73 Yards

[purplecat]

The world seems to be divided into those who loved 73 yards, including its refusal to explain itself and those who were very annoyed by its refusal to explain itself. I fall into the latter camp.

By this point I have listened to and read a lot of commentary on 73 yards. I appreciate that it is very well put together and succeeds in doing precisely what it set out to do. I understand that any attempt at an explanation would almost inevitably have been disappointing. I even like the fact that it's generated a lot of discussion of its themes and metaphors: the way the words of the mysterious woman at 73 yards can be seen as an allegory for some people's experience of coming out; how the whole episode can be viewed as an exploration of Ruby's abandonment issues.

I find it interesting that most people in the "I am cross about the mystery" camp seem to be hung up on the question of what exactly does the woman say? and, honestly, she clearly magically 'fluences people. I'm fine with that, it works within the rules of the Doctor Who universe as it currently stands. No, what I don't understand is the time loop at the end. We know from about 15 minutes in that there is going to be a reset because otherwise there won't be four more episodes of Doctor Who this season but the logic of the time loop feels very strongly to be "we need to reset therefore TIME LOOP!". Imagine the story as some kind of standalone and it works just as well without the reset. For me it was the lack of any kind of story logic for the loop, how or why it occurred, or why it occurred when it occurred, that bounced me strongly out of the episode and left me sat on the sofa at the end with my arms crossed and an angry frown on my face.


Anyway, amazing episode in lots of ways. Lots to chew over. I'm just irrationally annoyed by it.

Comments

[shivver]

I'm in the camp of "it was an amazing episode and yes, I'm trying not to think too hard about it". My husband says, "It is either the best DW episode ever or the worst DW episode ever". Basically, he thought that the point was that Ruby released Mad Jack by reading the paper, and it became Roger ap Gwilliam. Then, her stopping him appeased the spirits and thus time looped back and she and the Doctor were prevented from releasing it in the first place. But it was clear that Roger ap Gwilliam already existed in the current timeline (and he's brought up again later in the finale), so she only stopped him in the erased timeline... so what was the point? If all that Ruby did didn't actually mean anything, then, my husband says, worst episode ever.

[romanajo123]

Oh, you’re here now! I watched this one future first time a few days ago . It and the next are probably my favorite episodes this season. 😃

I don’t have much else to say except I am interested in who you think the woman is

[magister]

After some initial annoyance, my brain settled on two explanations.

1: It's not what the woman says. It's the realisation that she's the same woman who you can see 73 yards away. The sheer wrongness of this breaks people's brains in a Lovecraft Eldritch Cosmic Horror sort of way.

2. It's a ghost story in the tradition of Dickens' The Signalman or James' Oh Whistle and I'll Come to You. Once I accepted that, I was quite happy not to have an explanation. Different type of story telling, ergo different rules apply.