I hope you're ready for my scathing review of The Girl Who Waited. Let's jump into it, shall we?
I loved it. Well, at least, I loved it compared to all the other episodes this series. It's definitely one I would willingly watch again. I'm sure I'll still find plenty of problems with it, though. However, I'm a little worried that if I watch it a second time through, I might stop liking it, since last series when I watched an episode for the second time, my feelings about it flipped 180˚. Although, I usually went from disliking to liking an episode. But again, that could just be because there was so much about Series 5 (and the first part of 6) that I vehemently didn't like. But I digress.
The Doctor takes Amy and Rory to Apalapucia. Due to Amy needing to get her camera phone, they get separated. It turns out that the planet is suffering from a plague which only affects those with two hearts - like the Doctor. It kills them within a day, but they are placed into "kindness centers", which allow them to live out their entire lives in the span of one day. There are magnifying glass-looking mirrors that let their loved ones watch. Therefore, even though they only have one day to live, the dying person does get to live out a long life.
While Rory and the Doctor entered one of the "watching" rooms, Amy accidentally entered one of the containment rooms, so she is on the "fast track", as Madame de Pompadour would call it. The span of a few seconds for Rory and the Doctor is a week for Amy. The Doctor says he'll get her out of there immediately, and he and Rory head back to the TARDIS. Because the Doctor is susceptible to the plague, he outfits Rory with glasses (which my husband promptly declared would become the new "Rory" costume) through which the Doctor can see.
Meanwhile, Amy has been wandering around the facility and discovered something called Interface, which I'm still not really sure about. I guess it's purpose is to give people information? There are also Interrodroids - I mean, Handbots - that distribute medication which would be fatal to humans. To escape from the Handbots and wait for the Doctor, Amy finds a mechanical room and writes "Doctor - I'm waiting" in lipstick.
The Doctor sends Rory out into the facility to find Amy, and when he does, he finds that they have gone into the wrong time stream, and she's aged 36 years. And she's not happy about it. She's been alone this whole time with only Interface and a disarmed (literally) Handbot that she's named Rory. The Doctor and Rory want to find the younger Amy, but Older Amy doesn't want to help. If she helps them rescue younger Amy, she'll have never existed. The Doctor finds younger Amy's correct time stream, and he instructs Rory to use the magnifying glass to speak with her. The two Amys have a conversation (which Older Amy remembers having 36 years ago) in which Older Amy refuses to help younger Amy. However, she reconsiders for Rory's sake, but says that they need to take her back in the TARDIS as well.
The Doctor agrees to this, saying that the TARDIS will be able to handle the paradox, so he sets about getting the two Amys into the same time stream. Rory, Amy and Amy head back to the TARDIS, but they are assaulted by Handbots. Older Amy shows off some more of her fighting skills, but Amy is brushed by one of the Handbots, and Rory picks her up and carries her into the TARDIS. The doors slam shut behind them. Older Amy disables most of the Handbots, and she begs the Doctor to let her into the TARDIS, but he refuses. He tells Rory that he lied about the paradox, and that only one Amy can exist. It's Rory's choice. Older Amy decides to sacrifice herself, and she bids Rory an emotional goodbye, telling him not to let her into the TARDIS, just before she is touched by a Handbot and (we assume) goes to her death.
In the TARDIS, Amy wakes up (she'd only been knocked out) and the first words out of her mouth are, "where is she"?
Repeat Ideas:
The whole time stream thing was just done in The Doctor's Wife, so I wasn't pleased with it popping up again. I know it wasn't real in The Doctor's Wife, but it was the same basic concept. However, it was pulled off successfully in The Girl Who Waited.
Dislikes:
1) I don't understand why Amy didn't just try to go back to the TARDIS in the week that she waited in the other room. And shouldn't she be severely dehydrated by now?
2) I don't understand why 36 years later, not only is she wearing the same clothes, she's wearing the same nail polish.
3) They could have really attempted to make her hands old. I kept noticing how her face was beautifully aged, but then she had the hands of a 24-year-old. It's just too bad that they can't do reverse aging to make River look less a grandmother.
4) I'm not sure I like the Doctor's new coat.
5) I would have preferred for Older Amy go back with them. Just Older Amy. She's a lot more interesting and sympathetic than Amy.
6) Amy makes a sonic screwdriver. Let me repeat that: Amy makes a sonic screwdriver. I have a very hard time believing that anyone can just "make" a sonic screwdriver. I'm going to just pretend it's like when you're a kid and you "make" binoculars out of two empty toilet paper rolls.
Likes:
1) Wow. Karen Gillan has more than one acting style other than wide eyes! It's so nice to know that the reason her acting sucks is because of the writing and directing. Because she knocked it out of the park in this episode. I really believed she had aged 36 years. She was worn, she'd put up walls, she had a kind of quiet bitterness. Brilliant. And I seriously cannot believe that I just said that about Karen Gillan.
2) For the first time this series, I was absolutely riveted. I was totally invested in what happened to these characters. I cared about them - I was crying like a baby during the entire exchange between Amy and Rory at the TARDIS. I hated to see Amy left behind - she didn't want to stay with the Doctor and Rory, she wanted to go off on her own and have a new life. She was absolutely a sympathetic character, and I was rooting for a way for both Amys to be able to go on.
3) Rory had brilliant lines, and he just keeps getting better and better all the time. I so wish that it was just the Doctor and Rory. I have a feeling that I'd like Doctor Who about 10 times as much if Amy were out of the picture. Seriously, I find I actually really like the Doctor when he's not around Amy. After watching several stories from the Second Doctor, I feel like Matt Smith and Arthur Darvil have a very similar chemistry to Patrick Troughton and Frazer Hines. And Amy is just the annoying Victoria who you'd wish would just get eaten by one of the Abominable Snowmen.
4) I liked how the Doctor blatantly lied about the TARDIS being able to manage a paradox for a short time. We knew he was lying almost immediately, and at one point we see things are starting to go wrong in the console room. It just makes the audience wonder exactly how much the Doctor lies about.
5) I'm sure there are all kinds of issues that I could have with the two time streams, but the fact that this episode was just so fun makes me not care about details. It made me feel like (most of) the RTD Doctor Who episodes did - yes, there are some plot holes, but they're not really critical to the story that is being told, so they're easily ignored. Plus, it's a lot easier to ignore the badness when there are more good things than bad things. And yes, I won't deny that there are many RTD episodes that I pretend never happened, like all the BS with the Master. (See, I'm critical when necessary, I don't just blindly love the RTD era!) God, he could have done such fantastic things with that storyline ... sorry, I'm off on a tangent again!
Let's wrap things up with a little bit of Karen Gillan on playing Older Amy.
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