"The Girl Who Waited"

In the original run of Doctor Who you had a series about a time traveler so that you could tell any story in time and space that you wanted. For the most part, they stayed away from telling actual time travel stories. Those stories are hard to tell because they usually don’t stand up to any thought.

These days, not just Doctor Who but all science fiction seems quickly willing to tell stories that wholly revolve around time traveling complications. It can be a bit frustrating when the whole plot doesn’t just depend on the viewer allowing a conceit, but actually engages in the sort of story that ends up being speculation about impossibilities. It comes across as intelligent, philosophical writing but it doesn’t stand up to any intelligent, philosophical thought.

“The Girl Who Waited” is perhaps the strongest example of this sort of story. It even admits the fact in the end when the whole story, for all practical purposes, never occurred. (Avoid the temptation to prove that last sentence wrong, you’ll only hurt yourself cognitively.)

All that being said, it is a fun exploration of Amy’s character and there is a wonderful moment in the film where the Amy we all know tries to convince a possible Amy from 36 years in the future to help her out of the situation that led to that future Amy being who she is. The argument she uses is a great description of marital love and is a further example of the wonderful things that the current creators are doing with their married characters.