The Almost People - Amy

[vervet_monkey]

 OK this is more a reaction to reactions, rather than reaction to the episode itself. It is a bit of a rant, but a rant is no fun if no one argues against it, so please disagree (well, or agree) with me.

I knew as soon as I saw the last part of this TAP that people were going to have issues with it. One of my Uni friends refuses to walk through a door being held open by a guy, even if they are just holding the damn door open and I could just hear her head exploding from here.

So we have Amy pregnant and captured and all helpless waiting for her two men to come rescue her. And apparently this strips her of her agency as an independent being and places her firmly in female stereotypes and is bad and all that.

 

But does it? Amy is not frequently the damsel in distress. The first time she meets the Doctor as an adult she hits him over the head and handcuffs him to the radiator, she goes against the Doctor and releases the Star Whale, she joins with Winston Churchill to fight the Darleks rather than sitting and waiting like a good girl, she stands up to the army boys so that she can see this crack, she goes alone to confront the "vampires", it is her choice that the boys must follow, she negotiates with Homo reptilia to share the planet, she acts independently to help the Doctor when he is stranded alone on Earth and she  brings the Doctor back by the power of her mind, she survives 3 months running through the desert, fights pirates and saves her man, stands against the House.

 

Amy is the dominant individual in her relationship with Rory. That's Rory, the male character, who was left at home when Amy went flying off with the Doctor, was relegated to Brother in Venice, killed in Amy's choice, left behind again in The Hungry Earth and killed, again, in Cold Blood, had his entire life made fake. Spent an episode wimpering that Amy seemed to be calling to the Doctor, spent another entire episode being at the mercy of a female character, then died, again. Died again in The Doctors Wife and has just spent 2 episodes being led on by another strong female.

 

To me Amy is not marginalised because she is captured and pregnant, she is not captured and pregnant because she is female (well, OK, pregnant wouldn't work if male I guess, but you get the idea). She is captured and pregnant because it is a good story. To strip Amy's character to this one plot point marginalises her, but that's not Moff or the production teams doing, that's the fans doing, to ignore everything that has come before and define her by her capture.

 

The idea that Amy cannot be captured and put into a place of dependence because she is female seems as sexist to me as the idea that that is the only reason she has been captured is because she is female.