(780) The Girl Who Waited

The Girl Who Waited is one of the strongest stories of the series in my opinion and easily the strongest story of this half of the series. When I saw this episode on September 10^th 2011, I came to the immediate conclusion that this was the best episode that Karen Gillan had been in. The Doctor doesn’t feature in the episode very much so this allows Karen Gillan and Arthur Darvill to shine. I have commented on how Rory has felt like a spare part in recent episodes but this is corrected in this episode.

The Doctor and Rory are separated from Amy before the titles have even played. Even by Doctor Who standards this is quick and its slightly eye rolling because it does seem a bit silly. That is perhaps the only aspect of the episode that doesn’t work. The rest of it is light on special effects but heavy on character development. Amy is literally the girl who waited as her time stream is faster than the Doctor’s and Rory’s.

Rory has to search for Amy and after a while finds older Amy. I was really impressed with the older Amy. Older Amy has become quite the aggressive individual and Gillan does a good job in making older Amy seem very different from the Amy at the beginning of the episode, she doesn’t like the Doctor and has become bitter because of the 36 years she was on her own. One of the best scenes for Gillan is Younger Amy is talking to Older Amy and Younger Amy is trying to convince the older version to help change her history. This episode should really have been called Rory’s Choice because he is the one that makes the decision.

I never realised that Imelda Staunton played the voice of the Interface. It’s a shame that she didn’t get a physical role for the story but it’s the same thing as with Michael Sheen in The Doctor’s Wife. Even though he isn’t in the story that much, I thought that Matt Smith was still quite good and the Doctor deals with Amy’s anger quite well. It seemed the Doctor and Rory got on better in this episode than ever before.

This is the first story from Tom McRae since 2006’s Cyberman two-parter and I think that this is far better because it’s tighter in narrative terms and also doesn’t carry the burden of having a classic monster in it. McRae deals with the three strong characters really well and seems to thrive from the lack of supporting characters. The direction was also something that worked quite well and Nick Hurran used the sets quite well.

This was a superb episode that had some superb performances and this shows how good the show can be and bearing in mind that it’s a cheap episode it makes the story even more impressive. The NEXT TIME trailer reminds me that there is another great episode coming up. This is one of the best Matt Smith stories and the dark tone of the series continues but I must admit that I would like the serious tone of the series to subside a bit but not too much.