Characters / Doctor Who - The Ponds

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Amy Pond and Rory Williams

"Together, or not at all."

"Amy and Rory. The last Centurion and the girl who waited. However dark it got, I'd turn around, and there they'd be."

— The Doctor

The Girl Who Waited and The Last Centurion. A young couple from Ledsworth who became two of the Doctor’s closest friends, forming a long term traveling trio for the first time since the Revival Series began. They eventually became parents to River Song and traveled with the Doctor on-and-off for years until they were tragically separated from him for good by the Weeping Angels, who sent them back to the 1930s in Manhattan. Fortunately they had each other and lived a long happy life before dying in their 80s.

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Tropes associated with the television continuity:

Tropes applying to both

• Childhood Friend Romance: The two knew each other since they were children, with Rory having followed Amy around who was often simply annoyed with him. As they grew up Rory kept his crush a secret while Amy became convinced he was gay, until their friend Melody finally got them to get together.
• Two Girls and a Guy: They were this with their other friend Melody, who turned out to be River Song, their time travelling daughter from the future.
• Two Guys and a Girl: Them and the Doctor, the first long term trio of the revival series as Jack’s involvement was at the tail end of the Series he appeared in, Adam lasted one episode, and Mickey was quickly put on a bus. These three travelled together for a portion of Series 5, most of Series 6 and the first half of Series 7.

Amy Pond

Amelia Jessica "Amy" Pond (Eleventh Doctor)

"I'm easily worth two men."

Debut: "The Eleventh Hour" (2010)

Departure Story: "The Angels Take Manhattan" (2012)

Final Appearance: "The Time of the Doctor" (2013)^note As a possible hallucination seen by the Eleventh Doctor just before he regenerates.

Played by: Karen Gillan (2010–2012, 2013)^note A companion from 2010–2012, she was Back for the Finale in one episode of 2013 for Matt Smith's final regular episode., Caitlin Blackwood (Young Amy, 2010–2012)^note  An unknown stand-in played her in 2013 when she came Back for the Finale — Caitlin had become a teenager by that time and was too old to pass as a little kid anymore.

"Well, there was a time - there were years when I couldn't live without you, um... When just the whole 'everyday' thing would drive me crazy... But since you've dropped us back here, since you've given us this house, y'know, we've built a life! I- I don't know if I can have both."

The Girl Who Waited

Amy, a kissogram (and, later, a model and a writer), is a Scot raised in a small village in rural England. She first met the Doctor as a little girl in 1996, an encounter that everyone but Amy dismissed as imaginary. But Amy never forgot her "raggedy Doctor", and he served as a sort of imaginary friend for her… until he finally returned, twelve years later. Her relationship with the Doctor is arguably inspired by Wendy Darling's relationship with Peter Pan... except that in this case, Wendy is Peter's mother-in-law.

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• Action Girl: She exerts this when "pushed into a corner". "The Girl Who Waited" sees her exhibit this to her fullest potential by surviving 36 years in a Kindness Facility against an army of hostile robots.
• All Therapists Are Muggles: Amy is sent to therapy in two separate realities when others find out what she’s experienced and can’t believe it’s real: in "The Eleventh Hour" because of her tales of the Raggedy Doctor ^note  She bit all four of them , and in “The Big Bang” where all the stars have gone out and young Amy is the only person in the world who remembers them.
• Always Save The Boy: The Doctor even lampshades it.
  The Doctor: Rory! Rory! Always with the Rory!
• Amnesiac Lover:
  • From the end of "Cold Blood" to the end of "The Pandorica Opens", she doesn't remember Rory because he never existed.
  • Played with in "The Wedding of River Song". Amy remembers that she has a husband named Rory whom she loved dearly, but can't remember what he looks like, and therefore doesn't recognize "Captain Williams". It's the Doctor who tries to restart both their memories.
• Aw, Look! They Really Do Love Each Other: While she often takes Rory for granted, if anything happens to him, she'll be crushed, even suicidal. After she reads about Auton-Rory's disappearance in the Blitz during "The Big Bang", she's utterly devastated. "The Girl Who Waited" is testament to how deeply she's in love with him.
  Old Amy: You're asking me to defy destiny, causality, the nexus of time itself for a boy.
  Young Amy: You're Amy, he's Rory... and oh yes I am.
• Back for the Finale: She returns briefly as a hallucination in the Eleventh Doctor's dying moments.
• Berserk Button: Growing up, the Doctor was her button.
  The Doctor: Four [psychiatrists]?
  Amy: I kept biting them.
  The Doctor: Why?
  Amy: They kept saying you weren't real.
• Beware the Nice Ones: When pushed enough or her family's in danger, she can be terrifying. Her (much-deserved) murder of Madame Kovarian, for example.
• Big Damn Kiss: Has a few incredibly Big Damn Kisses with Rory, first in "Amy's Choice" when she made her choice, then in "The Big Bang" on her wedding day, and "The Girl Who Waited", which is effectively "Rory's Choice". She also snogs the Doctor at the end of "Flesh and Stone", while he scrambles to shove her off of him.
• Body Motifs: There's a lot of focus on her legs and she's known as the companion who waited for the Doctor all her life. When she finally marries Rory, she still has trouble moving on from the Doctor.
• Brave Scot: She's brave. She's Scottish. What more is there to say?
• Broken Bird:
  • The Doctor abandons her repeatedly in "The Eleventh Hour", leaving her with lifelong psychological problems as a result.
  • She repeatedly suffers this in "A Good Man Goes to War": First she gives birth in captivity, held prisoner God-knows-where in time and space. Then her baby girl is taken away from her by the villains. Then after the sheer joy of getting Melody back and reuniting with her husband and the Doctor, the villains reveal that they've already taken off with the baby and replaced her with a flesh duplicate, which promptly dissolves in Amy's arms.
  • In "The Girl Who Waited", she's left to fend for herself against killer robots for 36 years, hardening her into a bitter old woman whose faith in the Doctor has dissolved into hatred.
  • Finally, in "The God Complex", the Doctor deliberately breaks that faith in order to save both her life and her future.
• The Call Put Me on Hold: As above, she answered yes to the call long before she was able to actually have the adventure associated.
• Changed My Jumper: She's a worse offender than the Doctor himself. Wearing a miniskirt in public would probably have at least caused some comment in some of the places she went.
• Character Development: Though she starts as an innocent and adventurous young girl, after being abandoned by the Doctor for 14 years she grows up to be jaded, snarky and emotionally damaged, as well as finding herself sexually conflicted between the Doctor and Rory. Throughout Series 5 and 6 she comes to realise just how much she loves Rory, and her mask of overconfidence is toned down as she becomes more mature. She also comes to see the Doctor as less of a childhood hero and more of a friend and equal.
• Character Tic: In Series 5, she would bulge her eyes and pucker her mouth a lot.
• Clingy Jealous Girl: She gets pretty annoyed when she thinks Rory is more focused on another woman. It's justified for a few reasons; he's her husband, he's had a Single-Target Sexuality on her for most of their lives, he has a tendency to die and she's feeling guilty over calling him her "sort of boyfriend" in their first episode.
• Deadpan Snarker: Has her moments. In the ending of, "Flesh and Stone", she snarks that it's a been a while since the Doctor has gotten laid. Subverted earlier in the episode when the Angel Bob makes her cry stone out of her eye and count down.
• Distracted by My Own Sexy: in the 2011 Comic Relief short when she crossed her own timestream and wouldn't stop flirting with herself.
• Double Consciousness: After the events of "The Big Bang", she remembers two different versions of her life, as stated in the "Good Night" mini-episode. In "The Wedding of River Song", this is now a triple consciousness, with Amy remembering her life in the time-everywhere universe.
• Double Standard: Abuse, Female on Male: She emotionally and physically beats Rory over the head a whole lot in Series 5, something hinted to be a result of her epic scale abandonment issues. She gets called out on it hard on occasion, and slowly learns that there are other ways to love someone. It's still her default defence mechanism when she feels that their relationship isn't heading the right way, but it's thankfully downplayed/non-existent by the later part of Series 7A.
• Driven to Suicide: After Rory is sent to the past and "killed" by a Weeping Angel, she chooses to get sent back in time by that same Angel to die with him (of old age, though). The Doctor sounds like he's trying to talk her off of a high ledge.
• Drives Like Crazy: According to Rory.
  Rory: Uh, Doctor, don't. Seriously, I let her drive my car once.
  Amy: Yeah, to the end of the road.
  Rory: Yeah. Where, according to Amy, there was an unexpected house.
  Amy: Aw, he's jealous because I passed my test first time.
  Rory: You cheated: you wore a skirt.
  Amy: I didn't wear a skirt. ... No, no; I did wear a skirt, but it was any old skirt.
  Rory: Have you seen Amy drive, Doctor?
  The Doctor: No?
  Rory: Neither did her driving instructor...
• Dull Surprise: A minor example; Karen Gillan was a model before she got into acting. In Series 5, her acting was perfectly fine, but her facial expressions could be rather static and make Amy seem kind of deadpan. This was resolved by Series 6, when Karen was much more comfortable in the role and began emoting much more.
• Expy:
  • Shares quite more than a few traits with Sally Sparrow from "Blink", a story Steven Moffat wrote before taking over as the head writer, right down to having a guy that's interested in her that's considered way out of his league. Unlike Larry Nightingale, Rory definitely does hook up with the girl he likes.^note  This is probably not a coincidence as Steven Moffat wanted Carey Mulligan to reprise the role as a full-time companion only for her to turn the opportunity down.
  • Her origin story also appears to be adapted from another Moffat script, "The Girl In The Fireplace". Like Reinette in that episode, she first meets the Doctor as a child, believes him to be an imaginary friend, and then is surprised to meet him again in adulthood.
  • She also shares more than a few character traits with Rose Tyler. However, unlike Rose, she actually comes to love her Muggle boyfriend (it helps that he became a invokedMemetic Badass not far short of the Doctor himself), grows out of her crush on the Doctor, and generally does a lot of growing up.
• Fag Hag: Believed herself to be this to Rory for years.
• Fair Cop: Subverted in her first appearance, when she uses a Kissogram outfit to pretend to be a cop.
• Fanservice Model: Amy was this for a time before starting her adventures with the Doctor. Different from most of the characters on this trope, she didn't wear lingerie or swimsuits, but Fanservice Costumes since she worked as a kissogram. By the time she saw the Doctor again after meeting him as a child, Amy was wearing a police officer costume.
• Fiery Redhead: This ginger companion is quick to lose her temper. As early as her first episode, there's her smacking the Doctor with a cricket bat and sticking his tie in a car door because he left her alone for 12 years and then won't explain what's going on.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus: In "The Bells of Saint John", the characters — including the Doctor, eventually — read an old-looking book titled Summer Falls. It's written by "Amelia Williams".
• Freudian Excuse: Her selfishness and bossy personality is in part because the Doctor accidentally abandoned her when she was little after literally promising her the stars, and having to deal with four different psychologists over her childhood basically made her "damaged goods" by "The Eleventh Hour".
• Friends with Benefits: Wants to be this with the Doctor, and she gets one kiss in before he pushes her away. She tries again during her wedding — twice.
• Future Badass: Thirty-six years spent alone defending herself from robots with a sword in a quarantined medical facility.
• Happily Ever After: While Amy and Rory are dead in the present, they have 50+ years in the past, and Amy's final note assures the Doctor that they had a full and happy life together until their deaths of old age. Karen Gillan herself also thinks they had Babies Ever After as well — at the very least, they definitely adopted a child.
• Heh Heh, You Said "X": Gives one in "The Time of Angels" when River asks the Doctor to "sonic her" device in order to amplify its signal, as part of her general winding the Doctor up over his relationship with River.
  Amy: Ooh Doctor, you sonicked her!
• Hidden Depths: She really loves van Gogh's work.
• In-Series Nickname: The Girl Who Waited. Twice.
• Insult of Endearment: "Stupid face" and "moron" is Amy's love language.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Despite her selfish and shady attitude on occasion, Amy's overall a good person who's willing to sacrifice her own life for those she cares about.
• Jumped at the Call:
  • Asked to come along, as a girl; unfortunately, the caller got waylaid and she had to wait for fourteen years before she got to see the inside of the TARDIS.
    Amy: When I was a little girl, I dreamed of time and space. Last night, all my dreams came true.
  • Invoked by the Doctor with his repeated declaration.
    The Doctor: Amelia Pond! Get your coat!
• Killed Off for Real: In "The Angels Take Manhattan", her permanent death is confirmed by her tombstone.
• Lady of War: In "The Girl Who Waited", the future Amy has taken a level in badass and become one of these. This attitude is also very much in evidence in "The Wedding of River Song".
• Laser-Guided Amnesia: Done to her memories of Rory courtesy of the time-crack, and, it later turns out, to her memories of her parents as well.
• Last-Name Basis: The Doctor has a habit of calling her "Pond".
• Leg Focus:
  • The "Space" short is based on her long legs, her short skirt, and how her husband is distracted by them.
  • Clara's thoughts on the subject:
    Clara: Dear GOD, that woman is made of legs! That's the most legs on any living human!
  • Amusingly, the newly regenerated Twelfth Doctor mutters about her legs in comparison to those of the much shorter Clara... because they're both tied up and Clara's trying to reach the dropped sonic screwdriver with her feet.
• Leitmotif: There's "Locked On", which plays while she gives her narration at the start of the American broadcasts of Series 6. As well as a musical piece called Amy's Theme.
• Like Brother and Sister: Despite a chronic case of Will They or Won't They?, she and the Doctor ultimately end up like this when she realizes that Rory is her true love.
• Limited Wardrobe: For the first six episodes of Series 6, appeared to have nothing in her wardrobe except two or three similar-looking plaid shirts. It turned out to be a subliminal hint to the audience that she's actually a mind-linked Doppelgänger in these episodes.
• Love Triangle: Thinks she's in one with Rory and the Doctor. Rory and the Doctor both disagree. She readily accepts the fact that the Doctor wouldn't necessarily love her, being a 907-year-old alien and all, but she still hopes for a quick shag. While it largely dies to nothing by the end of Series 5, the Ship Tease around it eventually becomes a major plot point, due to invokedTrolling Creator, when she becomes pregnant in Series 6 and people start to assume that it might be the Doctor's baby. Of course, it's not — despite there being, at first, overwhelming circumstantial evidence for it.
• The Maiden Name Debate: After she marries Rory, she becomes Amy Williams. The Doctor knows, but calls her "Pond" regardless (he even calls Rory "Rory Pond" consistently), unless things get properly serious.
  • She evens names her child "Melody Pond", not "Melody Williams". This becomes important later in the series.
• Male Gaze: Her first appearance as an adult is a slow pan up her legs.
• Mama Bear: Very nearly kills a spaceship full of people, including herself and Rory, to save their child. No guarantee that anyone died, but none that everyone lived, either. Madame Kovarian learns this, too.
  Amy: You took my baby from me and hurt her. And now she's all grown up and she's fine. But I'll never see my baby again.
  Madame Kovarian: But you'll still save me, though. Because he would. And you'd never do anything to disappoint your precious Doctor.
  Rory: Ma'am, we have to go. Now.
  Amy: The Doctor is very precious to me, you're right. But do you know what else he is, Madame Kovarian? Not here. [reattaches Kovarian's eye-drive, condemning her to a torturous death by electrocution] River Song didn't get it all from you... sweetie.
• Marry Them All: In her first season, she genuinely intends to have both Rory and the Doctor as her "boys", with Rory's unhappiness with such an arrangement going largely over her head (and the Doctor not having any intention to come between them — quite the opposite). She pointedly ignores their protests even during her and Rory's wedding, and tells the Doctor he can kiss the bride. (He doesn't.)
  Amy (to the Doctor) Oh, you may absolutely kiss the bride
  Amy: [also to the Doctor] Oi! Where are you sneaking off to? We haven't even had a snog in the shrubbery yet!
  Rory: Amy!
  Amy: Shut up, it's my wedding!
  Rory: Our wedding!
• Master of the Mixed Message: Towards Rory in Series 5 and early in Series 6, where he goes from her boyfriend to her "sort of boyfriend" to her fiancé, to one of her two "boys" and then forgetting him entirely due to a time crack. Since then, she's clearly established him as her number one priority.
• Meet Cute: She and the Doctor have one when he shows up in a crashed TARDIS asking for an apple.
• Ms. Fanservice:
  • She's a Kissogram, and so has several... interesting outfits. Seen onscreen is a Fair Cop police uniform; refered to are Naughty Nurse Outfits, Naughty Nun, and French Maid outfits. She has a general liking for short skirts or hotpants that show off Karen Gillan's long legs; there's only two episodes of the fifth series in which we don't see her in something like that.
  • This causes a minor disaster in the 2011 Comic Relief skit, when her wearing a short skirt distracts Rory enough to cause him to drop a thermocoupling, causing a spatial paradox.
  • It's also implied she Invoked this to pass her driving test.
  • As of the end of Series 6 and the beginning of Series 7, she had a quite successful modelling career. By "Dinosaurs on a Spaceship", she seems to have quit.
• Multiple-Choice Past: After the mess with the cracks in time has been resolved, Amy is left with two largely incompatible childhoods — one where she had a mum and dad, one where she was raised by her aunt. She remembers both of them, which is a bit of a headache.
• Mystical Pregnancy: Straightforward example — Amy is subjected to a horrifying pregnancy and delivery. It leads to a half-Time Lord child — though not by the means that anyone expected.
• Oblivious to Love: For a kissogram, she was a little bit slow in realising that Rory liked her.
• Older Than They Look: Not initially, but over her two-and-a-half seasons Amy ages by roughly a decade, though no effort is made to physically reflect this. The Doctor's line about her wrinkles in "The Angels Take Manhattan" is a little hard to swallow when Karen Gillan's face barely has any lines on it even when frowning.
• Painted-On Pants: If she's not wearing a miniskirt, she's probably wearing these.
• Pajama-Clad Hero: In "The Beast Below", she saves all of Starship UK and the Star Whale carrying her while in her nightie.
• Parental Abandonment: When we first meet her, she's living with her aunt (who's never there). The question of what happened to the rest of her family is part of the season arc.
• The Peeping Tom: Had no problem watching the Eleventh Doctor's bare backside when he just started changing clothes right in front of her and Rory not long after his regeneration.
  Rory: Are you not gonna turn your back?
  Amy: [smirks] Nope.
• Phrase Catcher: "Come along, Pond."
• The Power of Love: With Rory, going both ways. In her case, it helps restore her memories of him in the time-everywhere reality, just in time for her to interrupt his attempted Heroic Sacrifice by mowing down half a dozen Silence with an assault rifle.
• Reality Warper: Her Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory is the only reason the Doctor's second Big Bang goes off without a hitch, and is also the only way the Doctor comes back into existence.
• Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory:
  • Develops this as an actual explicit power, though not so much ripple-proof as ripple-resistant. She can lose memories of her own history if she doesn't really concentrate when the moment is rewritten, but she can get those back. This culminates with her remembering the Doctor back into existence after a nasty Ret-Gone.
  • This skill comes back again in "The Wedding of River Song". She and Rory can both remember bits and pieces of the correct timeline, but Amy is the only one able to remember the correct order of things — with a lot of effort and many scribbled illustrations.
• Red Is Heroic: Mostly because of her fiery red hair, she also wears a lot of red clothing troughout the series, like her big red sweater and her red scarf.
• Scarf Of Ass Kicking: Frequently wears one throughout Series 5. Less so afterward — which, ironically, is about the time she Took a Level in Badass.
• Screw Yourself: When the TARDIS gets tangled in a time loop, Amy finds her slightly-time-displaced-self rather fetching.
  The Doctor: Ohhh... this is how it all ends. Pond flirting with herself — true love at last. Oh, sorry, Rory.
  Rory: Absolutely no problem at all.
• Security Cling: The Eleventh Doctor and Amy have a variation. Because Amy's story is one traumatic Break the Cutie moment after another, the Doctor develops a habit of clinging tightly to her and rubbing her back while delivering each new piece of bad news. Asking permission from her husband Rory every time, of course, that being Eleven's method of making clear that he's not trying to rekindle Amy's affection for him.
• Ship Tease: With the Doctor. While it seems to die around the end of Series 5 (the Doctor, for his part, never reciprocated), this becomes a major plot point when she becomes pregnant and her baby turns out to have Time Lord DNA. Rumours promptly start flying about the universe as to exactly what happened, with Dorium noting that anyone now hunting Amy or her family will be in serious trouble, explicitly remarking to the Headless Monks, "I've even heard whose child you've taken. Are. You. Mad?!", before talking up the Doctor's reputation as The Dreaded, implying that the Doctor is the father. Due to invokedTrolling Creator, it takes a while before we find out that it was all a big Red Herring, and the Doctor has never touched Amy.
• Show Some Leg: According to Rory, this is how she got her driver's permit.
• Small Name, Big Ego: Very mild case of this sometimes, as she tends to overestimate her own competence.
  • Case in point, during a conversation with River about the Doctor, River says she knows what Amy is thinking. Amy's immediate response is to confidently state that River doesn't. As it turns out, River does in fact know what Amy's thinking — though in fairness to Amy, she didn't.
• Statuesque Stunner: At 5 foot 11 inches she’s the same height as Rory and only an inch shorter than the Doctor, probably why she’s never shown wearing heels on the show otherwise she’d tower over both.
• Surprise Pregnancy: She had no idea she was pregnant, even after having done the deed on or after her wedding night.
• Tangled Family Tree: From late Series 6 onward, Amy and Rory are together and have a daughter, Melody, who was named after their childhood best friend, Melody a.k.a. Mels. Amy, however, fancied the Doctor and snogged him early on (he did not reciprocate and was extremely surprised, to say the least). She later marries Rory and has a daughter whom she names Melody, after her and Rory's best friend. Melody turns out to be River Song, who eventually marries the Doctor after a childhood spent as said best friend Melody, meaning that she was accidentally named after herself. On top of that, Melody's second mother is the TARDIS, who considers herself married to the Doctor and has a romantic (as well as biologically symbiotic) relationship with him. Things get more complicated when Amy accidentally marries Henry VIII in a throwaway gag — because the Doctor, rather briefly, married Queen Elizabeth I in his previous incarnation, who happens to be Henry VIII's daughter, making her simultaneously his mother-in-law and his step-mother-in-law. In the middle of all that, the Doctor snogs Rory for no obvious reason — though the main incident of this was a invokedThrow It In!, and could just be the Doctor being excitable and, well, the Doctor. The TARDIS, meanwhile, also fancies "the Pretty One" (Rory).
• Took a Level in Badass: Thirty-six years of defending yourself from killer robots will do this.
• Trapped in the Past: Amy and Rory's final fate is to be locked into early 1930s New York by Weeping Angels.
• Trauma Conga Line: She gets severely traumatised roughly every two episodes, from kidnapping to abandonment to adult fear and death.
• Tsundere: A textbook examples. She's the "Harsh" type at the beginning of Series 5, thanks to her many, many issues ("Twelve years! Twelve years, and four psychiatrists!"), and "sweet" by the end.
• Unrequited Love: very briefly for the Doctor, and arguably it's more lust than love. However, she pretty quickly realises that Rory's the one for her.
• Violent Glaswegian: Not actually Glaswegian, but she's still Scottish and still very bad tempered when the mood takes her. She invokes it in "Asylum of the Daleks".
• Violently Protective Girlfriend: It's really not a good idea to mess with Rory. While he's a invokedMemetic Badass in his own right, Amy is considerably more ruthless than he is.
• Wham Line: To the Doctor, when he's grilling this "policewoman" on why she lied about how long the Pond family has been gone.
  The Doctor: This is important! Why did you say six months?
  Amy: [screaming, in her real accent] Well, why did you say five minutes?!
• Why Do You Keep Changing Jobs?: Kissogram, supermodel, travel writer, book publisher... Amy fits in quite a few careers around all the time travelling. Justified because there are years' worth of gaps between her adventures with the Doctor.
• Wistful Amnesia: Finds herself crying over Rory without realizing it or knowing why several times late in Series 5 after he'd temporarily been swallowed by a crack in reality. Does it again at her wedding, not knowing it's over the Doctor being erased from existence.
• Yaoi Fangirl: As shown in the comics, when Rory kisses the Doctor by accident and Amy asks them to do it again, but slower.
• You Called Me "X"; It Must Be Serious: As she points out, the Doctor only calls her "Amelia" when he's worried about her, and "Amy Williams" when things get very, very serious.
• You Have Waited Long Enough: Amy runs off with the Doctor on the night before her wedding.

Rory Williams

Rory Arthur Williams (Eleventh Doctor)

"Great! We're dead, again."

Debut: "The Eleventh Hour" (2010)

Joins TARDIS Crew: "The Vampires of Venice" (2010)

Departure Story: "The Angels Take Manhattan" (2012)

Played by: Arthur Darvill (2010–2012)
Young Rory played by: Ezekiel Wigglesworth (2011)

"Rory Pond is everything I could never be — brave enough to show when he's scared, man enough to take his wife's name, and so steadfastly in love that he'll wait 2,000 years and not complain once. Everyone needs a Rory in their life."

— Steven Moffat

The Last Centurion

Rory is a nurse, Amy's childhood friend, and now her husband. Growing up together with Amy, she used to make him dress up as her "raggedy Doctor", and he's appropriately freaked out to learn that the man actually exists. He starts off incredibly reluctant to travel with the Doctor, out of love for Amy and fear for his own life, but quickly rises to the challenge and becomes a tremendously courageous force to be reckoned with.

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• Always Save the Girl: If you suggest that his girlfriend is less important than the universe, then he will punch your lights out.
• Amnesiac Lover: In "The Wedding of River Song", in which he's lost all his memories of the correct timeline and only knows Amy as his boss (albeit whom he is quietly devoted to). The Doctor tries to get them back together again... and fails, at first.
• The Atoner: As an Auton, following the (apparent) death of Amy by his own hands.
• Badass Adorable: "A Good Man Goes to War" has him terrifying Cybermen and then later crying with joy at his baby daughter.
• Berserk Button : Threaten Amy and you might as well dig your own grave as you’ll be needing one once he’s through with you.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Normally a gentle soul (he's a nurse, after all), but he's capable of amazing destruction if his family is threatened.
  Rory: I have a message from the Doctor... and a question from me. WHERE. IS. MY. WIFE? Oh don't give me those blank looks, the twelfth Cyber-legion monitors this entire quadrant! You hear everything. So you tell me what I need to know, you tell me now and I'll be on my way...
  Cyber-Leader: What is the Doctor's message?
  [the entire Cyberman fleet outside the window explodes]
  Rory: Would you like me to repeat the question?
• Big Damn Kiss: Apart from a few very Big Damn Kisses with Amy, the Doctor (well, Matt Smith, improvisinginvoked) rather unexpectedly snogs him once. Rory makes a "yuck" face.
• Broomstick Quarterstaff: He uses a mop as an improvised weapon in many episodes, including "The Vampires of Venice", "Night Terrors" and "The God Complex".
• Bullying a Dragon: Rory is normally a gentle soul, but it is not a good idea to test his patience whenever Amy is in trouble.
• Butt-Monkey: Started out as Amy's put-on "sort of boyfriend" so wasn't taken seriously by anyone and regularly made a fool of himself. Many, many levels in badass later...
• The Champion: Spent 2000 years as the Guardian of the Pandorica, simply to make sure Amy would remain protected.
• Character Development: He went from an insecure Mickey-type character whose main purpose was to look hurt, to a Badass Adorable man who is willing to spend two thousand years protecting his wife.
• The Chew Toy: Where Amy gets horribly tortured emotionally, it is Rory's lot to suffer physically, in new and interesting ways. At one point, fans on Twitter jokingly threatened to come after Moffat with a pitchfork if he tortured Rory again. Moffat responded they'd have to haul the pitchfork out of Rory first.
• Chick Magnet: Gathers quite a few looks from various female characters (and, after a while, from Eleven as well). Even the TARDIS fancies him, calling him "the pretty one" — one episode later, it's revealed that they have a child together, in a sense.
• Covert Pervert: In "Space" and "Time", he accidentally causes a major malfunction in the TARDIS because (a) his wife is wearing a skirt and (b) the TARDIS has a glass floor.
• Deadpan Snarker: An often dry and understated example, he responds to the insanity that is his life with frequent snark.
• Determinator:
  • Auton Rory spent 1894 years protecting the Pandorica simply because Amy was inside and she was, just about, a bit safer with him there.
  • In "The Wedding of River Song", in another version of reality, to give Amy time to flee, he ignores the fact he's being electrocuted.
    Amy: You have to take your eye-drive off!
    Rory: I can't do that ma'am, I can't forget what's coming.
    Amy: But it could activate at any moment!
    Rory: [with trembling, clenched fists] It has activated, ma'am.
• Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?:
  • Rory tops himself, and quite possibly takes the all-time Companion Crowning Moment, in Doctor Who Magazine comic "The Chains of Olympus", where he lets out a Pre Ass Kicking One Liner in the form of "Hi, honey! Is this bloke bothering you?", announces himself as Roranicus the First of the Upper Leadworth Empire, and whips out a Your Mom joke... all before taking on Ares, the Greek god of war in SINGLE COMBAT, and wiping the floor with him. Eat your heart out, Kratos.
  • He also once slugged the Doctor, who has been known to do a fair impersonation of Cthulhu himself/send Cthulhu crying for his mummy. That said, in that case, the Doctor was intentionally provoking him, to see how much of him was Auton and how much was Rory.
  • He also punched out Hitler. And put him in a cupboard.
• Disney Death: He has a knack for wiggling his way out of being Killed Off for Real.
• Distressed Dude: Frequently. Amy never takes it well.
• Double Consciousness: Rory remembers both his original life and his life as the Last Centurion in the universe of the Total Event Collapse. However, he's worked out how to block away the latter set of memories most of the time — unless he decides he needs to access them.
• The Dreaded: After the reboot of the universe, he's been woven into all human legends as "The Last Centurion".
• Establishing Character Moment:
  • He's first introduced as being the only one in the hospital not to dismiss the rumour about coma patients wandering about, which attracts the Doctor's attention when he notices he's busy taking photos of them, rather than the sun going dark. He's only then introduced properly as Amy's fairly timid boyfriend.
  • As a companion this moment comes in "The Vampires of Venice", when he quite angrily tells the Doctor that "you have no idea how dangerous you make people to themselves", establishing himself as the first companion since Donna who doesn't outright idolise the Doctor, and someone who is perfectly willing to call him out.
    • In the same story he witnesses an apparent vampire attack... and focuses on trying to save the victim rather than chasing the vampire.
• Expy: Shares traits with Larry Nightingale from "Blink", a story Steven Moffat wrote before taking over as the head writer, right down to being interested in a girl that's considered way out of his league. Unlike Larry, he definitely does hook up with the girl he likes.
• Fanservice Pack: Mild version. In Series 6, the costume department gave the character more flattering clothes (like tighter jeans) and hair gel. It's also applied to the Roman uniform when it reappears.
• The Fettered: Remembering his time as the Last Centurion hurts, so he blocks it out for his own sanity. When needs must, he has 2,000 years of experience as well as years of training as a Roman soldier that he can draw on.
• Foil: The Nurse to the Doctor's Doctor. Also to Mickey Smith, as both are the boyfriends of the Doctor's main companion who feel unappreciated and threatened by their girlfriend's close relationship with the Doctor. They were also childhood friends with their respective love interests and experience surprising character development into a more stronger and tough character. The difference is that Rory's character development is shown by him proving his love for Amy by waiting almost 2000 years for her which strengthens their relationship, while Mickey's involves him moving on from Rose.
• From Bad to Worse: Story of his companionship and non-existence right up through the penultimate episode of Series 5, which culminates in an Auton with his memories killing Amy against Rory's will.
• Genre Savvy: Rory knows a bit about science and science fiction, and the Doctor gets peeved when Rory doesn't need anything explained to him, especially how he perfectly understands the TARDIS interior being bigger on the inside.
• The Good Captain: In "The Wedding of River Song", he is "Captain Williams" in Amy's anti-Silence organization.
• The Heart: This is a common trope for companions of the Doctor, but Rory's compassion and kindness are showcased more than just about any other companion in the Revived Series. These traits are often Lampshaded by the Doctor, and it makes him an Unwitting Pawn in "The Rebel Flesh"/"The Almost People".
• Henpecked Husband: He's okay with it most of the time, and offers only mild resistance to being called her boy or taking her last name.
  Amy: Would I make it up at a time like this?!
  Rory: Well, you do have a history of [receives Death Glare] ... being very lovely.
• Heroic Bystander: Though not a fan of adventuring, Rory sets the tone early when, upon coming across a vampire attack, his first impulse is not to flee or chase the monster, but to stop the victim from bleeding to death. Throughout his time with the Doctor, he tends to act to save life first and foremost. This leads to him not only tending the wounded, but frequently doing awesome things like punching Hitler out to stop him shooting an apparent innocent bystander, and then locking him in a closet!
• Heroic Sacrifice: In "The Angels Take Manhattan", he and Amy commit suicide by jumping off of the top of a building in New York to create a paradox that will prevent the Weeping Angels from taking over New York.
• Heroic Willpower:
  • In his Auton form as the Centurion, he uses willpower to keep himself from going insane. He draws on this again in "The Wedding of River Song", but it nearly fails. Despite this he manages to keep his gun aimed through nigh unbearable pain. Rory gives Samuel L. Jackson a run for his money in BAMF territory.
  • This has the unexpected bonus of making Rory completely resistant to Mind Rape, if "The Doctor's Wife" and "The God Complex" are any indication.
• Hero of Another Story: Early in "The Big Bang", he spent 1894 years worth of history guarding the Pandorica. Probability of zany adventures: extremely high.
  The Doctor: So. Two thousand years. How did you do?
  Rory: Kept out of trouble.
  The Doctor: How?
  Rory: Unsuccessfully.
  • Big Finish Doctor Who has announced a new series, The Lone Centurion. So far his adventures have taken him to ancient Rome and to Camelot.
• Hospital Hottie: In case you could ever forget, he's a nurse, and a pretty one at that.
• I Just Want to Be Normal: Rory's ideal world as recreated by the Dream Lord is rather quiet — he is a doctor instead of a nurse, Amy is pregnant, and most of the residents of their hometown are over 90.
• In-Series Nickname: The Last/Lone Centurion.
• Internal Homage: He succeeds Big Finish companion Hector Schofield as a cute nervous nurse (and sci-fi dork) who goes from The Chew Toy to intergalactic hero. Creator Steven Moffat is a huge Big Finish fan and loves to reference the series.
• Just Friends: He had feelings for Amy to the point of Single-Target Sexuality, whilst she was Oblivious to Love to the point she thought he was gay.
• Killed Off for Real: After eight attempts, Moffat finally kills him permanently in "The Angels Take Manhattan". He has a gravestone and everything. While Amy and Rory are dead in the present, they still have 50+ years in the past, and Amy's final note assures the Doctor that they are living Happily Ever After there.
• Knight in Sour Armour: Series 6, thanks to spending 1,894 years straight guarding the Pandorica from anything and everything that could possibly threaten it. In "The God Complex", he says he neither fears nor believes in anything anymore. His eye roll at Eleven's inability to wait for even five minutes gets quite magnificent at times.
• Let's Get Dangerous!: Whenever Amy is threatened, Rory is no longer content to hold back and stay by the sidelines. He's been pushed to the point where he is going to wage war!
• Living Legend: As the Lone Centurion, he is interwoven into a significant number of Earth's legends, right up until his presumed death in World War II. Amy's comments in A Good Man Goes To War suggests that these legends still exist after the universe was rebooted.
• Love Martyr: After he dream-dies in "Amy's Choice", Amy admits to the Doctor that she never told him she loved him, and this was the (constant) day before their wedding.
• The Maiden Name Debate: After he marries Amy, she legally takes on his last name... at which point the Doctor merrily starts to call him "Rory Pond". Rory protests, a bit, at first. It becomes fairly hilarious once the Doctor insists on also calling Rory's father "Pond".
• Manly Tears: He sheds a few when reunited with Amy and their daughter before the rug gets pulled out from under them:
  Rory: Oh God, I was gonna be cool. I wanted to be cool, look at me...
  Amy: Crying Roman with a baby. Definitely cool.
• The Medic: Rory is a nurse, and acts like it. (See Heroic Bystander above.) As of "A Good Man Goes to War" he's evolved into a Combat Medic.
• Mirror Character: To the Doctor, and it's best shown in "A Good Man Goes to War", where his actions demonstrate that episode's title could be interpreted as referring to either the Doctor or himself.
• Missing Mom: Rory's mother never appeared once, though she has been mentioned once in the show and more in the expanded universe. Given his father managed to spend several days in the TARDIS without anyone noticing, that suggests she's not in the picture anymore for whatever reason.
• Mistaken for Gay: Amy never saw him show any attraction to any girl, and assumed this because she was too thick to realise that there was at least one he liked...
• Nerves of Steel: At the start of series 5, he's a nervous nurse who's in no way ready to deal with space/time travel. By mid-series 6, he believes he's lost the ability to feel fear from the amount of crap he's seen and experienced, making him immune to this week's form of Mind Rape. ^note Although it's his lack of faith that is the important bit here When he thinks he and Amy are dead, his only reaction is "We're dead. Again." His alternate universe self, in the Time Crash, is like this too. The only thing that frightens him is the thought of losing Amy.
• Nice Guy: Really, really nice guy; he's a popular nurse at his hospital.
• Non-Action Guy: At least before he Took a Level in Badass, he'd rather be living a quiet suburban lifestyle than going on adventures in the TARDIS. But he'll do anything for Amy.
• Noodle Incident: He spent 1894 years staying out of trouble... unsuccessfully. Big Finish has announed they will be revealing what he got up to during this time.
• Not Afraid to Die:
  • He knows full well that he might not survive the 1894 years guarding the Pandorica. He still does so anyway.
  • In "The Angels Take Manhattan", after seeing the death of his future self who spent over 50 years without Amy simply as food for the Angels, Rory decides to jump off of the roof. When Amy protests, he says it's Better to Die than Be Killed and his intention is not suicide, but to create a paradox large enough that it will take the Angels with him and prevent any of this from happening!
• Older Sidekick: At least in "The Big Bang", following 2,000 years of guarding the Pandorica as an Auton.^note This depends on how old you consider the Doctor to be at the time, however, since he's known to be inconsistent about his age. Outside of that episode he's more debatable, being physically in his twenties while retaining the Auton memories.
• One-Man Army:
  • In "Day of the Moon", Rory has over twice the number of tallied markings on him, implying that during the three months he spent in 1969, he's dealt with the Silence on nearly a daily basis (while also constantly outwitting the FBI).
  • Best demonstrated in "A Good Man Goes to War", where Rory, in full Centurion gear and armed only with a sword (and a screwdriver), managed to waltz through a Cyberman-controlled vessel and scare the living crap out of them. In the same episode, he takes down a half a dozen Headless Monks armed only with a Gladius and Pistol.
• Only Sane Employee: Unlike his boss, he's the only one in the hospital to take the rumours of wandering coma patients seriously.
• Only Sane Man: Acts as the voice of reason on the TARDIS. Unlike the Doctor and Amy, he recognises the danger they often find themselves in, and isn't afraid to call out the Doctor on his tendency to act cavalier with people's lives. Steven Moffat says that Rory actively makes himself this because otherwise he'd get sucked into life with the Doctor like Amy.
• Phrase Catcher: Manages to get a good "Oh, Rory..." out of the Doctor every once and awhile.
• The Power of Love: When Amy was trapped in the Pandorica, Rory protected her for two thousand years. It was his love that kept him sane.
• Progressively Prettier: Alongside his character development as a Non-Action Guy who then Took a Level in Badass, the makeup department do a good job of making him look hunkier in series 6 compared to series 5.
• Previously Overlooked Paramour: Amy initially overlooks Rory (partially because she believes him to be homosexual) in favour of her infatuation with the Eleventh Doctor, but eventually comes to terms with her own feelings for Rory, who has always been there for her, and whose personality she considers to be the most beautiful she has ever encountered.
• Promotion to Opening Titles: As of the 2010 Christmas special, and thereafter.
• Really 700 Years Old: Mentally, he's almost two thousand years old, which makes him technically older than the Doctor. (Or, at least, older than the various ages Doctor was claiming to be when he knew Rory. Since the Doctor doesn't remember his exact age anymore, he could still have been older.)
• The Reliable One: The Doctor seems to trust him more than any other male companion in the modern era, even teaching him the basics of TARDIS repair.
• Reluctant Warrior: He honestly doesn't want to fight anyone, but if you threaten Amy, all bets are off.
• Ret-Gone: Temporarily; he's not only fatally shot, but absorbed by one of the cracks afterwards. The Doctor remembers him, but Amy doesn't.
• Sarcastic Devotee: To the Doctor, and to Amy, if he can get away without being hit with her shoes afterwards.
• Secret Test of Character: The Doctor casually threatens Rory's family to see if the Auton-Rory he's talking to has genuine human emotions. He does.
• Secular Hero: After his stint as the Last Centurion, he fears nothing and believes in nothing; not religion, not superstition, and not even friends of his like the Doctor.
• Shrouded in Myth: In his Auton form as the Centurion, getting written into legends all over the world as a result. No one knows for sure if he's real or not, but there are many accounts of him.
• Single-Target Sexuality:
  • Only ever shows attraction to Amy; his entire life, just Amy. Which, when they were younger, led to him being Mistaken for Gay by Amy. The moment the camera focuses on his face when Amy says them being together is impossible is sad, then a few seconds later when Amy reveals she thinks he is gay is very funny.
  • In a very sweet issue from IDW's comic series, Amy and the Doctor get body-swapped. Rory decides that he doesn't even care. He kisses the Doctor, realizing a bit too late that the body switch has already been corrected. (Amy asks them to do it again but more slowly.)
• The Slow Path: As the Centurion, he spent 1,894 years waiting while the Doctor skipped ahead with the Vortex Manipulator. Note that he explicitly chose The Slow Path, despite the Doctor trying to talk him out of it.
• Smarter Than You Look:
  • In his first episode, while the rest of the planet pays attention to the sun going wobbly, Rory (who up til now has just been an easily cowed nurse) pays attention to the coma patient that's out walking his dog. Later on, he figures out why the TARDIS is bigger on the inside remarkably quickly and without any help from the Doctor at all. The only companion to have done this so far.
  • Done rather subtly throughout series 5 and 6, and tied to his taking a level in badass. He was already smart enough to spot Prisoner Zero, but when the Doctor comes back for him a few episodes later, he's studied up on enough physics and time travel to know more than most comparable companions. Add in his years as the Centurion and he's become one of the Doctor's most competent companions in a while. For all of his occasional mocking, the Doctor seems to trust him more than any other companion, probably due to their similar experiences. He could be the strongest and smartest companion the Doctor will ever have, with the possible exceptions of River and Jack Harkness — which, since one is a part-Time Lord Super-Soldier trained to assassinate the Doctor himself, and the other is a centuries old ex Time Agent with Complete Immortality (depending on whether or not he's actually the Face of Boe, who was millions/billions of years old, and even then, the Face chose to die) and incalculable levels of military experience, isn't too shabby.
• Straight Man: According to Moffat, Rory has to make himself this, otherwise he'll get sucked in to the life like Amy.
• Super-Strength: In his Auton form as the Centurion, he can drag the Pandorica from a burning building. He was also strong enough to stab a Cyberman straight through its metal body and pin it to a door with a sword.
• Sword and Gun: Due to his memories of being the Last Centurion, he has over 2000 years of experience in this form of combat. He wields them to devastating effect in Series 6, as shown by managing to infiltrate and blow up a Cyberman fleet and successfully hold off the Headless Monks.
• Taking the Bullet: At the end of "Cold Blood"... and then he gets retconned out of existence.
• Tangled Family Tree: Albeit his part of the family tree is probably the least tangled about it. See River Song and Amy Pond for the rest.
• They Killed Kenny Again: Rory Williams: the man who dies, and dies again. In Doctor Who: Best of the Companions, one of the commentators equated him to Kenny from South Park, and believes Moffat gets some sick pleasure out of torturing Rory◊. It gets to the point where he complains at one point that he's dead... again.
• Thousand-Yard Stare: He has one whenever he remembers the 1,894 years as the Last Centurion. The Doctor mentions that he sometimes catches Rory just staring.
• Tomato in the Mirror: In "The Big Bang", he did not come back from the dead. He was a Nestene replicant whose programming killed Amy.
• Took a Level in Badass:
  • At least 20 levels after his resurrection into an Auton and nearly 2,000 years as the Lone Centurion. The man really would do anything for his wife.
  • Again in "A Good Man Goes to War". "WHERE. IS. MY. WIFE?"
• Too Spicy for Yog-Sothoth:
  • In "The Doctor's Wife", Rory is not shown to have been subjected to any Mind Rape by House, suggesting that either House knew it'd not work on him, or that it happened off-screen and Rory was simply better at shrugging it off.
  • In "The God Complex", the titular Hell Hotel shows people their worst fears so the Minotaur can feed on their faith. Rory is not religious nor superstitious, has experienced enough in his travels to be left with very little to fear anymore and unlike Amy, does not have faith that the Doctor will always be around to save them. In the end, all the Hotel can do is show him the exit. Shows just how amazing he is.
• Trapped in the Past: Rory and Amy's final fate is to be trapped in 1930s New York by Weeping Angels. The Doctor can't go back to them due to the damage the Angels did to local spacetime.
• Trauma Conga Line: Like Amy, though where hers is emotional/psychological, his is mostly physical — the only characters to die more than him are the Doctor himself (depending on whether or not one counts regeneration as dying) and Captain Jack Harkness, who's got Resurrective Immortality going for him.
• True Beauty Is on the Inside: Amy cites this as the reason she fell for Rory:
  Amy: You know when sometimes you meet someone so beautiful and then you actually talk to them and five minutes later they're as dull as a brick? Then there's other people, when you meet them you think, "Not bad. They're okay." And then you get to know them and... and their face just sort of becomes them. Like their personality's written all over it. And they just turn into something so beautiful. Rory's the most beautiful man I've ever met.
• Undying Loyalty: 1,894 years guarding what was basically Amy's coffin so she could revive.
• Unfazed Everyman: He's a very ordinary and relatable guy, but he also takes his first view of the inside of the TARDIS far better than most new companions have. He very quickly works out that the TARDIS interior exists in a different dimension, which is what allows it to be Bigger on the Inside, without any help from the Doctor (which actually kind of annoys him!). While he has his moments of panic after that (at least at first, before he became the Last Centurion) he tends to take things far more in stride than most ordinary people would. In fact his overriding emotion at his house being stormed by UNIT is mild irritation.
  Rory: There are soldiers all over my house, and I'm in my pants!
• Victorious Childhood Friend: He was friends with Amy back when she was "Amelia".
• Vitriolic Best Buds:Both the Doctor and Rory seem to enjoy the level of snark they throw at each other.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Often calls the Doctor out on constantly making people try to impress him, often putting them in serious danger.
  Rory: You have no idea how dangerous you make people to themselves!
• When He Smiles: While flirting with him when working the controls, older Amy tells him to give her a minute and his cutest smile in order for her to fix them properly.
  Older Amy: That's the one.
• Yank the Dog's Chain: Just as Amy remembers who he is... the Auton programming overruns him and he's forced to shoot her.

Apalapucia Amy

Amelia Jessica “Amy” Pond

"In fact, I think I can now definitely say I hate him. I hate The Doctor. I hate him more than I've ever hated anyone."

Played by: Karen Gillan (2011)

"If you escape, then I was never trapped here. The last thirty six years of my life rewrites, and I cease to exist. That's why old me refused to help then. That's why I'm refusing to help now. And that's why you'll refuse to help when it's your turn. And nothing you can say will change that."

An older version of Amy who spent over 30 years fighting for her life against medical pots on Apalapucia due to being separated from Rory and The Doctor in a time dilated area of the planets hospital.

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• We Used to Be Friends: Young Amy loves and has an Undying Loyalty towards the Doctor. This Amy openly despises the Doctor for failing to save her and dooming her to a life time of misery.

Tropes associated with Big Finish

Rory

Voiced by: Arthur Darvill

The legendary Last Centurion who guards the Pandorica for 2000 years, waiting for when his one true love can be saved. While also unsuccessfully trying to stay out of trouble.

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• Beethoven Was an Alien Spy: The audios reveal that he was the basis for Gawain during his time in Camelot which makes him even more of a Living Legend. Ironically in the myths Gawain is associated with locations in Scotland and had a son with a fey, which brings to mind River who is a child of the TARDIS and part-Time Lord.
• Deconstructed Character Archetype: Becomes this for the Royals Who Actually Do Something after becoming emperor of Rome. Rory is a Fish out of Temporal Water who comes from a far more progressive society who has ideas that, from a modern perspective, are great ways to improve the lives of Roman citizens. Except that all of his ideas go against everything Romans believe in and actually want, meaning they don't care that they could improve their lives and firmly reject the idea. They are perfectly content with the current state of Rome and as a result Rory ends up making a deal so that he can leave Rome with the Pandorica in return for giving up his title. In short, having royalty actually do something is all well and good, but if they're not doing something which the people are actually happy with then they actually can't do anything.
• Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: He fights Merlin of all people and wins, though admittedly Merlin simply abandoned the fight since Rory's actions had made it impossible for him to become the new king of Camelot.
• Fish out of Temporal Water: He's a 21st century nurse trapped in the past and must wait almost 2000 years, forcing him to experience the cultures of the past. He's naturally horrified and confused by Roman culture, especially after he's made the new emperor and his attempts at reform fail.
• Forgot About His Powers: Granted he's trying to keep his identity a secret, but Rory seems to often forget he has a gun in his hand which he could use to scare away his enemies.
• Hitman with a Heart: He briefly became the personal assassin of the empress of Rome. As you can guess, he was terrible at the job and ended up bribing his targets to fake their deaths.
• Immortality Hurts: The audios establish early on that while his body does apparently heal from damage despite the Doctor's warnings that damage was permanant, including fire as his hand was melted when he grabs a torch and it looks fine by the time of The Big Bang, he still feels pain.
• New Job as the Plot Demands: Even if it's justified as he is immortal, he still ends up with an insane list of job titles. Back in Leadworth he was a nurse and still calls himself that when trying to help someone with a medical issue, but so far he has been: a gladiator, an assassin, an emperor, a physcian's apprentice which he mentions is still basically a nurse, and a knight. The only job he actually wanted was to be an apprentice as the rest were forced on him by other people.
• Pinball Protagonist: He is this as no matter how hard he tries he can't seem to avoid dangerous situations and ofen people are manipulating events either to get the Pandorica or to control him better. If he had his way he would stay under the radar and keep watch over the Pandorica without getting invovled with anyone.
• Refusal of the Call: Well, he tries to avoid crazy adventures at least which makes him a little better than the Doctor who often goes looking for them. Everytime he tries to say no however it's often to someone with more political and social power than him who could have him executed, so he has to go and do what they want the best he can.
• Reluctant Ruler: He briefly becomes the new Caeser before abdicating due the problems it caused.
• Reluctant Warrior: Like on the show he does everything he can to avoid fighting, but is ready to do so if he has no choice and to defend the few friends he has.
• Royals Who Actually Do Something: He tries to be this after becoming the new emperor of Rome, but it's quickly deconstructed since Roman culture rejects all his changes.
• Took a Level in Badass: In Volume 2 Rory is far more confident in himself and his abilities, now having had a couple of centuries to adapt to his new situation. He still has moments of awkwardness, but it's made very clear that he's more focused on his goals and more willing to harm others if they force him to leave the Pandorica.
• True Companions: Becomes this with Lancelot despite the latter's crush on Rory.

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"What the hell are you doing?!"
"Changing the future. It's called marriage."