The Girl Who Tore Through the Universe

"She was too old for imaginary friends."

Writer: Nikita Gill

Format: Short Story

Released: September 2022

Printed in: Origin Stories 08

Featuring: Amy, Rory

Synopsis 

We all change, when you think about. We're all different people all through our lives...

Amy Pond looks for her Raggedy Man, Jo Grant remembers her childhood, the Master hunts the past... a young girl discovers a love for explosives.

Eleven incredible stories from the world of Doctor – the early lives of friends and foes that have never been told before.

Verdict 

The Girl Who Tore Through the Universe was a sublime story to continue my way through the Origin Stories collection! I think this was probably the best in the volume so far as I was left feeling tense to reach the conclusion and see how things finished. That’s very impressive considering we know what would happen with Amy during The Eleventh Hour and there were references to that episode in their plenty. That’s no surprise given that for Amy this story takes place during those events but she spanned quite a long time as we catch up with her here being sixteen years old. That’s a fun gap to explore and just the history of her psychiatry failures regarding the Raggedy Man was fantastic. Knowing what we know about Amy when we catch up with her and she fully becomes companion to the Eleventh Doctor, I certainly cannot imagine her reacting well to therapy of that kind! Sixteen is a difficult age for obvious reasons but Amy was so inundated with finding a way to the Doctor once again. He’d promised he would return and she knew beyond doubt that he was real. The memories of fish fingers and custard were great. I thought the exploration in the early relationship between Amy and Rory was tremendous. It was a little sad that in the last year they had slightly lost touch, but they were still on more than good terms and there was an instant connection between them. The chemistry is brilliant and they were really a joy to read together as the lead characters. There wasn’t much of a threat in this story which worked very well actually and I guess there couldn’t be as far as Amy’s character story was concerned. Amy and physics didn’t seem to be something I would combine but in her efforts to find a way to the Doctor, she had been devouring physics books from the school library and what Rory found regarding Newton and the mystery behind his death was sublime. I’m not sure if Newton’s experiments and works presented here regarding the multiverse were factually real or not, but for the purpose of this short story I thought they were marvellous!  When Amy heard about the reports from some of Newton’s servants regarding him coming from rooms he couldn’t possibly have gotten into and his desire to bring his dad back from the dead, she had to go to his manor right away. Rory didn’t think twice about faking a day off school to drive her there which showed just how much he cared about her. The mention of Mels was a nice touch and being grounded as a way to explain her absence was nicely done. She wasn’t needed here as this was all about Amy and Rory. I thought it was really fun to visit the apple tree where Newton discovered the theory of gravity and that has now been added to my list of places to visit! I’m no science buff, but that would be super cool to explore. I thought the efforts and confidence of Amy to find the notes left by Newton that contained the multiverse theory equations was extraordinary and whilst it’s not wholly believable that Amy could find the notes in quick time, her intellect in thinking he’d hide the notes beneath the tree was terrific. Amy using the equations and taking the simplistic route was very good and I loved the emotion behind her conversation with her mother from beyond the boundaries of dimensions. The fact she pulled her through and she became zombified was sad and that was worse than not having her at all. She was totally shell shocked. I liked that Amy realised what Newton had given a warning about on his notes here and the moment where Rory instilled the confidence in his future wife that she could fix things was superb. A touching moment. The carved apple at the end actually being from her mum and not Rory as she suspected was a lovely way to finish what was a really powerful story! Amy having to deal with losing her mum a second time was so much worse as this was a fresh memory. Overall, a fantastic short story!

Rating: 9/10