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Doctor Who Companion Profile: Amy Pond

Doctor Who Companion Profile: Amy Pond

Karen Gillan as Doctor Who Companion Amy Pond

Amy Pond

Portrayed by: Karen Gillan, Caitlin Blackwood (Amelia)

Doctor(s): Eleventh Doctor

Tenure: 26 stories (31 episodes), from “The Eleventh Hour” (April, 2010) to “The Angels Take Manhattan” (Sept, 2012)

Background: Amelia Pond is a child when the TARDIS crash lands in her back yard. When the Doctor attempts to hop the TARDIS forward 5 minutes and overshoots by twelve years, Amy grows up with the Doctor as her childhood imaginary friend. She has somewhat of a difficult childhood, acting out and insisting that the Doctor is real to the point where she’s put into therapy. Amy is incredibly close with her best friend Mels and becomes good friends with Rory as well, and the two eventually start dating. Amy is working as a kissogram and still living in the same house when she next encounters the Doctor as a late teenager.

Family/Friends: Amy notably has almost no family when we meet her. She lives with an absentee aunt and we eventually discover that she should have a full, close family, but they had been lost due to the crack in time in Amy’s wall. After the Doctor reboots the universe, Amy has a tall mom and a funny little dad and she seems far more content in her childhood home.

Personality: Amy is confident, fun, and decisive. She is able to relate easily to people of all stripes and she’s very independent, happy to branch out on her own and explore. She’s brave, resilient, and adventurous (and more than a bit flirty) and while she may take a while to face her fears, she inevitably does so. Forceful at the best of times, Amy is deeply in love with her eventual husband, Rory, though it takes her a while to be sure of this, and her relationship with him and friendship with the Doctor are the two most important bonds in her world. She gladly puts her life on the line time and again to save them and, while she is robbed of her opportunity to raise her daughter, she is fiercely protective of her and vengeful towards those who took her away.

Special Skills: attitude, determination, interpersonal insight

Best Story: “The Girl Who Waited” puts Amy and Rory front and center in a way very few stories have, regardless of Companion, as does “Amy’s Choice”, and “The Pandorica Opens”/“The Big Bang” is one of the very few stories to feature two of the same Companion, in this case little Amelia as well as our Amy

Worst Story: “Victory of the Daleks”- spitfires in space and a robot bomb de-powered by love. Enough said.

Highlights of tenure: Amy’s wedding speech in “The Big Bang”, her sheer competence in “Dinosaurs on a Spaceship”, and her fury in “The Wedding of River Song”

Lowlights of tenure: Not seeming to care through the second half of series six that she’d been robbed of her daughter Melody (River), particularly when she encounters a young boy who doesn’t feel wanted by his parents in “Night Terrors”. Perhaps the most substantial bungling of a Companion’s arc in the entirety of NuWho

Memorable quotes:

– “Raggedy Man, I remember you, and you are late for my wedding.”  “The Big Bang”

– “If we’re going to die, let’s die looking like a Peruvian folk band.”  “Amy’s Choice”

– “The Doctor is very precious to me, you’re right. But do you know what else he is, Madame Kovarian? Not here. River Song didn’t get it all from you, sweetie.”  “The Wedding of River Song”

Other notes: After saying goodbye to and checking in on all of his Companions while regenerating into the Eleventh, the Doctor becomes incredibly attached to Amelia almost instantly. He seems far closer to her than he has been with most of his Companions. Amy and Rory are also the first married couple to travel in the TARDIS and one of only three total. The only other couples to travel with the Doctor (aside from the few episodes Rose and Mickey shared) are Ben and Polly, who traveled with the First and Second Doctors, and Ian and Barbara (yes, it’s never confirmed onscreen, but they were totally together), the Doctor’s first human Companions. Amy is also notable as the first Companion to share multiple adventures with the Doctor at significantly different ages.

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