Quote Originally Posted by dps View Post
Yeah, and I still feel that would have been a perfectly good send-off for Amy and Rory. In a sense, it kind of was anyway. In between that and "The Angels Take Manhattan", they didn't really do anything all that much that was really plot-significant except in "The Wedding of River Song", and that was in an alternate time-line anyway. Well, OK, "The Power of Three" was about their relationship with The Doctor more than it was about the Slow Invasion, but they didn't actually do that much. And look at the other episodes in there:

"Closing Time": basically, they just had a cameo, and no interaction with The Doctor or anything to do with the plot.

"The Doctor, the Widow, and the Wardrobe": again, they just have what is essentially a cameo, though they do at least interact with The Doctor (and yeah, it's a touching scene).

"Asylum of the Daleks": other than the pointless (and quickly resolved) divorce subplot, what did they really do? OK, the Daleks say that it's known that The Doctor requires companions, but is there any in-story reason that the Daleks couldn't have grabbed some of The Doctor's past companions (after all, Amy and Rory weren't travelling with The Doctor right at the time they were "acquired"). Sure, on a meta-level, Moffatt has said that he doesn't intend to re-use any RTD-era characters (I guess River is an exception since Moffatt created her), but in-story, the Daleks could have just as easily acquired, say, Captain Jack, or it even could have been an opportunity to bring back another Classic Who companion.

"Dinosaurs on a Spaceship": they didn't really do all that much in this one, and even without them, The Doctor would have still had Nefertiti and whatshisname the hunter. Though we would have missed out on Brian.

"A Town Called Mercy": they really had very little to do in this one.
I think I mentioned that I don't think this season is all too good. The lack of the Ponds doing anything interesting being a factor in it.

Mind you Closing Time and The Doctor, Widow, Wardrobe were meant to be cameos more for an emotional level that the Ponds are doing ok and that the Doctor wants to go back to his friends. So I'm not sure they should really count.

Asylum, you hit pretty squarely on the head.

Now Dinosaurs does have the Ponds doing a fair few things. Amy lead around Neffertiti and fought off some dinos, while Rory piloted a spaceship. Mind you Rory's part was horrendously contrived but at least he was doing something.

And yeah in Town called Mercy they did very little, except Amy telling off the Doctor which I guess I'll give 1/2 a point. (As an aside, kinda disappointed that Amy went from "I can hunt down velociraptors, Muldoon eat your heart out" to "Derr, if I pull the trigger the gun goes off")