SPOILER WARNING
I’ve been a long time defender of Moffat. Not in that I think he’s a feminist writer by any means, just that I didn’t think he was too awful. I was convinced he’d redeem himself given time. But Asylum of the Daleks proved me wrong.
In Asylum of the Daleks, Rory and Amy are getting a divorce. Why? Because Amy can’t get pregnant.
Here’s my initial response, immediately after the episode ended:
Transcript:
Come off it…Moffat.
Just finished Asylum of the Daleks and I have to say, I”m kind of disappointed. I loved the Daleks, and I thought all that was really cool. And you know cosplayers are going to have a fucking field day with this episode.
But…really…Amy?
This is 2012, and Amy still defines her worth by her ability to reproduce. (What bothers me most here isn’t that a 21st Century woman might feel this way, but that Amy would never have been written ANY OTHER way, even in 2012.) And I want to be able to argue that, “Oh the point is that she finds out her worth isn’t based on her ability to reproduce.”
Well, its only resolved by Amy finding out that Rory just loves her so much! So she does have worth, because her husband really really loves her!
Its not like with Donna Noble, who finds her self worth based on her ability to help people and problem solve. I think in a story like this Amy needs to find her self worth based on something else. Its bullshit. Its such a cop out.
Steven Moffat is just not a very good character writer, its as simple as that. Of all the trauma Amy and Rory have been through – and there have been a lot – the one thing that breaks them up is that Amy can’t have kids….really?
It kind of pushed it over the edge for me. Moffat has been accused of misogyny and sexism, and I’ve often been willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. But this is just so fucking cartoonish. Its so childish.
Give me a break. This is Amelia Pond. She’s saved hundreds of lives all across time and space. She’s married to an ancient Roman. Her best friend and son in law is the coolest super hero ever. She’s like…a super model. But…she can’t have kids, so she just can’t be with Rory anymore!
I know a lot of you are going to horribly disagree with me on this, and I’m going to get a lot of hatorade about this.
I think the first 4 or 5 years of New Doctor Who, had some really wonderful role models for young women. But Amelia not only hasn’t been as good of an example as Rose, Martha, and Donna, but she’s turning into a fucking cartoon.
Its about time she left, or maybe its just about time Steven Moffat left. (I’m going to get so much hate because of this video.)
I’m just going to put this out there now, while I’m on the subject: The nerd community, if there is such a thing, is incredibly sexist. And you may think you’re enlightened, because you really love sexy busty women wearing barely anything, holding a great big sword, showing how strong they are, but that’s not really how it works.
Moffat just doesn’t understand people as well as Russell T Davies, especially women. His understanding of women is just nil; it doesn’t exist.
We need women writers on this show so bad.
OK, now bring the hate, guys, I’m ready.
Edit:
In hindsight, I’m not pleased with everything I said in the video . I don’t mean to undermine the experiences of real women who have been through this themselves.
It isn’t the infertility itself that bothers me. Its how its used, and how its conveyed. Amy’s experience with it is drastically oversimplified, in a way that is misleading and not at all empowering to younger viewers.
Also in the context of Amy’s previous season, it bothered me. I miss the Amy of season 5, and I was hoping to get her back for season 7. Alas, it was all about her uterus again.
I posted this primarily to invite discussion, since it had yet to be mentioned on Doctor Her. I value all the opinions of the commenters below! Please post your own!
I wasn’t offended by it, nor did I find it problematic from a feminist perspective, but I did think it was WEAK.
I was on the edge of my seat after the last Pond Life minisode wondering what had happened to make Rory storm out. (It did not look like Amy gave him the boot. It looked like he left angrily, which made me wonder what could have POSSIBLY made Rory leave Amy after waiting 2,000 years for her.) Then they tease you all throughout The Asylum of the Daleks. But the payoff? It barely makes sense.
First of all, she just divorced him without telling him why? Just: “GET OUT NOW! No reason.” They didn’t TALK about this issue AT ALL? No discussions in their MARRIAGE about children and the future and all that?
And there’s lots of ways to have kids. Adoption? Surrogacy? Advanced medical help in the future with your time travelling bestest bud? It’s not exactly an insurmountable issue.
And how could she think the dude who waited 2,000 years for her — whom, as the episode touches on, seems to love her more than she loves him — would want to be without her because she has an issue that, quite frankly, affects lots and lots of women?
After everything this power-couple has been through, they couldn’t have discussed this problem and worked together towards a solution? I had a lot of trouble buying it.
Well that’s the problem. Its so ridiculous that I think it kind of implies to a young audience that Amy’s right to think that. In reality, it would imply a horrendously dysfunctional relationship. But as its shown here, it feels like Amy’s right to think that her worth is lessened.
I completely agree. First thing I did after I watched the show was text my best friend and say “Is it me, or would Amy and Rory’s divorce not have happened if they’d, say, had a conversation”?
I think Moffat’s primary motive was to show off how the Doctor can fix everything (which seems to be SM’s motive for a lot of what happens to Amy and Rory). This is what caused the contrived situation, and the horrible undertones came in as a result of the fact that SM is the dangerous combination of a person who a) believes he is a feminist and b) has not even begun to challenge his own male privilege.
I really do not like the trend of “working uterus = female strength” that is coming across from DW (remember The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe?) Again, I think SM really believes he is doing something feminist by portraying biological motherhood as an example of female strength (and I’m not saying that it isn’t – just that it’s not the ONLY way for a woman to be strong). It reminds me (and I can’t believe I’m making this comparison) of the section in Breaking Dawn where Leah believes she has become a werewolf because she “isn’t female enough” (ie has stopped menstruating). (I can’t believe I just compared DW and *Twilight*). If working uterus = strong woman, what does that say about infertile women? Post-menopausal women? Transwomen? Women who have no intention of having children, like me?
I think the episode would have been much more interesting and nuanced if the issue had been “Rory wants kids, and Amy DOESN’T” rather than “Amy CAN’T”.
“And there’s lots of ways to have kids. Adoption? Surrogacy? Advanced medical help in the future with your time travelling bestest bud? It’s not exactly an insurmountable issue.”
Yes. This. Amy has seen high-tech medical facilities (that’s where she gave birth, after all). She’s seen the Doctor off-handedly cure what would have been a major medical issue on Earth (Cleaves’ inoperable blood clot in “The Almost People”). Amy, of all people, should know that she has options.
You’re absolutely right. Moffat can be a tremendous storyteller, but his obsession with the amazing power of biological parenthood is getting fucking tired.
“Of all the trauma Amy and Rory have been through – and there have been a lot – the one thing that breaks them up is that Amy can’t have kids….really?”
Not for nothing, but countless seemingly strong relationships have broken down due to an inability of one of the partners to conceive. Even in 2012. Now, of course most of them don’t face exactly the kind of things Amy and Rory have faced, but this is a real-life problem for many relationships.
Yeah, but–they didn’t even TALK about it? Really? Amy finds out that she is infertile and doesn’t broach the subject or anything she just… kicks Rory out because of some weird sense of duty?
I mean, I’ve never even dated anyone, and *I* know better.
But in this case, the portrayal totally trivialized that genuinely devastating real life experience. There wasn’t even a real resolution to it. I would have been totally down with it if it had been done in a more mature (preferably feminist) way. It was done horrendously.
No, actually, it was not.
Amy is depressed in response to the damning reality that she is sterile. This includes self loathing, feeling as though she has let Rory down, embarassment, resentfulness, etc, etc, etc. Are some of these feelings irrational? Yes. But whe someone is depressed, they often say and do irrational things because they are having irrational feelings (i.e. like having let Rory down even though Amy was the victim and could never have prevented what happened to her, so she never actually let anyone down). So she pushes Rory away and the depression grows worse. (Similar to Nine’s depression after the Time War.) They begin fighting because Rory doesn’t understand why Amy is pushing him away and she refuses to tell him the truth. And then she decides to cut him off completely, believing it’s better for him and will enable him to go off and have the child(ren) he’s always dreamed of. (Literally, in “Amy’s Choice,” that was his ideal life: to have a family…with Amy.)
It’s completely realistic for Amy to go through this. An in fact, it’s quite in character for Amy as a character who has a history of burying her problems inside herself, running away, pushing others away, and only unleashing her feelings when she’s finally at her breaking pointl. There are real women who have gone through similar situations after learning that they were unable to have children or that there was a high chance they might be sterile. And although it’s tragic, I appreciate the way they handled this sitaution in such a realistic manner.
An in fact, it’s quite in character for Amy as a character who has a history of burying her problems inside herself, running away, pushing others away, and only unleashing her feelings when she’s finally at her breaking pointl
That’s a really REALLY good point.
It was handled in a realistic manner? Really? I’m not opposed to that interpretation, I’m just surprised…because it seems like such a poorly written scene to me.
In terms of realism, I find it unrealistic that Amy mentioned Demon’s Run, but rather than expressing anger about Demon’s Run, or about the Doctor dragging them into it, she completely puts it on herself. All these awful traumas and the ones thing that breaks them up is that Amy decided that Rory only waited 2000 years for her so she could “give” him children.
I’ve never known someone suffering depression from a horribly traumatic experience to be entirely logical. As I already explained, irrationality is a realistic side effect of depression. Self loathing and the belief of inadequacy are side effects of Amy’s particular brand of depression in response to her infertility. Those are realistic human reactions.
“I’ve never known someone suffering depression from a horribly traumatic experience to be entirely logical.”
That doesn’t excuse the bad writing. The insertion of the matter into the script was badly done, and the resolution was badly done. I’m not talking about Amy in-world. I love Amy. I think she’s great. I don’t love how another major issue to do with Amy’s reproductive organs was handled.
Also…I know that Amy is probably depressed. But…I mean…is she? She’s actually having fun in this story. For the most part she seems pretty much like her old self. Depression is definitely a very real part of that experience, but I don’t think its conveyed in this story.
“She’s actually having fun in this story. For the most part she seems pretty much like her old self.”
My mother is depressed. She won’t take medication for it because it’s too expensive. Sometimes she can act extremely happy and like the person I used to remember. Perhaps this makes it worse, because I have to walk on eggshells around her. I can say one thing, an offhanded comment, and suddenly she takes it as a personal insult towards herself. She’ll twist it into something awful because she’s feeling insecure and – she has even admitted in the aftermath of one of our all out screaming matches – uses my words to justify her own insecurities. And in the blink of an eye, she’s suddenly enraged or crying again and nearly unbearable to even be in the same room with.
So yes, depressed people can have fun and they can even “act like their old selves.” That doesn’t mean they are not still depressed. I can easily imagine Amy in moment like the ones I’ve experienced with my mother and Rory in place of myself. Certainly as a husband/wife relationship with different issues, this would have it’s major differences than a mother-daughter relationship, but because the the scene in “Pond Life” where Rory is running out the door and Amy is crying is such a familiar aftermath to me, I have no problem understanding how they got to that point.
You don’t have a problem imagining it, no. But that’s not the point. This is a show watched by millions of people every week. Not all of them have your knowledge or Doctor Who, nor your experience with depression. You can relate to this episode in a completely different way from the way 95% of the people watching it can. That doesn’t make Moffat’s writing good.
Realism absolutely is the point. Realism makes writing good. Poor writing is when you play to the stereotypes and myths just because those are the popular assumptions.
Then for the sake of realism, why did Amy have to say it outloud at all? Rory said he already knew; they’d obviously talked about it before? Why did she bother with the exposition at all?
Because its a story, and you don’t relate information by possibly maybe vaguely implying something that a few people are going to understand.
I thought it was kind of made clear already that she’s not gonna be acting entirely irationally? Speaking as someone with an experience of incredibly, incredibly mild but still bad depression before, I wouldn’t be surprised if I’d just snapped and sort of rambled on about obvious points and nonsense drivel and angry stuff if I was being slowly converted into a dalek, my short-term memory and regular memory was getting shot, genetic robots in my body were turning me into what is functionally an embodiment of evil and stopping me from thinking clearly, being on a planet-sized insane asylum of living omnicidal tanks that can really only be killed by each other, and also the planet’s about to self destruct and then my husband just said “yeah i love you more you don’t love me that much your experience of your love for me is irrelevant here let me just effectively commit suicide for you”
I mean, when it gets really bad, you stumble around your words a lot, and they seem poorly ordered and make little sense and etc.
So realism is still going on there.
I completely agree that someone could feel the things you described – but the problem is, they didn’t show that in the episode. If they’d gone into Amy’s feelings and what had happened between her and Rory in more detail, it would have been a much better portrayal of infertility and the problems it causes for couples. But if a screenwriter wants to bring that into an episode, they have to SHOW it. If it’s not shown, either explicitly or subtly, it hasn’t happened.
I didn’t have a problem with that particular element of the story – and I’d go so far to say if you ARE going to have a marriage become irretrievably and suddenly broken over the course of a couple of months then this is one of those dealbreaker issues that could do it (the other is infidelity and I’m glad they didn’t go there).
I do wonder why they want the marriage to be in trouble at this point – and cling to the hope that if they’re doing this now, we won’t have one or both of the Ponds killed in episode 5, because it’s more likely that we’d be getting complete lovey dovey at this point instead.
I think Amy is wrong, absolutely, but consistent with her character so far – the brief scenes in which they do finally talk confirm that no, they don’t communicate well about the big issues as a couple, for all they seem fine at day to day domesticity in Pond Life.
She’s flawed, absolutely, but that’s part of what I like about her as a character – I don’t need them to make the right life choices much though I would LIKE them to. And Rory isn’t covered with roses in this episode either – I like very much the way that his martyred belief that he loves Amy more than she loves him is called out by her as a very selfish assumption.
Basically the message of this story for me is that Amy is cut out for adventures far more than she is cut out for marriage/domesticity. Which has always been true. I really wonder where the story is leading them.
“I really wonder where the story is leading them.”
Probably to another situation where she doesn’t have any control over her own life again (such as her marriage or pregnancy or motherhood).
I didn’t buy that a couple who have known each other since childhood would have split over something like this without a proper conversation.
I don’t think her entire self worth was caught up in her ability or otherwise to have kids, but having struggled with similar issues, I know how it feels to be desperate to be a mother and not be able to.
Where Moffat failed miserably, in my opinion, is to adequately cover the appalling violation perpetrated on Amy at Demon’s Run. She was kidnapped and kept isolated for most of her pregnancy in pretty horrible conditions. Her baby was stolen and she and Rory were both deprived of the chance to bring up their child. The effect on her I think would have been much greater and would not have been sated by killing eye patch lady.
YES! This is just it. There was a lot about their whole situation that seemed to have been completely ignored – and if it hadn’t been, it would have been a much better way of dealing with the issue.
For example, obviously there are a lot of women (and men!) out there who have never even thought about becoming parents, and then suddenly it becomes very important. That’s how people sometimes feel in real life. But in fiction, you have to establish something about a character before you start having them react to that something. If Pond Life had featured even a snippet of Amy and Rory talking about babies, or babysitting and interacting awkwardly, that would have saved the episode. But this just came out of the blue, and to me, it seemed yet another contrived way to make the Doctor look good.
As for what happened to Amy at Demons Run – I think the episode would have been much better if it had dealt with that. When you think about it, Amy went through something completely horrific. Other pregnant people have nine months to adjust to the idea. Amy had her body hijacked, and then she was thrown into the middle of labour before she’d even known she was pregnant. I think it would have made a much more interesting and realistic story if Amy’s issue had been “Rory wants kids, but I am so freaked out by the idea of being pregnant again that I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to have them”. Then the story could have explored Amy reconciling herself with her body (perhaps through her modelling!), and finally getting to a point where she’s okay with being pregnant – or realising she’s never going to be, and her and Rory adopting or using a surrogate.
I don’t hate this reading, but I don’t agree with it either. It’s not anti-feminist to acknowledge that infertility involves feelings of inadequacy or guilt for some women (including capable, high-achieving women). Amy and Rory’s actions were consistent with a history of poor communication, so I don’t have a problem with this development in terms of story-telling.
There is a problem more generally that women who feel ambivalent, or indifferent to infertiity tend not to be portrayed on television.
As a data point, I’m infertile.
I don’t think the concept of what happened to them was sexist per se. I think it could’ve been done very well by someone who writes characters better. But the dialogue in that scene is awful. And as an example for young viewers, I’m disappointed that Amy’s feelings of poor self worth weren’t a more important part of the plot, and that they weren’t resolved in a more meaningful way.
A few people have mentioned Amy and Rory’s communication issues. Again, not a good example for young viewers of married life.
But the lack of communication had clear, negative consequences. If the function of children’s television is to set good examples – something which is up for debate anyway – you don’t necessarily achieve that by showing exemplary (rather than flawed) relationships.
OK yeah, there’s that. But I don’t think it was played as a communication problem, I think it was played as Amy’s brave sacrifice or something.
When Rory tells her that he loves her more because he believes that she just stopped loving him and she has to angrily correct him and tell him that she never stopped loving him but instead pushed him away because she wants him to have the family he always dreamed of, how is that *not* played as a lack communication problem? The whole point is that Amy did not share her situation with him and instead pushed him away because – in that mindset – she believed to know what was best for him. In a relationship, that is not okay, and Rory starts to tell her that had she talked with him about it, they could have avoided the whole mess. It couldn’t be a bigger example of a communication problem if it was neon red.
I’m not entirely convinced it is consistant with her character actually. In the past her main problem with Rory is taking him for granted. She knows he’ll always wait for her. She knows he’d wait 2000 years just to see her again. So why would she think he’d want to leave her just because she can’t make babies by herself?
Getting infertility on prime time television is rather impressive in itself.
Yeah but so’s getting trans women on there, and like Cassandra this isn’t exactly the world’s greatest example.
(can’t say I don’t love cassandra though!)
After reading what you and others have written, I’m coming around on it.
It IS in keeping with her character to hide her feelings and run away from her problems, since that’s how she ended up in the TARDIS to begin with. She basically ran away with her childhood fantasy rather than tell Rory she was having cold feet.
There must also be enormous pressure to give Rory everything he’s ever wanted — to not disappoint him — after everything they’ve been through and everything he’s done for her. His 2,000-year wait and his “I love you more than you love me” belief only makes it worse.
And it makes sense to think that burying those feelings would cause tension and fighting that would lead to the break-up.
This wasn’t made clear in the storytelling, however, which is why I think it’s a hard sell. You guys sold it to be better than the show did.
Hopefully, we will delve into these issues further as the season progresses.
I understand the “in keeping with her character” thing. But yeah it isn’t played that way in the episode. And I’m still not convinced that it all very simply comes down to “I can’t give you children”, and none of the other traumatic bullshit they’ve been through is relevant in the moment (even considering that its basically the Doctor’s fault that she can’t have kids now).
It doesn’t come down to simply “I can’t give you children.” That vastly oversimplifies Amy’s depression and mourning over the loss of her fertility and the factors surrounding it. To make that argument undermines the fact that real women do go through these complicated emotions.
And no, it’s not The Doctor’s fault that she can’t have children. It’s Kovarian and The Silence’s fault, they were the ones who kidnapped her, they were the ones who experimented on her, they were the ones who rendered her infertile, rendered her infertile, and they were the ones who stole her child. And as soon as she was alone with Kovarian in a situation in which she had the upper hand, she unleashed herself on her in classic Amy Pond style.
But…that’s what SHE says! “Whatever they did to me at Demon’s Run…I can’t ever give you children.”
You’re right it definitely shouldn’t be simplified to that! But it is in the episode! That’s what I’m so bothered by! It should be so much deeper and more complicated than that, but the reasoning given in the episode is literally and simply “I can’t ever give you children” – verbatim.
And the way that its resolved? No more complicated than “2000 years, waiting for you outside a box, saying it because its true.”
This is after a whole season where Amy’s primary role was to create a child.
Is murdering people classic Amy Pond style? I’m not sure she’s done anything like that before.
She says that because it’s the last straw in a string if terrible things that have made her BREAK! It is the culmination of everything she’s been there that has lead to this depression! Over three years after Melody’s abduction she’s got a lovely home, she owns her own business, she’s a model, and she’s thinking about children again. She grew up knowing Rory wanted them. She was there in Rory’s dream world in “Amy’s Choice” and even admitted it felt as real as her world on the TARDIS did. She knew she wanted that too, one day. And then that day finally comes and she finds out she’s infertile due to one of the most traumatic experiences of her life. How many times can you hit a person before they completely break? This was a progression and Amy’s infertility was that final blow.
“Is murdering people classic Amy Pond style? I’m not sure she’s done anything like that before.”
No, of course not, she only shoots The Impossible Astronaut – Melody, although she doesn’t know this yet – because she’s been pushed into a corner and her emotions explode because she’s keeping this massive secret (sound familiar?) and knows that the Astronaut is going to kill The Doctor at Lake Silencio.
And what does she do as soon as The Doctor runs off in his TARDIS at the end of “A Good Man Goes to War”? She grabs a big gun, points it at River in a manner that makes Rory actually believe that she is going to shoot her, and demands to know where her daughter is.
Precedent: set.
But that is not how its portrayed! The episode doesn’t allude to any of those problems! Its every easy to extrapolate a reason based on fan knowledge, but any average viewer watching that episode doesn’t know all that stuff. It isn’t written into the script. Depression isn’t even written into the script. Its portrayed as anger (remember, the love vs anger Dalek comparison). She’s actually having fun in the episode, doesn’t come across as depressed at all, just angry!
I think you’re defending Amy as a person, while I’m arguing against Steven Moffat’s ability to write Amy’s problem realistically.
I think there are many valid comments here, but I have to say I barely noticed what Amy and Rory were up to because Oswin was just so damned cool!
agreed
Hmm. I must admit I wasn’t bowled over by Oswin, due to perceiving her from much the same angle that you’re looking at the Amy-infertility revelation. Oswin is a genius, great. Good female role model. But as far as I could tell the rest of her characterisation rested on her being flirty and more than a bit sexy. She’s cool, she’s cute, she’s hot… but intelligent women don’t need to be cool and cute and hot in order to be geniuses (genii? I’ve never figured that one out).
Maybe she’ll grow on me – I always have an unreasoning dislike of any new companions / new Doctors and then inevitably fall in love with them – but right now I just find her a bit irritating. An intelligent woman doesn’t have to act flirty in order to make her seem – what? Less threatening? More acceptable? It’s not as if the Doctor hides his intelligence behind a heavy veneer of pungent masculinity!
I thought /exactly/ the same at the time as what Ally said, earlier:
“I think it would have made a much more interesting and realistic story if Amy’s issue had been “Rory wants kids, but I am so freaked out by the idea of being pregnant again that I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to have them”. Then the story could have explored Amy reconciling herself with her body (perhaps through her modelling!), and finally getting to a point where she’s okay with being pregnant – or realising she’s never going to be, and her and Rory adopting or using a surrogate.”
Without going into too much personal detail I suffered mental health issues as a result of my son’s birth experience, which compared to Amy’s was a walk in the park. It would have made perfect sense to me for Amy to be so terrified of giving birth again that she won’t even think of going through it, and for this – after many conversations and discussions – to perhaps distance and eventually separate her from her husband (rather than the two second clip of Amy kicking Rory out, in Pond Life).
However, I inferred from the conversation between them that what had happened at Demon’s Run had somehow damaged her physical fertility. This felt like – yet again – Steven Moffat using Amy’s uterus for a plot device. I wasn’t a fan of it the first time. This time, to reference the Doctor in that episode, it sickened me.
I would just like to say how much I appreciate Camille’s posts on this thread. I’ve tried to make similar points elsewhere, based on my own experiences of those close to me who suffer from clinical depression. Criticising characterisation by saying “Why can’t they just talk?” does seem to show a lack of understanding of the effects of real problems. Not to mention what the effects of certain kinds of personality. I have no problem at all in believing in difficulties in communication between Amy and Rory in certain areas. I also have no problem in believing that there are scenes between them (between Pond Life and the beginning of Asylum) which we did not see, and which essentially consisted of heightened-emotion miscommunication. Having personal and painful experience of such scenes in my own life, I would prefer not to be told that they are unbelievable.
Why are they not explicitly shown in the program? Because they would be too harrowing for the younger audience. Adult viewers are expected, I suggest, to extrapolate from the lacunae. I didn’t have trouble doing this myself. Perhaps Moffat, given his own personal experiences of relationship problems, overestimated the extent to which such extrapolation would be easy?
Mossy: you inferred a physical problem from the conversation. It is also possible to infer precisely the psychological problem you describe (which I have also witnessed), but expressed in physical terms.
You’re right, it was insensitive of me to suggest that women wouldn’t have this problem to day. But I do think that this portrayal of that experience is poorly done.
Most of the defense I’ve read so far is based heavily around personal experience, and the gestalt that personal experience provides. But that isn’t the majority experience, and doesn’t mean Moffat told a good story, or portrayed the problem in a realistic way.
Also, the way that Moffat writes the subplot into the story is that Amy needs to give up her “anger” in place of “love”. Anger vs. Love is how its tied into the Dalek plot. There’s no mention or implication of depression. We’ve seen depression in Doctor Who before (“Vincent and the Doctor”), I don’t see why it would be so ridiculous to take Amy in that direction briefly.
And would it really be too harrowing for children? Really? In the last few seasons we’ve seen Amy die (twice), the Doctor die, Rory die several times, many episodes devoted thoroughly to coping with impending death. We’ve seen manic depression, Amy kidnapped and forced through pregnancy, we saw a baby literally melt in its mother’s arms…could we really not cope with seeing one short believable fight between Amy and Rory, inevitably resolved by the end of the episode?
One of the difficulties is that you implicitly introduced the importance of personal experience in the post – e.g. Moffat not understanding women, and the lack of women writers on the show. So of course people are going to draw on personal experience of this specific issue if they feel it has been fairly represented.
Another difficulty is that there are two interpretations of the word “realistic” jostling in these comments – one focuses on verisimilitude, and the other focuses on convincing a variably informed audience that Amy’s behaviour is credible. In my view only people informed about the effects of infertility get to judge verisimilitude. I agree that convincing the larger audience might also be important, but that does open a larger can of worms about what we believe the purpose of writing is and who it should serve.
Your point that the majority of people haven’t experienced infertility is a fair criticism of SM’s writing if he wants/needs to cater to all his viewers. I’m still not persuaded his handling of infertility was sexist on this occasion.
I don’t really think anything should be labelled simply as ‘sexist’ or ‘not sexist’. I suppose ultimately the scene wouldn’t bother me as much (despite being poorly written and placed into the episode), if it wasn’t within the context of Amy’s last season with the Doctor. Just another episode where she doesn’t get much of a say in what happens in her life. I guess because I’m not complaining about his handling of infertility, but his handling of Amy.