- For a gallery of images depicting Abby, see Abby/Gallery.
- You may wish to consult
Abby (disambiguation)
for other, similarly-named pages.
"Abby" was the name used by a companion of the Fifth Doctor, who originally named her "Amy".
Biography[]
Search for the Key to Time[]
At the Chaos Pool, (AUDIO: The Chaos Pool) the Grace created a pair of humanoid tracers to track down the decaying segments of the Key to Time. Whilst one went on her journey to find her three segments on her own, the other chose to employ the Fifth Doctor's assistance in finding the other three. It was one such piece, in the form of a compass within the wreckage of the Green Man's Burden, which led the Doctor to her.
The tracer, whom the Doctor named "Amy" after a misunderstanding, was able to get the Doctor to agree to help her find the next segment and joined him in his TARDIS, taking control of it and piloting them to Mars where she identified the next segment as the capstone of a pyramid. They encountered Harmonious 14 Zink and Amy's sister, whom the Doctor named "Zara", and gained the two segments that they had found thanks to Isskar before being saved from a spacecraft by the Black Guardian. (AUDIO: The Judgement of Isskar)
Having arrived in 9th century Sudan, Amy told the Doctor not to listen to the Black Guardian. She later lost her satchel in which she kept the segments and was mistaken for a slave of Lord Cassim's household, eventually finding her satchel and reuniting with the Doctor. She transformed the golden shard formed from Lord Cassim's compressed treasures into the fifth segment and departed with the Doctor, leaving the Black and White Guardians behind. (AUDIO: The Destroyer of Delights)
During their brief travels together, the Doctor told Amy about cricket. (AUDIO: The Fog)
Amy was knocked out on a spaceship by Zara, who imprisoned her in her satchel and took on her form and identity to deceive the Doctor. Sensing the decay of the five segments, Amy placed them in her own satchel and, upon being freed, refused to give them to the White Guardian as the Doctor believed that to do so would be to end free will. The Key was finally formed, by which point both Amy and Zara had become human, and Amy gave her sister the choice of what to do with it. (AUDIO: The Chaos Pool)
Life on Gallifrey[]
After the Key's destruction, Amy chose to go to Gallifrey with Romana to persuade the High Council to open the Time Lord Academy to non-Gallifreyans, saying farewell to Zara, who invited her to Atrios, and the Doctor, who assumed that she would continue travelling with him and help him find Peri Brown. (AUDIO: The Chaos Pool)
Romana was successful in her aim, although it was not without controversy. (AUDIO: Insurgency) Amy studied at the Academy and shared her knowledge with Zara, allowing them both access to certain powers such as limited telekinesis, a power that Zara used to her monetary advantage. She also came into possession of a Time Ring (AUDIO: The Sphere) and was familiar with Valyes (AUDIO: The End) and Leela. (AUDIO: The Garden of Storms)
The Sphere and aftermath[]
Pargrave sent Amy to find Zara after he had an argument with her during which she teleported away. She tracked Zara down to the Sphere, which she infiltrated by taking on the name of one of its members: Abigail Oblong-9 Menton, and began calling herself "Abby". She stayed with Zara and Marek Golding-Sassafras, who she learnt were expecting a baby, and assisted Uncle Lindsay in deterring cheaters in order to earn enough money for her and her sister to escape from the Sphere. When Uncle Lindsay threatened to exile Zara, Abby destroyed the Sphere by disconnecting a pylon before escaping with Zara, leaving Marek behind after he betrayed them. She decided to keep the name "Abby" after this, feeling that the woman she had been would never have arranged the destruction of the Sphere.
Abby and Zara found themselves in 1912 Compton where they were accused of killing children (AUDIO: The Sphere) and female villagers with witchcraft. They were almost lynched before they were saved by Daniel, who questioned them and locked them away in an attempt to prove their innocence when the next disappearance occurred. Abby travelled a week into the future and brought back a copy of The Manchester Guardian which stated that the town would be destroyed by a meteor that night and they eventually realised that the villagers were already dead and that they could only see them because they themselves were dying.
The sisters were kidnapped from the crater by Marek, (AUDIO: The Fog) who had utilised time technology to escape from the Sphere and wanted revenge on them. Whilst in flight, they were captured by Kreekpolt and forced to try to heal his daughter, Persephone, to no avail. They suggested they go to the Grace at the Chaos Pool and, upon arriving, the Grace made it so that Abby and Zara could only die when they wanted to. After this, Abby, Zara and Marek departed from the Chaos Pool, hoping to start a new life together, raising the baby after its birth. (AUDIO: The End)
Adventures with Zara[]
Zara and Abby changed time to make a city survived being killed, but lost Marek in the process. (AUDIO: The Line)
She wanted to rescue a crashed ship. After Zara went missing she wanted to sacrifice her life so that the inhabitants of a village she stayed at could escape. (AUDIO: The Flood)
She met with someone who said she was Zara's daughter. She[who?] was still naive about some parts of sex and asked a lot of awkward questions. (AUDIO: The Dark)
She tried to hook Zara up with Kurt. She later lost her memories. She went after Zara when she went into a burning building. (AUDIO: The Edge)
She went to medieval England and tried to stop a battle. (AUDIO: The Battle)
She wanted to go back to the Archive and talk to Chi about the day of her death. On arrival she was arrested for murder. (AUDIO: The Archive)
She came and saw Brondle and Wing, here she met Marek again. She wanted to save the planet from the sun which would implode. Abby and Zara decided to die but the Grace told them that they were an experiment into balance and decided to remove their powers instead of them dying. Abby decided to be known as Amy again as she felt she was no longer Abby. (AUDIO: Consequences)
Three centuries later, Amy, now using the last name 'Landing', was in hospital because she fell out of a tree. Zara told her about Pool and their plans to stop a nuclear fusion reactor. Knowing she was dying, Amy asked Zara to get all the family together. She came along to help Zara persuade the guards. She got annoyed when Dodyk wanted to stop them. She helped Zara to stop the reactor. They consumed the energy from the blast and the fuel and became young again. (AUDIO: The Bomb)
Abby went with Zara to see a rare snake but they soon got caught up in the war that was waging across the planet. She suggested to Onora Cormorant to stop the war by surrendering and got her and Slink to try and talk. Abby discovered from Cormorant where Zara was being kept. Later she realised how to stop the war when she ordered Kronchev to kill everyone on the moon. When that didn't work she set up another plan to stop them. (AUDIO: The Room)
Abby pretended to be a doctor under the alias 'Dr. Mollus' and sometimes helped Zara in surgery. She found it hard when a set of children died. Abby later went on a date with Chaff but lost him when he slept around. Pool arrived at the hospital to tell Abby and Zara that the Grace needed them. (AUDIO: The Ward)
Pool took them to the end of time to a ballroom, trying to get answers on what was happening from Oblong and Triangle. Abby thought that Pool was sent by the Grace to judge their balance. She took Pool to see them before they got their powers back. She got the dancers to decide what they wanted to do. (AUDIO: The Dance)
Reunion with the Doctor[]
Leela was asked to find Abby and Zara with the Doctor's help. They were investigating a strange tradition on the Moon where no-one over the age of 40 were killed. She wanted to stop the practice from happening, but used careful means to do it rather than brutal interventions. She tried to intervene in the Doctor's arrest but got arrested herself. They managed to escape to the termination centre. She was delighted that Brody incited rebellion. (AUDIO: The Garden of Storms)
Leela helped Abby to escape the Smoke and piloted the TARDIS to find the Doctor and Zara. Abby tried to convince Riya Nehru not to stop her from removing Leela and Abby from her ship. She saw the Sontarans' garden, which reminded her of what she saw on New Japan. She worked out the code to enter where the Doctor and Zara were being kept. (AUDIO: The Moonrakers)
Back in the garden, Abby and Zara discovered that Brody had been murdered. She pretended to be a plumber to find more information from Wei. She didn't like the effect that the Smoke were having on people they saved. She wanted to help them but couldn't work out who to save. When the Smoke started attacking she became appalled at what was happening and how they were feeding off the Doctor. Abby and Zara connected to draw the Smoke out, and extinguish themselves. After feeling that the Smoke had gone, Abby and Zara used their power to restore one last time to restore the Doctor back to his fifth incarnation. They then travelled the universe minimally using their powers, when the Doctor told them that not just the Time Lords will be interested in them. (AUDIO: The People Made of Smoke)
Personality[]
Amy was initially naïve, fearful and lacking a true personality of her own, but became more experienced and human over the course of her search for the Key to Time. (AUDIO: The Judgement of Isskar, The Destroyer of Delights, The Chaos Pool) She was, according to Zara, as "good as gold", although this was something that she herself believed was no longer true after her quest for the Key to Time. (AUDIO: The Sphere)
She was jealous of Zara's willingness to do whatever she had to to achieve her goals, but, upon learning of how far Zara would go, she decided that she would never want to be like her. (AUDIO: The Judgement of Isskar) She did, however, become jealous of her once more upon seeing how she could be free and make mistakes but still land on her feet. (AUDIO: The Sphere)
Abby liked her tea with milk substitute and four sugars (AUDIO: The People Made of Smoke) and enjoyed eating scallops and drinking a particular blue cocktail. (AUDIO: The Sphere)
Behind the scenes[]
- Amy's name was changed to Abby for the Graceless series. At the beginning of The Sphere, Amy took the name of a woman registered in the Sphere. The out-of-universe reason for this was to avoid potential confusion with Amy Pond.[1]
- Abby and Zara were at one stage planned to feature in the audio story Relative Time, part of The Legacy of Time box set. Ultimately, however, their place was taken by Jenny. (BFX: The Legacy of Time: Behind the Scenes)
Footnotes[]
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