When I began writing about Moffat’s Women, it was out of concern for the companion Steven Moffat had created in Amy Pond, as well as concern about the focus on Karen Gillan’s physical attributes rather than on the character’s intelligence or personality. Now that we’ve had a full series of Amy, how does she stack up?
Amy breaks the mold right away by virtue of her story. While she’s not the first companion to whom The Doctor has returned, she is the only companion that’s had a relationship with The Doctor that dates back to her childhood. The moment we meet Amelia Pond in “The Eleventh Hour,” we know that she is a tough girl who has faith. After all, she’s praying to Santa quite matter-of-factly, and isn’t the least bit surprised when her prayer for help with the voices coming from a crack in her wall is answered in the form of a crashed police box in her garden.
She fearlessly leaves her house to investigate the police box while still in her nightgown, and when she meets The Doctor, she interrogates him, invites him into her home, and agrees to go away with him. In a way, she is what Madame de Pompadour should have been, a young girl rescued from a life that was less than ideal for someone of her temperament and spirit.
Except that she wasn’t rescued right away, and this becomes the thing that defines her. When The Doctor doesn’t return “in five minutes” as he promises, seven year old Amelia Pond becomes misanthropic Amy Pond. Perhaps “misanthropic” is too strong a word, but she spends much of her life challenging the world to disappoint her after that. Even when she connects with someone, as she does with Rory, it’s held at arm’s distance. In “The Eleventh Hour,” when she introduces The Doctor to Rory, the fact that he’s her boyfriend isn’t something she’s comfortable making clear, let alone the fact that she and Rory are engaged to be married!
As she begins to travel with The Doctor, she is brave to the point of recklessness, throwing herself into danger simply because she can. In “The Beast Below,” she prides herself on ignoring signs telling her to keep out. Her fearlessness in the beginning of the fifth series feels less like bravery in the face of fear and more like the genuine fearlessness of someone who feels she has nothing to lose. She has no family and no future. She doesn’t allow herself a meaningful connection with Rory beyond their shared childhood history, and so she doesn’t consider keeping herself safe for his sake. She isn’t worried about her own safety at all. The world has already so thoroughly disappointed her that she doesn’t mind taking chances with her own life, because who would really care if anything happened to her?
This attitude changes over the course of the series, however, and it is this that makes her fascinating: watching her in her struggle to become Amelia again, the tough girl who has faith.
Though often reckless, causing herself to need saving in the first place, Amy started the fifth series saving the day almost to the point of making The Doctor look ineffectual. She is competent, intelligent, and a quick thinker. However, she is able to save the day so often, primarily because she is an insightful human being. In “The Beast Below,” despite The Doctor yelling at her, she is clear-thinking enough to remember what she’s learned about him so far (he can’t resist aiding a crying child) and put it together with what she’s experiencing (the Star Whale loves the children). She acts fast, disconnects the Star Whale, and shows everyone that it would have been happy to help if only humanity had just asked. No torture required!
In “Victory of the Daleks,” Amy not only convinces Winston Churchill to use Dalek techology to modify Spitfires, but she is the one able to properly implement The Doctor’s idea of convincing Professor Bracewell, who is himself a product of Dalek technology containing a wormhole that could destroy the Earth, that he is more human than machine, which deactivates the wormhole. While The Doctor attempts to remind him of his childhood home or his parents, she in her insightful humanity knows that the most powerful thing she could help this man remember is true love.
It’s interesting that Amy reminds Bracewell, as well as The Doctor, of the importance of love. Many of her interactions with people in her travels with The Doctor are based in love, in caring for others, in reading and understanding people’s motivations, but love is a luxury she doesn’t allow herself, because love requires trust, and that isn’t something she can easily give. When she does give it, it makes her afraid.
She has the love of her life in Rory, and yet she pounces on The Doctor at the end of “Flesh and Stone,” and when The Doctor takes her and Rory to Venice in “The Vampires of Venice,” she has Rory play her brother in their plan to infiltrate the school for girls. She is sexually mature, but emotionally immature. She is uneasy with Rory for most of the episode, but finally comes to her senses and realizes that she can have the man she loves and adventure with The Doctor.
It is in the episode “Amy’s Choice,” however, where we really get to see what Amy truly cares about, and what she’s capable of. It is here where she finally grows up. When the “Dream Lord” (who turns out to be a manifestation of The Doctor’s dark side caused by psychic pollen) gives Amy the choice of a reality with The Doctor on the TARDIS and a reality with Rory in their small, but boring, hometown, she chooses Rory, realizing after a harrowing experience that she didn’t want to live in a reality that didn’t include him. Despite being brazen and badass in dangerous situations, it is this admission of love that gives her real power, strength, and maturity.
The interesting thing about the companions in the recent re-imagining of Doctor Who is that they each seem to be sometimes less-than-cultured, sometimes brilliant, but always average. The Doctor sees something above-average in them, however, and draws it out, allowing them to live to their fullest potential. Amy started out above-average, an Alpha Female in a small town. Her time with The Doctor has allowed her to be re-introduced (eventually quite literally!) to her younger self; the self that believed in people and in magic; the self that admitted when she loved. It has allowed her to find the beauty in being small sometimes. She’s taken the opposite journey of all the other companions in New Who, and yet a more profound one. Karen Gillan, by the way, is the perfect actress to take this character on, and has impressed me all season with her depth and range.
I define a successful female character as a woman with agency who is portrayed as a multi-faceted person. A person who sometimes talks about men she loves, but sometimes doesn’t. A person who is sometimes fearless, but sometimes isn’t. A person who sometimes does the right thing, but sometimes doesn’t. Amy certainly has agency. The decision to travel in the TARDIS was her own, and she could never be told to do something she didn’t want to do. She traveled with a boyfriend, and now has a husband, yet it is clear that he is only (albeit the most important) part of her life. Her life doesn’t revolve around him, or even The Doctor.
And for every time she’s brilliant, she does something dumb. For every time she saves the day, she makes a mistake. She’s complex, she’s flawed, and she’s wonderfully real and easy to relate to even though she has looks many women would kill for. By the end of the fifth series, she is also a mature woman who has learned the value of vulnerability, and that it is very different from weakness. She is sort of a modern Katherine from The Taming of the Shrew. It is for these reasons that Amy stands with Sally Sparrow as one of the best female characters Steven Moffat has created for Doctor Who.
For once, BBC America is doing the right thing and airing the Doctor Who Christmas special the same day in the U.S. as it airs in the U.K.—Smithmas! I mean, Christmas. And I’m looking forward to it, as well as to watching Amy’s journey throughout the sixth series when it begins in Spring 2011!
Teresa Jusino was born on the same day that Skylab fell. Coincidence? She doesn’t think so. Her “feminist brown person” take on pop culture has been featured on websites like ChinaShopMag.com, PinkRaygun.com, Newsarama, and PopMatters.com. Her fiction has appeared in the sci-fi literary magazine, Crossed Genres, and her essay “Why Joss is More Important Than His ‘Verse” is included in the upcoming book WHEDONISTAS: A Celebration of the Worlds of Joss Whedon By the Women Who Love Them, coming in March 2011! Get Twitterpated with Teresa, or visit her at The Teresa Jusino Experience.
Amy Pond is amazing and I want a girl like that. The redhair too. And the tallness.
Ah but anyways, a word about the companions. I must confess, Amy has caused me to go back and look at Rose (because, let’s be real, who of us didn’t want things with her to happen and who didn’t at least get choked up at the season 2 finale?) and find myself a little disappointed. Rose was always fun but Rose is…well, she’s not clever.
Martha was just sorta there. I had a friend who hated her for not being Rose but I went with it and she had a couple of moments (getting Shakespeare to yell “Expelliarmus” for instance) but mostly, she was just kinda there and pining for the Doctor. (and on a side-note, her and Mickey? Huh.)
And then, there was Donna. Donna was great because Donna was liable to smack the crap out of the Doctor and that was a breath of fresh air. Donna was fun.
But Amy? Oh, Amy. Amy is my favorite. Amy everything a clever, adventureous person should be. Resourceful, willing to take the leap and by the time she’s gone through her character arc, she is utterly brilliant. And as a character, she is so human. She is flawed and shining and fantastic.
This is a really great rundown of Amy Pond, Teresa. The focus has been on the Doctor taking more emotional responsibility for so long that I never even considered that a companion could be the same!
@1. OMG DONNA. I hated Donna so much in The Runaway Bride and now I wish she had never left. The Doctor has had admirers and lovers but Donna was the only one I’d ever genuinely call The Doctor’s best friend. Catherine Tate played that part so well, in a million little ways.
While she’s not the first companion to whom The Doctor has returned, she is the only companion that’s had a relationship with The Doctor that dates back to her childhood.
Susan Foreman?
@james – Heh. I don’t count Susan. First, because she was his granddaughter, so I don’t really consider her a separate companion. She was traveling with him anyway. And second, well…I just don’t count her. Because she was useless. :)
Though I’m working on another series about The Women of Classic Who! :) Stay tuned…
I love you. THIS. THIS IS EXACTLY WHY I LOVE HER. One point, because I don’t think it’s ever been established via in-universe chronology – I don’t know that Amy and Rory were engaged as of initial events in The Eleventh Hour, (obv., by end of ep, yes. I may be parsing that sentence badly.)
I’m fascinated by Amy’s lack of deference to the Doctor, myself. I think that in both Amy and River, Moffat’s intent is to upset the apple cart of how women relate to the Doctor.
It absolutely works for me. :)
I’m clearly going to be the odd woman out here, but I never really gelled with Amy. It took a good half the season for me to even tolerate her mere existence, but by the end of it she moved up to third most interesting new companion (below Rose and Donna but above Martha because, well, she’s Martha).
I never saw her as all that bright. All she ever did was ask incessant and inane questions that she really could’ve figured out on her own if she’d shut up for two seconds and think. And she totally could’ve done better than Rory; that’s a marriage that’ll be dead in less than 5 years, no matter what those future Amy/Rory imply. Hell, Rory could’ve done better than Amy. But I also dislike this version of River. Loved her in Silence but can’t stand this younger version of her.
Where the rest of you see Amy and River standing up to Eleven I see arrogance and self-conceit. I don’t see wit or cleverness but selfishness and talking without saying anything useful at all. They’re unpleasantly aggressive rather than challenging and brave. Madame Pompadour spoke from a place of intelligence and confidence, and she was as close to an intellectual “equal” as The Doctor will probably ever find. Amy speaks but doesn’t say anything, and River shouts too much and says nothing of depth or meaning except to imply some vast Lost-like intrigue.
Rose risked her life multiple times to save The Doctor and Donna risked her sanity. What has Amy done? Um…she got the shivers and fell asleep as the TARDIS froze up. She doesn’t “do”, she merely reacts. The only time she “does” something is when she’s forced to by Eleven or because if she doesn’t then Moffatt would have a one-sided scene.
But it’s an excellent post, Teresa, and I certainly appreciate (though diverge) from your viewpoint :)
Donna is my favorite companion because – as someone else said earlier up the thread – she was a best friend and a breath of fresh air. Amy comes a close second. Rose and Martha were the Doctor’s companions, but the Doctor and Rory are, to some extent, Amy’s boys. And I love that.
I hadn’t seen this series on Moffat’s women until today and went back to read the previous ones. All good, insightful articles. But where’s River Song? Except for Amy, she’s had more screen time than any other of Moffat’s women. Did I manage to just skip over that article?
And yet there’s always going to be someone–often female–who sees arrogance in a woman where other people see strength. It is what it is and there’s nothing we can do about it.
I wonder what kind of world it’d be if more people saw arrogance in men instead of strength. Because so often, it is the former and not the latter.
Kristen @5 – a friend of mine actually called me on that re: Rory & Amy’s engagement. I’m not sure either. I haven’t seen the ep in a while, so I’ll have to go back and see.
Milo1313 @6 – I’m so used to you disagreeing with me, it doesn’t even phase me anymore. :) In fact, if you ever DO agree with me, I’ll start checking the skies for pigs in flight. Although, I really don’t understand how you don’t see how good Rory is for Amy and vice versa. They need each other. And love each other too, which helps. :) Don’t understand how you think she’s not intelligent or clever when I gave two examples of moments when she was just that – processing information, making a decision, acting on it. What more do you want? Lastly, if you notice, the thing I love most about Amy is that she’s flawed in a realistic way. I don’t need her to be perfect and all strength all the time, I need her to be real in a way I believe, and she is. I love the way we see that the change in her that needs to happen is a reverse of what happens to the other companions. While the others had to get stronger and more assertive, Amy has to learn to tone it down a notch. I find that journey interesting, and also more difficult, as it’s harder to become more humble when you already think a lot of yourself. However, I wasn’t comparing Amy positively or negatively to the other companions, just saying that her journey was different from theirs. I LOVE Donna and Martha (and will never understand how so many people don’t like Martha, as if they don’t understand unrequited love, or as if walking the freaking planet to spread the Doctor’s message wasn’t doing enough), though I never saw the big deal about Rose, except that she had the best “love story” I guess…? I liked her, but I also didn’t care when she was gone. I think you’ve oversimplified the power of the choice Amy makes in “Amy’s Choice.” Seriously. Choice IS an action, not a reaction.
JCHicks @7 – I talk about River in the Moffat’s Women post titled “The Women of the Library.” Thank you for reading! :)
Dana1974 @8 – AGREED. :)
dana1974 @8: That’s a rather unfair criticism of me. I am a staunch feminist and take offense at making such a blanket statement. I was making a comment about a fictional tv character. Donna was strong, Rose was strong, Martha was strong. Amy as a child was strong, but Amy as an adult wasn’t IMO. River as an older woman was, but the woman we encountered this season wasn’t. They both talk tough but have no real cleverness to back it up. And yeah, the Doctor is an arrogant bastard, and that’s always been one of my least favorite of his qualities, (when Eleven screamed at the Big Bads in “Pandorica” I wanted to smack him and tell him to shtum) but at least he has the brains and experience to back it up.
Teresa @9: Take Amy and Rory out of their small village and put them somewhere with more possibilities of romance and they will suddenly find themselves with nothing to hold them together. They are together merely because of circumstance. Amy doesn’t even decide she loves him until she realizes there’s no one else. And I guess for me making a choice when there is really only one thing she can choose isn’t a real dramatic plot point. If you know Bruce Willis is dead to begin with it makes the whole discovery aspect rather dull. I was bored through that whole ep whenever Eleven wasn’t freaking out.
I guess my biggest problem is that where the other companions felt like real people to me stuck in plausible situations Amy feels like a construct. I feel like she’s only there, that she only does stuff because Moffatt needed someone for Eleven to interact with. At least River is useful and feels like she has a life outside her interaction with Eleven. Amy is interchangable to me. Martha was as well, but that became a plot point once she realized she was really only there to fill the void left by Rose. Donna took her replacement status and messed with it to the point where the role became her own. Eleven likes Amy tremendously but I still don’t see her as vital to him yet or to the story (same goes for Rory). She has great chemistry with “her boys” but chemistry can only go so far. It’s very telling my opinions toward Amy in that my favorite ep this season was “The Lodger” in which she has a very small role and my least favorite was “Vincent and The Doctor” in which she has a very huge role.
Milo1313 @10
“Take Amy and Rory out of their small village and put them somewhere with more possibilities of romance and they will suddenly find themselves with nothing to hold them together. They are together merely because of circumstance. Amy doesn’t even decide she loves him until she realizes there’s no one else.”
Well, that can be said of any couple, couldn’t it? If they weren’t living where they were living, they’d be different people, and then yes, there’s a chance they might fall in love with other people. But the fact is, they grew up together. He understands her in a way that she doesn’t seem to allow others to. She didn’t just decide in “Amy’s Choice” that she loved him, she realized that she did. There’s a difference. She’s always loved him, she just didn’t let herself acknowledge it. As much of an Alpha Female as she was, and as much time as she spent as a “kissogram”, do you really think there was NO one else she could’ve had if she wanted to? She chose Rory for a reason – he knew her best, and saw past the walls she puts up. He chose her for a reason – he was drawn to her strength and liveliness. I think they really suit each other.
And I loved both “The Lodger” AND “Vincent and the Doctor” – though “Vincent” had me BAWLING. I thought Vincent’s interactions with Amy were beautiful.
Teresa @11: I’ll grant you that about Rory and Amy. I didn’t feel that in the script. It all just seems to be assumed and, to me, if you’re going to have stuff happen off screen then you have to build enough of a foundation to support the suppositions, otherwise it turns into a fanfic-like wild guessing game of who did what. We are supposed to believe that they spent all their time growing up together and that somehow that means that they’re in love or something, but I never felt the reason behind her choice other than he was there and is willing to put up with her. He loves her and she loves him, but I just don’t understand why. I don’t feel the pull or the passion or the need or anything else. There may have been someone else that she might have wanted, but without giving her a reason to choose him – or making her actively choose between Rory and someone else – it just felt meaningless to me.
“Vincent” was terribly sad, but I cared more about that poor blind alien creature they killed than Vincent’s relationship with Amy. I liked the Bill Nighy cameo though.
@milo Bill Nighy and his bowtie, yeeeeaaah! Haha, definitely had a nice little fanboi giggle over that. Now then, onto the subject at hand. I give you some props for your points. They are quite good. I have one thought towards an explanation for your point about foundation that has more to do with the writers.
As we all know, a whole new team was stepping in for this season and while Moffat was old hat, he’s now heading everything and not just a writer. And first seasons or new teams usually have some bumps to get passed. So, maybe some of these points were a part of that. We’ll see next season, I suppose, eh?
In any case, I would agree about young River being rather…overzealous at times. And as for your point about the Doctor’s arrogance, given his age, experience and intellect, it’s hard to imagine him not displaying that facet at times, however the point you brought up, I never took for arrogance. He was trying to buy himself some time to figure things out and why not play up who he is to his enemies, ya know?
And for the record, my favorite episode was the Lodger just cause it was so 11 heavy. Matt really has replaced David for me. I’ll be stoned by fangirls for that, but it’s true. I loved David, I did, he was brilliant but Matt’s whole energy and vibe and mannerisms connect with me more.
Ashe @13: “The Lodger” is probably one of my fave Who eps ever created precisely because Smith absolutely rocked it. The Pandorica thing, yeah, that was a lot of talk, but there’s a lot of truth behind it as well. It’s indicative of his general behavior. And arrogance isn’t necessarily a bad trait, it’s just generally a very intense one.
I hope that next season will smooth out some of the character issues I have with this past season. I have the same hope with The Walking Dead which, come to think of it, seems to be suffering from a similar syndrome as Moffat’s Who. Chalk it up to a writing team still finding their feet?
@milo: Usually, that’s always, ALWAYS the case with a first season. You’re figuring out where you’re going and what you’re doing and how to do it and you’re on a schedule. But yes, I have the same hope.
“it’s just generally a very intense one.” Well, the Doctor IS a pretty intense guy haha.
One thing that strikes me about Amy is that, without the negative qualities of being a MarySue, she’s very much an author stand in.
We have a child who is obsessed with the Doctor, and who loves story-creation and imaginative play. As she grows up, the adults around her try to get her to give up her “imaginary friend” and her delight in stories.
But when she grows up, she discovers the Doctor can really be part of her life. And the person she falls in love with, rather than expecting her to be conventional, joins her first in her imaginative play about the Doctor, and later in her adventuring with the Doctor.
If that isn’t a parallel for a writer who loved Doctor Who as a child, and grew up to write stories and have a wife who works producing stories, I’m not sure what is.
And this author stand-in aspect of the story tends to get overlooked, with Rory being seen as an author-stand in, as a geeky guy who winds up with the town beauty.
***
As far as Amy’s Choice goes, I have to disagree that she chooses Rory over the Doctor. As long as she’s expected to choose between them, Amy can’t choose. What she chooses is the option to have it all – to have Rory alive, and with her, and both of them being in the TARDIS with the Doctor. She realizes that she can’t bear living without Rory, when he dies in the dream world.
It would have been interesting to see what Amy would have done if Rory had died in the TARDIS dream instead of the small-town dream. So that she was choosing between small-town life with Rory, but without the Doctor, versus TARDIS life with the Doctor but not Rory.
But I’m glad she gets to have it all, and that she doesn’t have to choose between love and friendship, or domesticity and adventure.
The point about Rory being that Amy loves him enough so that she’ll be content with small-town life, if it is small-town life with him, even though that type of life has no appeal for her in and of itself. If he wants that life, she can’t reject it, and him, even for adventures with the Doctor in the TARDIS.
The dream of the Doctor and the TARDIS, on the other hand, is everything she ever dreamed of as a child growing up. She’s vindicated in her believe in her imaginary friend, she leaves behind the boredom that she feels in small-town life. It’s everything she wanted – but she’s not sure that Rory is happy in that dream, and she can’t reject the potential Rory’s happiness.
Rory is enough of an adult that he has his doubts about life with the Doctor, particularly in the long-term. But he does grow to enjoy the adventure, in part because it makes Amy so happy, and because he has a chance to develop his own place in the adventure, no longer having to pretend to be the Doctor but being invited by Amy to join them because she wants him.
Ursula @16 –
“What she chooses is the option to have it all – to have Rory alive, and with her, and both of them being in the TARDIS with the Doctor. She realizes that she can’t bear living without Rory, when he dies in the dream world.”
Actually, that’s not the choice she makes, that’s just the lucky thing that ends up happening. The choice she makes is that, when he dies, she decides that either he’s not really dead, because the small town world is the fake world, OR he is dead, and so she doesn’t care if she dies, too. She says as much. She doesn’t want to live in a world without Rory in it. Meaning, she doesn’t choose The Doctor if that means she has to do it without Rory. Meaning that she chooses Rory.
However, that’s a really interesting point you bring up about Amy being a stand-in for Moffat! I like that idea! :)
it’s interesting to look at the women of Moffat compared to the women of RTD.
with the exception of Donna (who was really just the embodiment Catherine Tate and even then she was severely punished for no reason) they’ve all been pretty one dimensional Doctor-worshippers.
You have Martha who was defined by her unrequited love for the Doctor and therefor punished for it by being turned into the one-note warrior without any real reason (the only times Martha was truly exceptional was when she was under the guiding pen of Paul Cornell, where she basically took care of the Doctor in a racist society, and Steven Moffat, even though brief, she took a job for the Doctor’s own survival and at the same time was able to be sympathetic towards Billy when he first landed in ’69, all the other times she was just shown bitching about not being Rose)
There’s the squadron of random female characters and one-off companions that pretty much bowed their heads down in adoration of the Doctor. Be it Kylie Minogue sacrificing herself for him for no real reason other than a way to look cool falling down in slow motion or Christina DeSouza being all cocky around him while talking endlessly about how amazing he is.
and then there’s Rose. She started off fine as an Ace remake but she ended up being this snot nosed little brat who would get all cocky and jealous everytime the Doctor invites someone else to the TARDIS all leading up to her essentially destroying the fabric of space and time just because she wants to get back together with the Doctor (which she wasn’t even reprimanded properly for)
compare them to all the women you’ve written about in these articles and you’ll come to realize just how great a writer Moffat really is.
Moffat’s portrayal of women are a laugh. RTD gave character depth and buildup to his companions, Moffat in the other hand throws character only to use them as plot devices. Mind you, the only reason the Doctor took Clara and Amy is because they’re puzzles and mystery for him. They didn’t even grow as characters. We see Amy living normally as kiss-o-gram and then turned to become a divorced model because she can’t give Rory a child…what (be thankful Rory’s around to save your cringe-worthy character). And Moffat can’t salvage this mess so he made Amy the mother of another plothole which is River Song. Don’t even get started with the pregnancy. Ugh i just hate how Moffat totally changed her character from little girl Amelia who had so much potential. Clara is another mess of a character in the making, no story, no depth, nothing to relate her character, just a mysterious girl always around in times of trouble so the Doctor took her in to solve her puzzle. Aren’t companions the eyes and sentiments of the audience? I miss characters and companions I can relate to and I don’t think I’m getting that from Moffat. Whatever people say about Rose there’s no denying she grew up to become strong and reliable. She ended up saving the world. Martha learned to let go and continue on to the thing she wanted most. Donna learned to believe in herself and carry herself not as temp but a very important person in the universe. I love Moffat’s Sherlock but creating relatable female characters isn’t his knack to be honest.
“I love Moffat’s Sherlock but creating relatable female characters isn’t his knack to be honest.”
With all due respect, Matthew_900, you are – I assume – a man. What makes you think you are the ultimate arbiter of whether a female character is ”relatable” or not?
I find both River and Amy very relatable.