Story 222 - The Girl Who Waited

In which the Doctor takes Amy and Rory to the planet Apalapucia, one of the most popular holiday destinations in the universe. On stepping out of the TARDIS, however, they are presented with a corridor of stark white walls. There is a door with two buttons - one with a green anchor symbol, and the other with a red waterfall one. As Amy pops back into the ship to get her mobile so she can take some photographs, the Doctor and Rory go through the door using the green anchor button. Amy follows a few moments later, but by pushing the red waterfall button. She is surprised to find the room beyond empty, whilst the Doctor and Rory wonder why she hasn't followed them. In the room where they find themselves they see a large object like a magnifying glass, and when looking into it they see Amy. She tells them she has been waiting in the room for hours, whilst for them it has only been a few minutes. The Doctor realises that there are two time-streams in operation in this complex, and Amy is in a separate one from him and Rory. A faceless white robot appears, which has human-like hands, and from it they learn that there is an infection on Apalapucia of the deadly virus Chen-7 - known as the "one day plague", as victims die within 24 hours of contracting it. The Doctor is horrified to hear of this as it only affects people with binary cardiac systems. he must isolate himself in the TARDIS immediately whilst he works out how to retrieve Amy. She is trapped within the infected people's time stream, where victims of the plague can lead a longer life in their faster time-stream. The magnifying glasses allow the friends and families of victims to communicate with the infected. The Doctor warns that the robots - Handbots - will attempt to cure Amy even though she doesn't have the infection, and their medicines will be fatal. She must not let them touch her.

Amy must pass into the medical complex proper and find somewhere to hide. She finds that there is a computer interface she can access, which allows her entry into a number of different entertainment zones. The Handbots are everywhere, however. In the TARDIS, the Doctor has brought the magnifying glass and has linked it to the TARDIS scanner, and to a pair of spectacles which Rory can wear. As he only has one heart, Rory must go alone into the complex to find a rescue his wife. The Doctor must quarantine himself in the ship and can only offer guidance using the spectacles. Rory enters the complex using the red waterfall button and sets out to find Amy. She, meanwhile, has found out that if two Handbots touch each other they will disable each other temporarily. She also discovers that the massive time engines which power the faster time-stream generate a field which shields her from their sensors. She leaves a lipstick message that she is hiding out near the engines in a service area. Rory sees this now faded message using the magnifier. he is attacked by a group of Handbots, but is rescued by a woman wearing makeshift armour. This proves to be Amy, who is now decades older. She takes Rory to her base, where he discovers that she has a Handbot companion which she has named  after him. She has drawn a face on it, but also removed its hands.

She is extremely bitter at having been abandoned by the Doctor, blaming him personally for her situation. Rory has to agree, angry that the Doctor failed to make any checks before bringing them to this planet. Amy communicates with the Doctor through the glasses and magnifier and lets him know in no uncertain terms how she feels about him. She refuses to assist them in getting the original Amy back, as to do so would mean that her existence would be cancelled out - even if it has been an unhappy one. The Doctor succeeds in locating the younger Amy and creates a link so that the two versions can communicate directly with each other. The younger Amy is able to win round her older version by using her feelings for Rory - that they will have missed out on a life together if she isn't rescued. The Doctor then announces that he has found a way to rescue both versions of Amy, but only by crossing his own time-stream in the TARDIS and creating a temporal paradox. he claims the TARDIS will be able to sustain this.

Rory is guided to an instrument panel where he is able to bring about a convergence of the two time-streams - allowing the younger Amy to cross over into that of the older version. Heading back to the TARDIS which has also crossed over, they come under attack from a number of Handbots. The younger Amy is touched by one and is tranquillised. Rory picks her up and carries her into the TARDIS whilst the older Amy fights the robots off. Rory is about to go back outside to help her when the Doctor locks him in. He had lied about the chance to save both. The TARDIS would never have been unable to sustain the paradox. He has decided which of the Amys is to live, which infuriates Rory. The older Amy realises what the Doctor has done, and finally accepts that she must cease to exist in order that her younger self exists and has a life with her husband. She asks the computer interface to show her the Earth one last time, then allows the Handbots to touch her as the TARDIS dematerialises...

The Girl Who Waited was written by Tom MacRae, and was first broadcast on 10th September 2011. It was this season's "Doctor-lite" story, which is why, after a few opening and closing scenes Matt Smith does all his work alone on the TARDIS set for the bulk of the episode.
This was only MacRae's second story, his last being the two part reintroduction of the Cybermen way back in Series 2. He had one story commissioned but ultimately unproduced for the fourth series - known as 'Century House' - which would have seen the Tenth Doctor and Donna encounter the crew of a Most Haunted type TV show encountering real paranormal events. It was quite a funny episode, and Russell T Davies decided to drop it as he had already commissioned The Unicorn and the Wasp, which also had a lot of humour and which would have immediately preceded it in transmission order. It was replaced by Midnight. 'Century House' was reconsidered for this sixth Series, but Steven Moffat already had Mark Gatiss' Night Terrors, which also featured haunted house trappings.
MacRae also contributed the plot for the interactive 'Crash of the Elysium' role playing adventure earlier in 2011. To date he still hasn't written his third story, but has been enjoying great success anyway with the stage musical Everybody's Talking About Jamie, which he wrote.

With Matt Smith taking a back seat, the two companion actors are given a real chance to shine - Karen Gillan especially, in her dual role. Of particular note is her performance as the embittered older version of the character. There had been some thoughts about casting an older actress to play this part, but Gillan insisted she be given the chance to do it, with some subtle make-up from Neil Gorton's team. She is older, but not elderly. Arthur Darvill gets some nice comedic moments, but really gets to show what he can do in his frustrated rage against the Doctor for his deceit, and for getting them into this situation in the first place. Smith, once again, gets to show that this most childlike of Doctors can have a darker side. This story does raise questions about how much the Doctor's desire for surprise and invention can put himself and his companions in jeopardy. The Doctor could have done background checks on this planet at this time, and so learned about the infection, but he doesn't like to do this - preferring just to leap in, sight unseen, and see what happens. Fine if he wants to do this himself, but he has a duty of care to the people who travel with him. This has been raised before, and by Rory again, when he accused the Doctor of making his companions want to be like him (in The Vampires of Venice), and it will become a theme for the next couple of stories as the Doctor faces up to this accusation and decides to make some changes in how he travels.
Apart from a holographic receptionist, and the Handbot performers, we don't see anyone else on screen in this story. There is one special guest artist however, for voicing the computer interface is Oscar nominated actress Imelda Staunton, best known for her role as the villainous Dolores Umbridge, of the Ministry of Magic, in the Harry Potter movie franchise.

Overall, a highlight of this season, and one of the best stories of the Matt Smith run overall. No overbearing story arc to worry about, and no huge guest cast cluttering things up. Just the three regulars giving great performances - even Smith, who only did a couple of days' work on it. The way it's put together, you barely notice that this is a "Doctor-lite" episode.
Things you might like to know:

• It's a good job that 'Century House' wasn't developed further, as it may have been accused of being somewhat unoriginal. The long-running TV show Supernatural covered similar ground - the regulars meeting a ghost-hunting TV show crew in a real haunted house. The episode was called "Hell House" and it aired in the very first season back in 2005.
• Moffat seems to have taken on board criticisms that Doctor Who monsters always seemed to be male. There were indeed very few female villains in the classic run of the series (the all female Drahvins, or individuals like Cesair of Diplos). Very few times when there was more than one of a species did we see a female one (such as Odda the Zygon or Enlightenment the Urbankan). Moffat came up with the all female Weeping Angels, and had the Venetian Vampires and the majority of the Silurians as females on his watch. The same actresses who played both the Silurians and the Angels are employed here to be the Handbots.
• As originally envisaged, the Handbots were to have been robed figures, with human-like heads as well as hands.
• The working titles for this story were 'Visiting Hour' or 'The Visitor's Hour'. 'Green Anchor' was promoted by fans, but MacRae denied this was ever considered as a title. Quite right, as it might have sounded like it was set in a pub. 
• The title they did pick refers back to the Doctor's description of Amy / Amelia Pond in their first story, and it will pop up again shortly as part of the slogan for the perfume which model Amy is advertising.
• This story has the third shortest credited cast list of any Doctor Who story, with just 5 names. It is beaten by Heaven Sent (3) and The Edge of Destruction (4). Some individual episodes of the classic series also had very small casts, often just the regulars, in their first episodes (e.g. The Daleks and The Ark in Space).
• For the second time this series, the Doctor faces an illness which would prevent him from regenerating (Chen-7 here, and the toxin from a Judas Tree in Let's Kill Hitler). In both cases he fails to mention that he can't regenerate anyway as he is in his final incarnation (as he believes it to be at the time).
• Looking for his spectacles, the Doctor accidentally activates a reel-to-reel tape player device on the TARDIS console which makes a strange noise. This is actually the original theme tune arrangement, played backwards.