…But that scene in The Big Bang, when Amy remembers the Doctor back into existence during her wedding to Rory, her parents in attendence… that is her first major triumph. Because she claimed back what was stolen, because she proved the magical to be real, because she demanded the universe to give her what she wanted and the universe did just that.I have seen people argue that it somehow devalues her story prior to this point, but for me that’s the most hopeful moment of all. The lost girl, with the house that was too big, who grew up to not recall the loving family she had or the wonderful man she came to adore. And she just has the power to change it all.Because she’s Amelia Pond.
Well this is interesting„,now I’m starting to rethink Amy’s arc…(Agency might not be the best term to use. Power might be better.)
Amy, when we meet her in series 5, is a person who has an unimaginable amount taken from her. The crack not only ate away at her life and stole away her parents, it robbed her of the very knowledge of what she had lost – memories of a happy childhood, full of life, not alone in the empty house in Leadworth, with an aunt who was neglectful enough that Amy, at the age of nine, was already used to fending for herself and playing up her confidence.
The truths that she did retain, the magic of reality, an alien crashing into her backyard with the promise of adventure, is something which no one believes. Even Rory is just playing a game. She’s the perpetual outsider in a village which does not even speak like her, full of people who think the impossible truth of her life is a mere story. And a dangerous one at that, madness even, psychiatrist upon psychiatrist telling her it isn’t real, to the point that after twelve years, even she doubts it.
And throughout the series, the Doctor never tells her the truth. He sees that lost little girl and feels kinship, and he takes her travelling, but he never tells her of the mess, of the tragedy, that is her past. He doesn’t tell her why she’s grieving. And they watch powerlessly as Amy loses another person she loves, Rory erased from existence and her memories. Amy was the girl who was running away on the night before her wedding and now she’s just a girl running.
And she acts. Oh does she act. Brave, wonderful, flawed, smart Amelia Pond. But she’s stripped of knowledge and truth and her entire history. Her freedom is tainted. It is there, in her very spirit, but it’s also an illusion. She doesn’t make sense.
So claiming all of it back is the single most important moment of series 5. All that damage the cracks in time waged on her life, on her mind, also give her the power to change, to retrieve, to heal. She brings back the parents she never had and always had. She brings back Rory Williams, the man she loves. And then, finally, she brings back the Doctor. Her Raggedy Doctor. Her stories are real. (Even more than that, they become real.) She single-handedly brings the fairytale back into the world, her world… and for everyone to see.