{spoiler|Older Amy could understand what he went through as the Last Centurion, or he could spare younger Amy that fate. He rejected the selfish choice, but only with help. "If you love me, don't let me in."}} This episode is effectively "[[Doctor Who/Recap/S31
* [[Scenery Porn]]: Brief, but it's there.
* [[Sci-Fi Writers Have No Sense of Scale]]: Amy's a remarkable woman indeed if she's managed to remain so stable after her predicament. Even the first week would affect most people a LOT more than what we've seen.
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** And also, if the inhabitants of a major tourist planet had thought to incorporate more judgment and biological scanning equipment than God gave a mosquito into their beyond-state-of-the-art quarantine facility and its robots, they might actually check to see if a given alien is even capable of carrying the plague, never mind what medications work on it.
* [[We Named the Monkey "Jack"]]: Rory the Handbot.
* [[What the Hell, Hero?]]:
** Until younger!Amy can sway her opinion, older!Amy spends the whole episode viciously grilling the Doctor.
{{quote|'''Amy:''' I waited. I waited for you. ''I waited.''}}
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