4. The Girl Who Waited
The Doctor is taking Amy and Rory to see touristy things on Apalapachia, #2 planet for discerning intergalactic travelers, but it turns out that it's under major quarantine for a bad plague. After going back for her camera phone, Amy pushes the wrong button and gets trapped in a different time stream from the Doctor and Rory. She is in the contagious bit of the planet, while they are in the sterile visitor center. Time is running parallel but at different speeds; she's experiencing years while they're living minutes. Rory mounts a rescue - the Doctor will die if he enters the planet - but the Doctor has miscalculated time - and the Amy that Rory finds has been alone, save for a pet robot called Rory, fighting to stay alive, for 36 years. He barely recognizes this bitter, cynical, tough survivor version. The Doctor hatches a plan, but it requires old Amy to save young Amy. She refuses - she's the girl who waited, her reward is to be saved. It takes young Amy to convince old Amy to do it for Rory, that he deserves to be happy, but old Amy has the condition that she gets to live too. A paradox is created as both Amys meet. The final scene is heart-breaking - old warrior Amy fends off a platoon of robots to let her younger counterpart escape with Rory. Then, we watch as she begs to be admitted to the Tardis. He has to choose which wife to save. Their hands touch through glass, love is declared, and old Amy relinquishes her life to allow Rory to grow old with her younger self.
The Lesson: Don't allow circumstances, bad timing and poor choices to make you cynical. Don't give up hope that everything will turn itself around, maybe not in the manner that you wished and hoped for, but that somehow it will all fall together the way it was meant to. Be open, be yourself and trust that ' What's for you, won't go past you' as my granny used to say...