Amy’s faith

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The relationship between the Doctor and Amy: It’s complicated and painful (although very touching too). By the time we reach The God Complex, which is a whole episode focused around Amy’s faith in the Doctor, I was wondering why Amy had any faith left in the Doctor at all. He’s saved her and Rory a few times, true, and saved the universe…but Amy’s daughter is still lost to her. Which is why The God Complex could be ‘fixed’ in just five words…”I can’t save your daughter.” If Amy’s faith had been about faith in still finding her baby, and the Doctor had destroyed that…I think it would have made for a much better episode.

But I guess I have to take The God Complex as it is, not how I want it to be, so I put together a sort of theory. I think perhaps Amy developed a blind faith in the Doctor as a way of protecting herself, as a way of reverting to her seven-year-old self and blocking out all the terrible things that had happened to her. That’s why she sees her seven-year-old self in her room, because she fears being that person, that little girl, for the rest of her life. Always waiting for the Doctor to save her and never moving forward.

Just like Gibbis lost all his sense of personal autonomy…possibly Amy did too, in a way. Because if she puts her faith in the Doctor and lets him make all the decisions then she won’t have to deal with any pain or (misplaced) guilt she might feel. As odd as it sounds, I wonder if him calling her “Amy Williams” wasn’t what jerked her out of it…if that suddenly made her realise “Hey, I was keeping my own name, not taking Rory’s..why are you making that decision for me?”

Some incredibly clever person on GB pointed out that the Handbots anesthetising Amy is an exact mirror to the Doctor’s hand-on-face sign of affection to Amy-

Like Amy’s using the Doctor to put herself to sleep, just run around the universe and forget the terrible things that happened to her. I think it sort of works- people often shut down due to grief, and Amy lost her baby, one of the worst things that can happen to a person. Even if she does know her child as an adult, she won’t get to raise her, and that may well have caused terrible grief. So the Doctor had to jerk her out of it before it was too late.

This theory isn’t perfect- the Doctor is still making a lot of the decisions, after all. Although Amy accepts it, I still don’t like that it was the Doctor’s choice to drop Amy off on Earth, rather than hers. Hopefully, though, this will be retified in S7, and Amy will choose to leave the TARDIS because she’s found other things she wants to do, and because she no longer needs him. (Though she will obviously always care for him.) So…yeah, I guess I like to think he did save her. Any more anesthetic and she’d have ended up (metaphorically) dead.

I enjoy poking at things I dislike until they turn into things I like…