Episode #229 : The Girl Who Waited

"Right, okay, this is big news. This is temporal earthquake time. I'm now officially changing my own future. Hold on to your spectacles. In my past I saw my future-self refuse to help you. I'm now changing that future and agreeing. Every Law of Time says that shouldn't be possible."

Episode #229:      The Girl Who Waited.
Companions:        The 11th Doctor, Amy Pond, and Rory Williams.
Air Date:               10th September 2011

The Eleventh Doctor, Rory Williams and Amy Pond land on Apalapucia in the middle of a plague. Amy is left behind, and the Doctor and Rory must save her...but time for Amy is running at a different speed.

Every season of modern Doctor Who seems to have that one episode that just doesn't work. In the past we had Fear Her and Love & Monsters, for example. This time around this is that one story. The Girl Who Waited is one of those stories where rather than being action, excitement and strange aliens, it is all about repercussions and choices. The problem is that it doesn't even do it in a good way which is why it doesn't work for me.

Science fiction normally does well when it gives us something to think about. In this case we are looking again at the repercussions of travelling with the Doctor from Rory's point of view. He sees travelling blindly through time and space as dangerous and that the Doctor puts his companions at risk. Unlike previous episodes where we see the repercussions of his travels in this one we don't get the chance to say that what the Doctor did was right or wrong. Everything is seen the point of view of an angry Rory and two versions of Amy separated by thirty odd years.

It is nice character development for Rory after all this time but it lets the episode down being just full of exposition with nothing else to it. It is nice to have a companion who sees things differently than everyone else has. Even Tegan who left because of things that she saw and experienced never failed to see the wonders of time travel. It took me a long time to like the character of Rory and in this episode I go back to how he was he first appeared and I just don't like the portrayal.

Future Amy is also unlikeable in this one. The troupe of the future self who won't save their younger self and has become angry and bitter, is just overdone in science fiction. Amy in this story has become that troupe. It is old and clichéd. It doesn't work and it doesn't do anything to expand her character.

I'm sorry to say that I just don't enjoy this one.