When Was Amy Switched?

Okay, so after watching The Almost People, and the big question of the episode is: When exactly was Amy replaced by her Ganger?  According to the Doctor, Amy hasn’t been around for a long, long time, so I’m starting with The Eleventh Hour in my search for when exactly it could be, by pointing out anomalies in the timelines, places where Amy’s gone missing, and things that are just generally strange.




The Eleventh Hour:

Amelia Pond was born in 1989.  She was seven years old when fish custard happened in 1996 (also the events of The Big Bang happened then too, in an alternative timeline), then she was 19 in 2008 when the events in The Eleventh Hour happened.  This actually puts The Eleventh Hour as happening before the Tenth Doctor/Donna Noble adventures, before the Dalek invasion.  Prisoner Zero has watched her grow up since she was seven, and Prisoner Zero knows all about the Silents, being the first to warn the Doctor about them and the Pandorica.  I did notice last season that there’s a lot of skipping time - twelve years, then two years in just the first episode - and it’s happening a lot in the current season too, though it’s making its way down to days and hours.  Another repeating theme is there being more than one version of the characters.  It begins here, when Prisoner Zero imitates Amy, the Doctor, and the coma patients.  The Doctor took Amy away properly the night before her wedding; isn’t that the night her house is attacked?  How did they manage to get away with such good timing?

The Beast Below:

Here, Amy gets separated from the Doctor and is brought to the voting booth on Starship UK.  We see her watch a video of why Earth had to be abandoned and how Starship UK works, and she is given the option of either protesting or forgetting.  What she does is watch the video (which features a lot of footage of a baby), leave a message to herself telling her to get the Doctor off the ship, and then press forget.  It reminds me a lot now of Day of the Moon, where they record messages to themselves about the Silents to stop them forgetting.  I would like to know how the voting booth is able to tell Amy’s name but not her marital status.  Is it because she’s already a ganger, and was created post-wedding, but pre-pregnancy?

Victory Of The Daleks:

I don’t know about the rest of you, but the first time I saw this episode and saw Amy’s empathy for Professor Edwin Bracewell, I was full sure she’d turn out to be a similar Dalek creation.  The Doctor, even in this episode, is quite insistent in trying to prove to what is basically a machine that his thoughts and feelings, specifically emotional pain, are what make him human.  Amy is able to point out that unrequited love is a good sort of pain, and to get Bracewell to talk about his crush from years ago, which stops his bomb mechanism from going off.  I pointed this out in my blog last year, I’ll just re-quote the passage:

“What did Amy mean when she told the recently outed (as a robot!) Bracewell: "I understand.  Really - I do"? How could she really understand what he was going through?  She's hardly a Dalek plant herself, as we can see in The Eleventh Hour, people remember her growing up.  So what the hell is she on about?”

Obviously, I don’t think she’s a Dalek thing anymore.  But still, that part bugged me at the time and it’s coming back to haunt me now.  What if she’s really soon after being cloned?  The gangers in The Rebel Flesh/The Almost People were aware of what they are, though that probably is because they’ve only been sentient a short while.

The Time Of Angels/Flesh And Stone:

If Amy is already a Ganger in this double episode, then a large heft of the second part would literally be a battle of wits between Flesh (Amy) and Stone (The Angels).  Maybe this is what the Angels sense when they start to move around her: They don’t consider her a living thing, therefore they can move freely.  And again, at the end, they return to the house the night before her wedding.  Nothing’s been disturbed yet.  Their timing in getting away before anything happens is really rather remarkable.  This is also where the Doctor has some sort of epiphany about Amy: “Mad, impossible Amy Pond.  It’s all about you.”  Why he suddenly decides to whisk her and her fiancé off on a holiday after making some sort of jump like this in his head is beyond me.

Vampires Of Venice:

So the Saturnynians ran from the Silents, eh?  How do they remember that’s why they ran?  Quibbles aside… Amy spends a good portion of this episode separated from the Doctor and Rory, and there would be ample time for the Saturnynians to clone her, if they so wished.  Indeed, if they had a Silent around who was able to help them with that, it would explain how they’re able to remember them.

The Hungry Earth/Cold Blood:

Much as I hate to acknowledge the existence of these episodes, we have Amy kidnapped and separated from the main team again.  It happens to her almost as often as Rory dies.  Though there is no evidence that the Silurians have Flesh-like technology (or even a point, dear God why was this allowed on television?!)

Amy’s Choice:

Two realities, one which has a pregnant Amy, one which doesn’t.  A telepathic link that lets the TARDIS team experience the same dream.  Sounds a bit like the link the Flesh have, and also a bit like our current storyline with Amy giving birth while an oblivious Ganger walks around living her life.

Vincent And The Doctor:

Can’t find anything here, I’m afraid!

The Lodger:

Bit of the old wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey thing going on here.  The week before the Doctor shows up at Craig’s, Amy from after the episode’s events leaves a note for the Doctor so he can find Craig’s house.  This would have involved Amy getting dangerously close to the Silents that lived above the house - Could they have replaced her then?  Is that why they suddenly decide to try to leave, because they have her?

The Pandorica Opens:

Well again there’s the whole thing with Amy being able to fully sympathise with something that thought it was human, but in this case it’s her future husband so you could forgive anyone for making that attempt.  Another thing that I found interesting: There’s the picture of Amy as a policewoman and Rory as a Roman, that River reckons Auton Rory was created from.  Why not also create a false Amy from the picture? She does reappear in that outfit in The Christmas Carol.

The Big Bang:

Amy bringing the Doctor back would still work if she were Flesh, because it’s the memories that matter in this instance.  So there’s that.  Do you reckon she’s able to interact with younger Amy without the universe ripping even more apart because of the Ganger thing too?

The Christmas Carol:

Amy’s not really in this episode, but these lyrics are:

“When you're alone, silence is all you know.
When you're alone, silence is all you know
Let in the noise and let it grow.

When you're alone, silence is all you’ll see
When you're alone, silence is all you'll be
Give me your hand and come to me.

When you are here, music is all around,
When you are near, music is all around,
Open your eyes, don’t make a sound.

Let in the shadow, let in the shadow,
Let in the light of your bright shadow.

Let in the shadow, let in the shadow,
Let in the light of your bright shadow.

Let in the light,
Let in the light,
Let in the light of your sweet shadow.

When you're alone, oh,
Silence is all you know,
Silence is all,
Silence is all around,
Silence is all,
Silence is all around.”

This is the song that Abigail Pettigrew (same initials as Amy Pond, and indeed, Almost Person) sings to open the ice clouds and tame the fish.  It sounds like a beautiful lullaby, but those lyrics tell a different story, with all the reference to Silence, and to be honest it doesn’t sound very comforting at all.  Though… If Amy is already Flesh, then her Ganger in this episode would be able to telepathically send her the song, and while not exactly comforting, if you were imprisoned in a tiny dark room with only your unborn foetus and the occasional visit from a woman in an eye-patch, lyrics like that might give you a bit of hope.



In conclusion: I have a very strong feeling that Amy was swapped sometime in the fifth series.  Her house almost definitely has another Silents console on it, á la Craig’s house (the mysterious third flight of stairs, when from the outside, the house has only two stories), pointing the Silents having been there before the events of The Eleventh Hour.  When they switched her is still a mystery, though that line in Victory of the Daleks, to me, points to it happening not long before that (she’s still aware that she’s a copy.  If she is a copy in this episode).  I can really only speculate at this point though, of course, and look forward to eventually finding out.