***WARNING CONTAINS SPOILERS***
Everything starts off fairly normal (well as normal as things can be on a show about a 900 year old alien in a time traveling blue box) in this episode of “Doctor Who.” The Doctor takes Amy and Rory to one of the finest vacation spots in the galaxy; however he doesn’t choose the ideal time to go. The planet is under quarantine, and thanks to something as simple as a button press Amy is isolated from the Doctor and Rory. The automatic quarantine doesn’t just isolate Amy in space, but puts her in her own independent time stream. Using the Tardis the Doctor is able to lock on and arrive in Amy’s time stream. However a simple miscalculation has the Doctor and Rory arriving after Amy has already been trapped for 36 years.
This episode tackles something that hasn’t quite been addressed before in terms of the hazards of traveling with the Doctor. The dangers of traveling in the Tardis have been brought up from time to time both in the original run of the series and the current incarnation. Companions at various points have been trapped in alternate worlds, had their entire memories erased and even died. What makes this one unique however is that it is actually the Doctor’s fault. It’s his fault for bringing them into the quarantine and it’s his fault that they jumped time streams and missed Amy by 36 years. It brings up something that’s never really been looked at: when it comes to the Doctor simple mistakes can have dire consequences.
The Doctor has missed his intended destination before, by months or even years. However it was almost always played for laughs or dismissed as just something that happens. It brings the dangers of time travel into sharper focus to have this usually innocuous event yield just personal pain for one of the main characters. Karen Gillan does amazing work playing the aged Amy. Both the makeup used to age her and her performance are great works of subtly which sell the whole premise from start to finish. This older Amy is bitter and angry at being left behind, yet at the same time happy on a very deep level at seeing Rory again.
This is a “Doctor-lite” episode, in which the Doctor himself appears minimally. In the past these types of episodes have been among the best and worst of any given series, thankfully this one is one of the better ones. The depth given to the aged Amy is wonderful and Arthur Darvill as Rory also gets some great emotional material to work with as he’s robbed of the chance to grow old with his wife the way he’d always planned. Even though the Doctor appears minimally (stuck on the Tardis to avoid an infection that humans are immune to but could kill him) he’s sprinkled throughout so he doesn’t feel as forcibly removed from the episode as often happens in these types of stories.
Things become delightfully twisted when it comes time for the resolution. The old Amy is capably of helping Rory and the Doctor rescue her right from the start of her isolation, thus sparing her the 36 years alone. However that means that this old version of Amy never existed and a combination of self preservation and bitterness keeps her from wanting to help save her younger self. Eventually she issues an ultimatum that the Doctor has to take both old and young Amy away in the Tardis. It’s a paradox but the Doctor claims he can do it.
The unfortunate truth is that the Doctor knows he can’t sustain the paradox and tells the old Amy that he can just to be sure she will help. The subtle yet completely pained expression on the Doctor’s face when he locks the old Amy out of the Tardis to die is a heartbreaking moment. In many ways the Doctor shows his cowardly side in this episode. He’s the one who locks out the older Amy but he then gives Rory the power to let her back in, effectively placing the burden of his choice onto someone else. And at the end when the young Amy asks what happened to her older counterpart the Doctor retreats, leaving Rory to attempt an explanation. The Doctor has always had an aspect of cowardice to him, as he is so often running from things, but it hasn’t been brought to light in quite the same way as it has here since the show came back on the air.
As emotionally powerful as this episode is there are a few weak spots. The first is the hand-bots, which are blank faced robots that serve as the de facto monster that Amy and Rory have to run from. Since they’re service droids and not war machines it’s acceptable that they’re not so difficult to defeat, especially since Amy had to be able deal with them on her own from the start. However they were made so easy to beat that it becomes laughable: one of them shorts out when Rory puts its head through a canvas painting. The villains being so weak it takes the strength of Amy’s survival and also the threat of the situation down a few notches. There are also a few other logical oddities as well, such as Amy constructing her own sonic screwdriver. However in the end the emotional strength of the story makes these issues minor in the big scheme of things.