Ranking Doctor Who’s modern day companions

Rory Williams

Didn’t we all love Rory? It’s surprising, only in the sense that he was originally introduced as the local boy Amy was supposed to marry, and positioned as something that was holding her back to her life on earth thanks to his insecurities. But it turned out that Rory was so much more than that, and I daresay some of us came to care more about him than we did Amy, who was the main companion of that era.

A bit like Kenny from South Park, Rory probably died more times than anyone else in the history of Doctor Who. It happened so frequently that it actually became something of a running joke on the show itself. (Which probably should have served as a hint to someone that it wasn’t really as emotionally effective as it should have been.) At any rate, Rory is tremendously loyal, waiting for and loving Amy across virtually all of time and space, even when it doesn’t always look as though she deserves it.

He was absorbed by a crack in time and space, became a literal person made of plastic, guarded a magic box in which Amy was held for almost 2,000 years, loses his daughter to kidnappers, gets sent back in time by a Weeping Angel and much, much more. Rory suffers a lot, but apparently thinks its all worth it because of Amy and the family they’ve made with the Doctor. Your mileage may vary on that point.

Best episode: Season 7’s “The Angels Take Manhattan.” This episode is Amy and Rory’s swan song, and sees the couple fling themselves from a building to try and create a paradox big enough to defeat the Weeping Angels that are attempting to use Rory as an endlessly self-repeating life force. (By killing him over and over, of course.) Rory gets to be brave, suffer some more, die a couple of times and profess his love for Amy, so it’s got a bit of everything. Except this time, Amy sacrifices her life in the present day to go back in time and be with her husband, because she really has loved him as much as he loved her all this time. It’s very sweet, and it’s nice to see someone choose Rory for a change, even if it does mean that the Ponds must live out the rest of their lives in 1930s New York.