Steven Moffat Regrets How He Handled Amy and Rory
Steven Moffat got a lot of flack for his treatment of Doctor Who but none more than what happened with Amy Pond and Rory Williams.
In an interview with Doctor Who Magazine, Steven Moffat discussed his feelings on how Amy Pond and Rory Williams dealt with the grief of their baby. In “A Good Man Goes to War”, Madame Kovarian kidnapped their daughter Melody. Amy gave birth to her child after being captured by Kovarian, and then Melody disappeared — only for everyone to find out that River Song is the grown-up Melody.
The entire season was a little wibbly wobbly timey wimey but the way that the Ponds dealt with their baby being kidnapped was weak, for lack of a better term. In the interview, Moffat explained why it was hard for him to write their grief.
“Usually, big dramatic things happen in Doctor Who, then the next week everyone’s absolutely fine. I never found a way to have Amy and Rory grieve over their lost baby, and I still don’t know how I would do that. I could never work out how to write that.”
While that explains why he couldn’t write it accurately, that isn’t really true. The season before found Amy Pond grieving over the loss of Rory Williams, and she didn’t even remember Rory at the time. Currently, the Doctor is grieving for River Song and his forgotten companion. Moffat can write grief, he just wanted an excuse.
Grief is a pretty common theme in Doctor Who, I personally just think that Moffat couldn’t write a mother’s grief. Especially if it didn’t directly involve the Doctor.
Related Story: Doctor Who Spinoff Class’ Ratings Woes Continue
What is done is done but that doesn’t mean we have to like it. Some of us (like myself) just pretend that season 6 didn’t exist. So maybe that’s a better way to go about things.