Rory Williams was a main character in Doctor Who between 2010 and 2012, joining his fiancee and later wife Amy Pond as one of the Eleventh Doctor's companions. He was portrayed by Arthur Darvill.
Personality[]
Rory was humble, loyal, protective, and a bit sarcastic at times. He also showed significant compassion and empathy. He was often found caring for others, sometimes as a nurse, and sometimes just as the TARDIS crew member who stopped to help newcomers acclimate.
Most significant of all, Rory was utterly devoted to his wife Amy and willingly put his life on the line several times for her sake, even sacrificing himself more than once in order to save her.
Biography[]
Youth[]
Rory was a childhood friend of Amelia Pond and grew up in the town of Leadworth. Like much of Leadworth, he was privy to her tales of "the raggedy Doctor," and he found himself a reluctant participant in dress-up games that she based on them, though he did not believe the Doctor was real. The pair were also friends of Mels, who, unbeknownst to them, was their daughter from the future. Rory was long attracted to Amy. His feelings were returned only after Mels pointed it out when they were older. Before this, Amy had believed Rory was homosexual, because he had never shown any interest in any other girl.
Meeting the Doctor[]
While working at the Royal Leadworth Hospital in 2008, Rory noticed coma patients roaming about the village. When he tried to show the photos he had taken of the patients with his mobile to his superior, he was ordered to take time off, as she believed he was hallucinating. He went to the park at the same time the Atraxi put Earth in a forcefield for incineration, seeing (unknown to him until minutes later) Prisoner Zero in another disguise. To his shock, he met the Eleventh Doctor and was left dumbstruck that he was real and not imaginary. Complying with the Doctor's orders, Rory helped lure Prisoner Zero out into the open and watched as it was taken away by its jailers. Rory then watched the Doctor steal an outfit from the hospital and call back the Atraxi to warn them the Earth was under his protection. After these events Rory became engaged to Amy and started looking up the "latest scientific theories" as preparation in case of any other alien visitors to Leadworth.
Travelling with the Doctor[]
In 2010, not knowing Amy had left in the TARDIS and spent days away from Leadworth, Rory was surprised when the Doctor unexpectedly popped out of a cake at his stag party and was disheartened to learn Amy had tried to kiss the Doctor. The Doctor took the couple on a "romantic break" to Venice in 1580 as a wedding gift. They ran into Saturnyns who planned to flood Venice and repopulate it with their species. Rory defended Amy from Francesco, a Saturnyn who wished to convert her into a "fish from space". The Doctor defeated the Saturnyns and while prepared to return to Leadworth, Rory agreed to continue travelling with the Doctor, once Amy asked him to.
Erasure[]
In the Series 5 episode "Cold Blood", the Doctor and his companions attempted to prevent the Silurian general Restac from launching an invasion of Earth's surface. As they made their escape from the Silurians' underground city, Restac followed and attempted to shoot him in revenge. Rory, however, got in the way of the laser blast and was killed. Just as he died, Rory was engulfed by a crack in time, an anomaly that the Doctor had encountered before. Though Amy was distraught, this didn't last as Rory was erased from existence and so Amy's memories of him disappeared. The Doctor, on the other hand, still remembered.
The Last Centurion[]
Although Rory was seemingly erased from history, he was reborn from psychic residue from Amy's house in Leadworth. He was reformed in the year 102 AD, though he had been brought back as an Auton, a plastic android controlled by the Nestene Consciousness. Rory was one of several Autons designed to mimic Roman soldiers that had been stationed near Stonehenge as part of an elaborate trap for the Doctor.
When the Doctor and Amy discovered the Pandorica in a cavern beneath Stonehenge, they were attacked by a Cyberman that was guarding it. The Cyberman was weak from lack of power and maintenance and its organic parts had decayed, but it remained functional enough to pose a threat to Amy. Before the dilapidated cyborg could harm Amy, Rory appeared and destroyed the Cyberman by impaling it with his sword.
Not yet knowing of Rory's true nature as an Auton replicant, the Doctor was confused. Amy did not remember Rory at all since he had been enveloped by the time field and wiped from existence, but the Doctor tried to help her remember and had kept the engagement ring Rory had given her. While his efforts were successful, Amy's memories returned at the precise time as the Alliance's trap began to unravel upon the Doctor. Part of this sequence involved activating the Autons (including Rory) in order to bring them under Nestene control. He urged Amy to run, but she refused, hugging him as the Auton programming activated, opening his hand and shooting Amy.
Following the Total Event Collapse all the other Autons were erased, except for the duplicate Rory who was left on Earth, the only remaining planet, weeping over Amy. It was then that the Doctor suddenly appeared in front of him to tell him that Amy wasn't quite dead and swiftly ordered him to open the Pandorica with the sonic screwdriver for the purpose of rescuing the Doctor's earlier self. A bewildered Rory followed these instructions, which led to a reunion with the earlier bewildered Doctor. Because most of the universe had been erased and the Nestenes were now non-existent, Rory's mind was fully restored and he was now in unfettered control of his actions. The Doctor confirmed this by pretending not to care about Amy's death and claiming the total collapse of the universe was more important than her, earning him a punch in the jaw from Rory.
To save Amy, the Doctor placed her in the Pandorica, where her life would be restored, though she would be in there for nearly two thousand years to complete the process. The Doctor, using a vortex manipulator, offered to take Auton Rory to retrieve Amy in the future, but the duplicate Rory refused, saying he had to make sure no harm came to the Pandorica. The Doctor admired Rory's humanity, Auton or not, and left him to his duty.
Rory watched over Amy for nearly two thousand years, following the box wherever it went and became the stuff of legend as "the Last Centurion" — a mysterious figure dressed as a Roman soldier who stood guard over the Pandorica, warning off those who would attempt to open it, a mythical sentinel whose story appeared in the folk history of a dozen civilisations. During the London Blitz of 1941, Rory was spotted moving the Pandorica out of harm's way during a bombing, but after that the Last Centurion disappeared from history and was believed killed or destroyed.
The Rory duplicate (posing as a museum security guard) was reunited with Amy in 1996, when the Pandorica was opened by a younger version of Amy, freeing her from the Pandorica. They briefly encountered a partially-restored Dalek, which Rory disabled using his wrist-gun. Along with the Doctor, who also rescued River Song, the duplicate Rory informed this present Doctor of his previous meeting in 102 AD, leading the Doctor to travel back in time to have his original encounter with the duplicate Rory. Ultimately, the Doctor piloted the Pandorica into the heart of the exploding TARDIS, which restored the universe, but also rewrote much of its history. The Doctor was removed from reality, and with him gone, the Auton version of Rory was likewise removed from history. The original, human Rory was restored, his death having never occurred.
The Silence[]
After the universe was reset, Rory was restored to his human form and married Amy. The two spent their wedding night in the TARDIS with the Doctor and later in the honeymoon suite of a 44th century starship (which would later malfunction and threaten to crash into a planet). At some point after Rory and Amy's honeymoon, Amy would be replaced by a Ganger, a duplicate of her crafted from a sentient fluidic substance called The Flesh. The real Amy had been abducted by a sinister organisation known as the Church of the Silence who were plotting to kill the Doctor in order to prevent him from destroying the universe as they believed he one day would. Rory and the Doctor would eventually realise the deception and also discover that Amy was pregnant.
The Doctor and Rory would discover that Amy was somewhere in the 52nd century and infiltrated the 12th Cyber Legion in order to find her exact whereabouts. After the Cybermen revealed that Amy was at the asteroid field known as Demons Run, the Doctor and Rory amassed an army to assault the base and rescue Amy and her newborn baby. While the assault appeared to be successful, it turned out to be a ruse as the Church leader Madame Kovarian had replaced Amy's daughter Melody with a Ganger and taken the real Melody herself which she planned on turning into a weapon to use against the Doctor.
Rory and Amy would be shocked to learn, however, that River Song was actually their daughter. The Doctor left Rory and Amy to be returned to their home era by River while he looked for the infant Melody. After waiting "all summer", Amy had Rory made a crop circle saying "Doctor" to catch the Doctor's attention. They found him waiting and were surprised by their childhood friend, Mels. She ordered them at gunpoint to help her escape the police and take her back in time to kill Adolf Hitler. The TARDIS landed in Berlin in 1938 and accidentally crashed into the Teselecta, where Rory slugged Hitler and locked him in a closet. Discovering Mels had been shot by Hitler, he also learned she was Melody, who regenerated into River Song.
River poisoned the Doctor. Rory and Amy followed her when she left, only to be sucked into the shape-shifting Teselecta, which took Amy's form. While the Doctor tried to reason with their child, they stopped the Teselecta from hurting her by making the Teselecta's antibodies attack the crew. On the verge of dying again, Rory was saved by his daughter in the TARDIS. Melody gave her remaining regenerations to revive the Doctor. Leaving her in "the best hospital in the universe" to recover from the strain, Rory and Amy rejoined the Doctor, while River was left to find her own way.
Rory and Amy would join the Doctor in several more adventures until the Doctor decided to leave them on Earth once more, after having apparently bought them a new house. The Doctor would not return for them until after thwarting the plans of Madame Kovarian and the Silence and deleting an alternate universe that was created by River when she assassinated the Doctor at Lake Silencio. While Rory and Amy waited, they were visited by River who informed them that the Doctor was still alive, having shrunk himself down and boarded the Teselecta robotic craft which he configured to resemble himself and have the Teselecta stand in for him when he was "killed".
Death[]
In the Series 7 episode "The Angels Take Manhattan", Rory dies for the final time. While in New York in 2012, he was abducted by the Weeping Angels and held prisoner in their battery farm of Winter Quay where the Angels planned to feed off of the temporal energy created each time he tried to escape. While at Winter Quay, Rory witnessed an older version of himself die in bed, indicating that he was destined to be trapped there for the rest of his life. However, thanks to Amy, the Doctor and River, he managed to escape his room and ascend to the building's roof, only to find that the Statue of Liberty had become an Angel and was standing right beside the building.
With no way out, Rory determined that his only means of escape was to kill himself. Amy tried talking him out of it, but Rory told her that if he killed himself then, he wouldn't die an old man in that bed and would create a paradox, essentially poisoning the Weeping Angels. With both their lives on the line and refusing to let him go alone, Amy joined Rory as he stepped off the edge of the roof. The couple embraced each other as they fell to their deaths.
Rory's hypothesis proved correct and the paradox that resulted from his and Amy's suicide destroyed the Angels. They, along with the Doctor and River, found themselves in a graveyard on the other side of New York. Here, Rory noticed a tombstone with his name on it. He had only a moment to ponder its meaning before he suddenly disappeared as he was touched by a surviving Angel and zapped back in time. Amy, devastated, allowed the Angel to touch her, sending her back to Rory. The Doctor was unable to follow her at the risk of an even more catastrophic paradox.
After Amy and Rory's departure, the Doctor was given a book by River that detailed their adventure that day. It included an afterword by Amy describing what had happened to her and Rory after the Angel had displaced them. They had been transported back to 1938 and had lived the remainder of their lives happily together. Rory died at 82 years of age.