"We see something inexplicable and invent the rules to make it work."
IN THIS ONE... Ruby is being followed by a mysterious presence.
REVIEW: It seems no review of 73 Yards can be posted without an explanation attached. At least judging from audience reactions. I'll give you four, starting with some basic behind the scenes elements. First, as to why we would get a Doctor-lite episode so EARLY (and another next episode too) is because Ncuti Gatwa was still filming Sex Education when production began. Not that I wanted the show to be delayed any more, but it does seem like the Disney deal put things in motion too quickly and we therefore get such an episode too early, in too short a season, when we really want to know who this new Doctor is. This was main criticism of the series throughout. Too many offbeat episodes in too short a span of time, and you just couldn't get a handle on what the "normal" was for this Doctor. That explains why it exists. As to what it IS, Russell T Davies has called it Welsh folk horror, and explains it by saying Ruby released an evil spirit and had to spend a lifetime of penitence (suffering her worst nightmare) until her sin had been purged and she could resume her place by the Doctor's side. It doesn't explain everything, but that's the genre we're dealing with, and 73 Yards at least obeys its rules.
But does it make sense in the context of Doctor Who? Given the Broken Universe Theory - and Kate Stewart saying UNIT now deals in the supernatural is as big a confirmation as we get - anything makes sense in the Whoniverse now. Up to a point. The amount of confusion felt is specific to each audience member, but here's how I interpret the plot holes after a second viewing. Ruby releases Mad Jack, an evil spirit trapped in a fairy circle (totally dissimilar to "real" fairy circles, but let that go) and she is shunted into a world of her own making. The Doctor is suddenly absent. There's a strange woman - which I will call the circle's "guardian" - always 73 yards away from her who, if spoken to, makes people abandon Ruby and their entire lives (or else the final gambit against the evil Prime Minister wouldn't work, he could just have Ruby removed). In Turn Left - the episode's closest cousin - Donna actually IS in an alternate timeline, but in 73 Yards, I think this is rather a pocket universe timeline, a copy of our own world that follows Ruby's rules. A kind of trap specific to HER. Think about it. Everyone abandons her, just as she was abandoned by her birth mother. The guardian is at 73 yards, just as (we'll find out in a later episode) her mother was 73 yards from the TARDIS that one time. Ruby spends a life alone, incapable of connection (because of the guardian or FEAR of the guardian), heroically using it as a super-power to make Mad Jack - inhabiting the body of an already dangerous Prime Minister, whose name it heard from the Doctor in the first scene - and at the end of her life merging with the guardian so she can go back in time and warn the Doctor not to break the circle. The guardian's entire motivation is to prevent Mad Jack from escaping, or returning it to the circle in timey-wimey fashion. My one problem with the episode on the first watch was that the Doctor still mentions Roger ap Gwilliam in the corrected timeline AND Empire of Death shows he was still elected, but on second watch, there IS a difference. This time he never mentions anything nuclear about his reign, so perhaps that's the difference. In any case, if this is an entirely separate timeline predicated on Ruby's mental state, then it only includes Roger ap Gwilliam because the Doctor just mentioned him, and the hare-brained scheme relating to Pakistani nuclear weapons (when the UK actually does have its own arsenal) is merely what she imagines as someone who's not up on that fact. It is STILL based on the real world, because she's never met Kate before, but there's a lot here that's using fuzzy logic. If it IS an imagined world, then perhaps the guardian creates it to prevent the release of Mad Jack before it actually happens.
Perhaps the logistics don't matter so much as the themes. If this is a "prestige horror" story, then the horror is a manifestation of trauma, and the logic is really just a means to that end. Ruby's abandonment issues are based on the details of her birth, yes, but how it plays out in the horror fantasy point to a larger metaphor. What IS the woman telling all those people that makes them run away? The actress playing the woman says she was signing this: "Bless you. Thank you so much. That's so kind of you. When you gave me that little thing, it was just so precious. How am I ever going to repay you? But we'll think of something". Albeit simplified from British sign language. Does that help us? It seems very friendly and may just be what Future Ruby (if she's paradoxically in there) is telling her younger self - thank you for this life which would not have existed if you hadn't brought it into being. We'll come back to that. What's perhaps more important is that she touches her chest when she talks to all those other people, and THEN they run. I believe that this IS Ruby and she's point to her heart, her SELF, where it becomes a metaphor for being outed as an invisible minority. There was talk prior to the season of making Ruby bisexual, and here they have characters (including a parent, notably) being repulsed by her "true identity" and abandoning her. This is all tied up in her dubious parentage (who is she really, depending on who her mother is really), but can also be seen this way. Wait, you say, she only dates boys in the life we see her leading! First, you can be bisexual and date the other gender, perhaps even exclusively. But in the context of the metaphor, none of those relationships work out. She's faking it to maintain the pretense, and when we see her merge with the guardian spirit, there's a sense that she finally accepts who she is. Because after she takes down the PM (a right-wing figure who makes a face about Marti's male name, this isn't a coincidence), she expects the old woman to go away. She doesn't. Ruby has weaponized her identity, but not ACCEPTED IT truly. When she does, she is taken back to her life to hopefully live it unburdened by doubts or self-loathing. This ties in pretty well with the "Ruby's World" theory above, where her psyche is what determines the rules of the game.
I am not absolutely sure RTD thought all this through, of course, and we understandably get the sense that this is all a big red herring. A timeline pops up around Ruby - and one with the 73-yard perception filter that ties into her mysterious mother (as they later reveal) - like she has a special destiny (as in Turn Left), but it can have NOTHING to do with her secret origins as they turn out to be mundane. There's the least friendly pub in Wales where she gets trolled by a bunch of regulars, none of which sit together and appear to come from all walks of life, but somehow connive to freak her out with the chemistry of a flash mob improv troupe. The dark bit where Marti Bridges is obviously being abused by the PM is also undercooked. But if the episode has any power at all - and it is generally considered a highlight of the season - it's exactly because of its ambiguities.
THEORIES: We just went through a bunch, so let me just point to a couple things that will become important. One is that Susan Twist not only appears again (as a hiker), but Ruby vaguely recognizes her. We'll come back to this, I promise. The other is the Doctor mentioning "the war between the land and the sea", which was recently announced as the title of a UNIT-centric mini-series.
REWATCHABILITY: High - While 73 Yards is a nice little timey-wimey horror mystery, it invites rewatching to get a proper handle on it.
Comments
Yes, a few more puzzle pieces naturally fall into place if story ideas are left to percolate organically away inside of the subconscious, but by obviating the mechanical troubleshooting process which usually wills such ideas into fully rendered existence, you have less of an overall grasp of the relative strengths and weaknesses of the piece in question. You've not kicked the tyres as it were, or indeed, kit bashed away.
Obviously, he's maps out the various seasonal plot arcs and general direction of the season long before he starts writing individual episodes, but a number of the stories this season have felt decidedly surface level. Looking for imbedded subtext is probably a fool's errand, as such.
There's no firm, fixed answers to the 73 Yards conundrum precisely because the folk horror genre doesn't demystify as a point of principle - as frustrating as it is here nested within an overall sci-fi context. There's no mundane phrase which one could possibly utter to routinely and so resolutely scare off friend or foe, any attempted explanation therefore falling at the first hurdle.