Rory Williams


 * For the Auton based on Rory, please see here.

Rory Williams was the "sort of" boyfriend and later husband of Amy Pond. He became a companion of the Eleventh Doctor, but later died and was removed from time after being absorbed by the Time Field. Following the "Big Bang Two" he was restored to the timeline, married Amy and continued to travel with her and the Doctor. He was later revealed to be the father of River Song (Melody Pond).

Early life
Rory was a childhood friend of Amelia Pond. He was privy to her tales of the &quot;raggedy Doctor&quot;, and an unwilling participant in the dress-up games she based around her stories. (DW: The Eleventh Hour) At one point in his youth, Rory was a member of the Cub Scouts. (DWA: If You Go Down to the Woods Today)

First Meeting
Whilst working as a nurse at Royal Leadworth Hospital, Rory witnessed the Doctor defeat Prisoner Zero and warn the Atraxi away from Earth. (DW: The Eleventh Hour) He later got engaged to Amy. (DW: Flesh and Stone)

Travels with the Doctor
After having his stag party crashed by the Doctor, Rory and Amy were taken on a "romantic break" to Venice. There, they encountered the Saturnynians, who planned to flood Venice. The Doctor defeated the Saturnynians and Rory agreed to continue travelling with the Doctor after Amy asked him to do so. (DW: The Vampires of Venice)

After spending some time aboard the Doctor's TARDIS, Rory fell victim to the same Psychic Pollen that ensnared his companions in two shared dreams. Rory escaped the trap after the Doctor figured out what was happening. (DW: Amy's Choice)

Rory, Amy, the Doctor and some friends succeeded in stopping the Silurians that lived beneath the Earth from attempting to kill humanity. However Rory was shot by their military leader Restac when he protected the Doctor from a fatal energy beam. Rory was then swallowed by a crack in time causing Amy to forget that he had existed. (DW: The Hungry Earth, Cold Blood)

When the Alliance scanned Amy's mind, they used her dormant memories of Rory to create a Nestene duplicate, which, due to Amy being affected by the crack in her room, possessed Rory's actual emotions and personality. Once the Nestenes' trap for the Doctor was complete, the Nestenes tried to control him, which caused him to shoot Amy. (DW: The Pandorica Opens)

A version of the Doctor from the future came to Rory, instructing him to place Amy's body in the Pandorica, which had the ability to keep its occupants alive. Rory watched over Amy for over two thousand years, following the box wherever it went. After the Doctor succeeded in saving the universe and closing the cracks in time, the real Rory was never erased. Despite this, Rory somehow still remembered his experiences as an Auton. The real Rory was brought back and he married Amy. The Doctor then arrived at the wedding and took them to the TARDIS for more adventures. (DW: The Big Bang)


 * In the new version of reality, the first time Amy and Rory were together in the TARDIS was during their honeymoon (DW: A Good Man Goes to War)

Honeymoon
After their wedding, Amy and Rory went on a long honeymoon on board the TARDIS, spending their wedding night on the ship itself, apparently conceiving their first child at the time. (DW: A Good Man Goes to War). The Doctor left Amy and Rory on a honeymoon planet shortly before the TARDIS was stolen by Claw Shansheeth (SJA: Death of the Doctor).

The couple continued their honeymoon on board a spaceship in the honeymoon suite, where Rory donned his auton counterpart's Roman armour. The ship began to crash, and the Doctor had just under an hour to save Rory and Amy, in addition to the other 4001 people on the ship. With help from Amy and Rory, the Doctor succeeded, and the trio left for another honeymoon location. (DW: A Christmas Carol)

At some point, Rory began helping the Doctor fly the TARDIS, much to Amy's annoyance. However, he accidently caused the TARDIS to materalize inside itself after dropping a thermocoupling. The Doctor was able to figure out how to demateralize the TARDIS from the resulting space loop. (DW: Space /Time)

America
Soon after their honeymoon, Rory and, unknown to him, a duplicate Ganger of Amy returned to Earth and bought a house together. (DW: A Good Man Goes to War)

In April 2011, they received a TARDIS-blue letter, which led the couple to America. There they met a 1103 year-old Doctor, who was later shot and killed The group later returned to the diner, where they encountered a 909-year-old version of the Doctor who possessed another copy of the blue letter. Rory then aided the Doctor in starting a revolution against the Silence, who had been occupying Earth for centuries. (DW: The Impossible Astronaut / Day of the Moon)

Further travels
In the 17th century Rory was present while the Doctor stopped a Siren from kidnapping the crew of a pirate ship. (DW: The Curse of the Black Spot)

Rory was later trapped in the TARDIS by House, who planned to eat the TARDIS. Rory then helped the Doctor get back into the TARDIS where he used the soul of the TARDIS to defeat House. (DW: The Doctor's Wife)

When the TARDIS crew found themselves caught in a clash between humans workers and their Ganger clones, Rory found himself sympathising with the Ganger of Jennifer Lucas (Perhaps due to his own past experiences as a duplicate of himself). The Ganger used his sympathy to her advantage, tricking him into trapping the crew in a room containing an overheating acid vat. Once the debacle was resolved, Rory was stunned when the Doctor revealed that Amy was herself a Ganger, and that the real Amy was elsewhere. (DW: The Rebel Flesh/The Almost People)

Demons Run
Rory then helped the Doctor raise an army to save Amy and his daughter Melody Pond from Madame Kovarian. Melody was then taken from Rory and Amy to which Rory was willing to do anything to get her back. He later realised that River Song was his daughter. The Doctor then left Rory on Demons Run while he searched for Melody. (DW: A Good Man Goes to War)

Personality
Rory appeared timid during his first encounter with the Doctor. He was easily intimidated by Dr Ramsden and was unsettled by the ensuing events caused by the Doctor and Prisoner Zero. Despite this, he did have the presence of mind to record evidence in order to prove that his patients were appearing outside the hospital. He also assisted Amy in attempting to clear the hospital of patients before Prisoner Zero could exploit them. (DW: The Eleventh Hour) During the events in Venice, Rory was unnerved that the Doctor actually wanted to get back into the Saturnynian stronghold. However, he was capable of bravery, as shown when he challenged Francesco in order to protect Amy, (DW: The Vampires of Venice) and later when he took a lethal Silurian energy beam meant for the Doctor. (DW: Cold Blood) It was also notable that when he saw Francesco had attacked a girl, his immediate reaction was to see if she was all right. (DW: The Vampires of Venice) He was greatly devoted to Amy. Perhaps the greatest testament to this personality trait was when his Auton self was willing to guard the Pandorica, with Amy in it, for almost two thousand years, even knowing that he would remain conscious the entire time. (DW: The Big Bang)

Known family

 * Amy Pond - Wife
 * River Song (Melody Pond) - Daughter
 * Tabetha Pond - Mother-in-law
 * Augustus Pond - Father-in-law

Skills
Rory was a trained nurse, and knew medical procedures, and how to examine bodies. (DW: The Eleventh Hour, DW: The Vampires of Venice, DW: The Curse of the Black Spot) Also, due to being a Roman Centurion, he was acomplished at fighting with a gladius. (DW: The Pandorica Opens, DW: A Good Man Goes to War) After spending two millenia guarding the Pandorica, Rory became a very effective warrior. In the attack on Demon's Run, he survived the battle with the Headless monks while two experienced soldiers (Strax and Lorna Bucket) were killed. (DW: A Good Man Goes to War)

Behind the scenes

 * In a deleted scene from The Hungry Earth, the Doctor admits to Amy that he likes Rory a lot.
 * Rory's death is very similar in nature to Jenny's (DW: The Doctor's Daughter). In both cases they died taking a shot intended for the Doctor, and in both cases the shooter was a violent member of a race that the Doctor had helped bring peace to. (Restac and Cobb respectively).
 * Coincidentally Rory temporarily "dies" in some manner in three consecutive episodes of Series 6 (DW: Day of the Moon, DW: The Curse of the Black Spot, and DW: The Doctor's Wife). Totalling up his temporary deaths to six. The other three 'deaths' occured in DW: Amy's Choice, DW: Cold Blood, and the erasure of his Auton duplicate's existence in DW: The Big Bang (In addition, earlier in that episode, Amy mourns him when the museum documentary concludes he died in the Blitz). This means he has died more than any other televised companion.
 * Incidentally, every time Rory "dies" in a given story, he dies in at least one adjacent story as well.
 * Additionally, in the story immediately following DW: The Doctor's Wife, Rory is the only character for whom a version of him doesn't die; at least one version of every other character has an on-screen death, including the Doctor and Amy (DW: The Rebel Flesh/The Almost People).

Nametag controversy
The question of Rory's "home" time period is one that baffled fans in the aftermath of the broadcast of The Eleventh Hour. This was largely fueled by an image of Rory's Royal Leadworth Hospital identification badge, that was given an extreme closeup in the episode. This closeup plainly shows the badge to have been issued on 30th November 1990, which would seem implausible given the presence of various bits of technology in the episode, such as laptop computers and the named 2008 Blackberry phone. The existence of Facebook, Bebo, and Twitter were also mentioned; the phone had Facebook. So perplexing was this badge ID that Steven Moffat was specifically asked about it in New York by an American fan on 13th April 2010. His response was recorded and released in the podcast, Meet the Filmmaker: "I have never actually looked at Rory's name tag to be completely honest with you...it's not a signficant plot thing."

- Steven Moffat at the SoHo Apple Store

Though it seemed a genuine, spontaneous answer, Moffat had earlier enthusiastically extolled the virtues of lying to the public and press about the content of Doctor Who, in a question-and-answer session following the New York theatrical screening of The Eleventh Hour. In any event, judging by the technology in existence at the time of the Atraxi incident, it seems unlikely that the 1990 date on the name tag could be genuine. But adding fuel to the fire, 1990s cars were seen, but so were cars said to be of a 2005+ period. Flesh and Stone later had the Doctor remark that June 25th/26th 2010 was "Amy's time", meaning that the 1990 date was an error.

However, in the same latter episode, the clock in Amy's bedroom jumped from 11:59am June 25th to 12pm June 26th, twenty-four hours missed in one second - and it was night time outside. This was likely also a production error, and was supposed to transition from 11:59 pm to 12:00 am. In the episode Amy's Choice, Leadworth was referred to as "the village that time forgot," these things all together causing many fan theories that something has gone wrong with Leadworth involving time itself. It was discovered in The Big Bang that time was shrinking due to the cracks. This may have caused these events, although it was not explicitly stated.