To me, a Mary Sue is too good to be true. In this case, she's a Mary Sue Companion--brilliant, quirky, talking back to the doctor.

The prequel needed to be the first scene of the episode. That would have changed everything for me. Well, that and getting rid of the Amy as model storyline.

Amy modelling (for her perfume line, it appeared) showed up last season. It's not that bad. I mean, she was a kissogram when we met her as an adult.

I see Amy's pushing Rory away as part of her damage from her arc last year. (Also, just for the record, guys, please never suggest to someone dealing with infertility that they could adopt. It's well meaning, but hey, hint: we know that. But that's a decision that the person has to make themselves, and involves a hell of a lot of other factors.)

Amy's amazingly resilient, but damn, there's a lot of scarring there. How many times has she seen Rory die now?

And, you know, running away IS her coping mechanism. It's how she wound up in the TARDIS in the first place.

I rewatched today. Oswin hits my Ace notes, thus I liked her. (And Ace was THE companion of my teen years. So.) As an aside

To me, a Mary Sue is too good to be true. In this case, she's a Mary Sue Companion--brilliant, quirky, talking back to the doctor.

But that's Sarah Jane, or Romana, or Leela, or Jo, or Ace, or any of them in their own way. (Especially Romana. Damn, I love Romana.)

To me, a Mary Sue is too good to be true. In this case, she's a Mary Sue Companion--brilliant, quirky, talking back to the doctor.

That's not much like my interpretation: to me, a Mary Sue is a character who warps the narrative around her. She's just as good at hand-to-hand as Eliot and just as good at hacking as Hardison, and she might be prettier than Sophie and happen to be Nate's niece. And she becomes really important in the lives of the characters and influences the narrative out of proportion to her strength of character. And her flaws are only endearing ones, like she never gives up, and stubbornly refuses to let her friends die. She's a representation of the writer's desire to be part of the story, and her affection for the characters in the canon.

So I don't see Oswin as a MarySue because she didn't warp the narrative, she was merely part of it. The fact that she didn't know what she was went a long way to dilute her MarySue-ness.

I hear you. I just have a different view of it, I guess.

The Doctor's too good to be true--is it because his name is above the fold that it doesn't matter when he does it? Too good to be true is kinda everyone--it's Eliot or Parker or Hardison or Nate or Sophie. They're all tops of their respective games, smacking people down left right and centre, to randomly grab another franchise. The Winchesters are the only ones who can beat both heaven and hell in the same day, and Castiel is the only angel who really grasps the importance of free will and the value of humans. Chuck is the only one who can take the Intersect (until he's not), no one outfights Sarah, but no one is badder assed than Casey.

Basically, I don't understand where competence porn ends (because we mostly cheer that) and Mary Sue begins.

I'm more with Suela's definition--it's about two things for me--the author's apparent relationship to her (very unreliable to tease out), and the degree to which she's a black hole twisting the fabric around her.

Deleted because it makes no sense without the previous post for a straight line

Dan -- I deleted your post as it is a casting spoiler.

Said casting spoiler is addressed in spoilers lite.