Doctor Who: 10 Times The Doctor Lost
7. When He Left Old Amy Pond To Die
On certain occasions, there's literally nothing the Doctor can do to make it out of an episode with a perfect score, something that was illustrated in Series 6's emotional powerhouse The Girl Who Waited.
Things start off just fine, with the Doctor, Amy and Rory gearing up to explore the paradise planet of Apalapucia, but after a button misunderstanding and a faster time-stream leads the creation of an older Amy, Rory and the Doctor have a choice to make: do they rescue young, regular Amy, or her more grizzled, world-weary counterpart?
For timey-wimey reasons, only one Amy can board the TARDIS and leave Apalapucia, but instead of revealing that, the Doctor lies, telling the Amys he can rescue them both. However, at the climax of the episode, the Doctor leaves old Amy behind, crushing her hopes of escaping the planet with a sharp, decisive slam of his TARDIS door.
Not only did the Doctor sentence old Amy to death at the hand of the sinister robots roaming Apalapucia, but by lying, he temporarily stripped himself of his humanity, revealing the cold, calculated alien lurking underneath. This whole incident also cost him some of Rory's trust: while searching for young Amy, Mr. Pond exclaims that he does not want to travel with the Doctor anymore, and in the very next episode, he suggests that his TARDIS days are behind him.
Given that this was one of Amy and Rory's last adventures before setting up a divorce, the tensions that were created between the characters in this episode certainly had a damning effect on their future together in the TARDIS.