73 Yards

And straight into the next one. I loved it! Although I’m still not sure what actually happened. If I understood it correctly, the woman who stays 73 yards away from Ruby is her own older self. Or her ghost, after dying? And the reason she was there was to stop the Doctor stepping on that fairy ring setting free (?) Mad Jack. Who then became the most dangeours Prime Minister. Which the Doctor remembers, but nevertheless vanishes. But why did he vanish? I mean, if he does remember that very dangerous PM, then he obviously survived meeting him. Oh well, maybe he got erased from the timeline at a later point. Timetravel gives me headaches, really.

Anyway, I liked Ruby’s story and desperation (yes, I do like a good whump) when everyone turned away from her after coming into contact with the mysterious woman. And Katherine Lethbridge Steward was back, I loved that!

I also loved that Ruby comes back to visit the Tardis, which (who?) is still standing on that clifftop. Overgrown and dead, or at least seemingly dead, but people bring flowers there even if they don’t know why. A dead Tardis is really such a heartbreaking sight, like lost hope. Although in this episode, I wasn’t really sure whether the Tardis was really dead, it felt like a dog lying on their master’s grave waiting for him to return.

So, it was sort of a weird episode, but I loved it! (And I really need to go on holiday to Wales, I think. I’ve never been there!)

I really liked this episode! A few things weren’t explained though. Why did The Doctor have to disappear? What year was it at the beginning of the episode? It seems like it was after 2046, because of the fairy circle notes mentioning “Mad Jack”. Also £5 for a Coke in a pub is more expensive than in 2024. If it was after 2046, then how could Ruby travel back home by train and find her Mum there to welcome her back? It looked like 2024. Another point about money is how much were Ruby’s savings of £1,000 worth in 2046 when she donated them to the Albion Party?

Of course, we never found out what the future version of Ruby was saying to everone which made them run away screaming. I think it coud have been something like “I’ve got a disease that made me very elderly and forced me to haunt my younger self over there. Run away now, before you catch it!”

Extended bonkers theory…

The Tardis lands on a cliff edge, teetering between land and sea, next to a sign in Welsh and English: Perygl! Camwch yn ôl! Llwybr yr Arfordir ar gau oherwydd erydiad. Dargyfeirio: troi i’r chwith Danger! Step back! Coastal Path closed due to erosion. Diversion: turn right

The diversion has been mistranslated – ‘turn right’ in English, ‘turn left’ in Welsh – and that unresolvable discrepancy flummoxes the Tardis translation circuits, and she renders it for her passengers as something that ‘fits’ with her locality, and knowledge of local lore – a fairy ring, a circular paradox between turning left and right.

I’ve no supporting evidence for this, it’s purely conjecture. Turn left/right obviously from the similar Doctor-lite episode that Donna experienced. There’s real-life incidences of turn left being ‘mistranslated’ on Welsh signs, something that would resonate with Welsh viewers (in line with the series dog whistles theme). Diversion from the old joke about the name of a Welsh sign-writer. Coastal erosion is both topical, and links in with the nod to  TWBTLATS. Step back! the phrase whispered as a warning in the misremembered second iteration of the loop. It all has just the right amount of silly, self-referential in jokes that RTD might just have concocted.

Well that was different.

First, no opening titles? Or did I just miss them? Is there any significance to this?

Second, no Doctor (for most of it). No offence to the Doctor, but the story was well enough written to keep my interest without him.

Third, what did we just watch? It was *good*, but completely baffling. Who was the woman? – future old Ruby frozen in time? Don’t know. And possibly more significant – *what* did she say to everyone that made them run away from Ruby in terror (except Roger ap H-bomb who just – resigned)? Why was his reaction different?

And of course there was a bloody huge Reset button at the end.

So many questions, so much unexplained. Normally the number of unexplained bits would really bother me (see my comments on Kill the Moon for just how much gratuitously breaking physical laws wholesale bugs me!), but somehow in this – more mystical – story, it didn’t matter.

Tough luck on Ruby, who had to live a solitary life – not without romance, but without any permanent attachments because the 73 yard woman was so distracting.    I have noticed (in retrospect) that 73 yard woman only gave the horror treatment to people who Ruby had pointed her out to.   She left Ruby’s other acquaintances and passing romances alone.

I’d rank this up with Boom.   A vast improvement on earlier episodes, and (I hope) promising for the rest of the season.

@dentarthurdent

according to Perkins in Mummy on the Orient Express, 66 seconds is ‘about’ as long as it takes to change the phase of matter. So a meter per second means… what? Dunno.

73 yards cropped up again in the ‘time window’ and was one of my least favourite things in Legend of Ruby Sunday which, after all, was not a terribly impressive episode.

I did start watching this again… got as far as ‘look at the state on THAT’ in the pub. That was quite droll. I kept expecting Nardole to turn up as Dewi from Little Britain.

I wondered about Glengatwg and why Roger ap Williams should sport a full on (Norman) Welsh name… admittedly the leader of Plaid Cymru does, but you would think there was a reason RTD chose it.

2 possibilities…

he is famous spear son of ambition hat = Rassilon in full regalia??

or narratively he is the equivalent of Harold Saxon (= major knife boy… oh never mind), the guy who assembled a planet full of missiles and who RTD hinted was as big an abuser as Rog…

Will enjoy finishing the story tonight!

@robink2567     Good point about the perception filter.   I’ve just realised that explains why 73 yard woman only terrorised people who Ruby had pointed her out to.   The rest just didn’t notice her (the woman) because of the filter.   I’m very slow sometimes.

I’ll take your word for it that young people (in Britain) would use metres rather than yards, I can’t judge as I live in New Zealand.   But I know that, for greater distances, it’s miles, as every road sign will confirm.   🙂

The perception filter being attached to Ruby’s Tardis key (and malfunctioning) – that works.    I wondered if 73 Yard woman was just a hologram generated by [something attached to] Ruby e.g. the perception filter.   And the filter would have been pre-programmed by the mystical forces of the broken fairy ring to target Roger ap H-bomb.

OR, she could be the Doctor, trapped by the mystical powers of the fairy ring and unable to do anything but watch (until his chance came to terrorise Roger ap H-bomb, which would be entirely consistent with his history of saving the Earth from itself).   But I don’t think the Doctor would deliberately cause a split between Ruby and her mother, so I think that theory is ruled out.

Probably all this has been exhaustively discussed in this thread, which I’ve only just skimmed through.

@ps1l0v3y0u     You said (on 25th May)    “I saw a transcription somewhere on the web but can I get it back???”

(See, I do read a lot of these threads!)

Might that have been on Chrissie’s transcripts site at  Chakoteya.net?   (It’s the only one I know of)

@dentarthurdent yeah metric for short distances, imperial for long distances! Petrol in litres and gallons. It’s bonkers!

My theory is The Woman is the Doctor. The perception filter is working in reverse, so as well as Ruby being conspicuous, things appear warped to Ruby. So the Tardis, which she sees as full of life, excitement and escape, appears lifeless. She sees the Doctor as a close friend, so he’s always depicted to Ruby as distant – at the furthest of the perception filter’s range (73 yards). He’s rendered as a spooky hag because it’s gone for something it thinks fits it with the Welsh location.

Who’s perception filters seem to be psychic rather than holograms and act both on the person at the centre of the field, and everybody within it’s range.

I’m also speculating that fairy ring isn’t mystical, or even a fairy ring. It’s a sign, written in Welsh and English warning of the danger of the cliffs. It says something like “Danger, step back from the cliff edge. Costal path closed due to erosion. Diversion, Turn Right” In Welsh the sign reads almost the same, but it’s mistranslated and says ‘Turn left’ instead. The paradox of one sign pointing in two directions confuses the perception filter so much it starts playing up.

@ps1l0v3y0u yes, there’s a nice call-back to Sound of Drums, which introduced perception filters based on tardis keys, and the ap Gwilliam sub-plot.  There’s a Dafydd ap Gwilym in Welsh history, he was a poet who recorded lots of Welsh folklore, the Triads. Triads is an anagram of Tardis, which is a nice coincidence.

Also. Mrs Flood’s front door. Very clearly Tardis diary blue.

As I mentioned in my “Boom” post, having just watched it and “73 Yards” I feel like I’ve watched an entire season. I loved this episode. It felt reminiscent of Doctor Who, but without being derivative. Many others have pointed to past episodes that it harks back to, so there’s no need for me to repeat any of that.

Can I ask a basic question? What, exactly, was Ruby doing on the football pitch? I know she was counting until she reached 73 yards, so I assume she had walked to a point that was 73 yards away from Roger ap Gwilliam, bringing her old self in proximity with Gwilliam. I wonder what she said that caused him to run off and resign. But we don’t need everything explained. Allowing us to imagine is a good thing.

I loved the appearance of UNIT, though they certainly weren’t helpful to Ruby. And I wonder what “old Ruby” said to Carla to cause her to disown “young” Ruby. That was heartbreaking.

This is one of those stories that time travel can tell so well: The Doctor and Ruby accidentally breaking the fairy circle the first time around, and then not breaking when we return to that moment in time, means that all’s well.

I’m hoping that this wonderful feeling I have, after having watched these two episodes, will continue as I carry on with the rest of the DVDs. I’m happy to have Doctor Who back, even if it’s just for today.

@nerys    Well yes, Ruby was on the football pitch precisely in order to ‘target’ (or terrify) Roger ap H-bomb.   She actually got too close and had to back away to exactly 73 yards, and she knew her ‘follower’ would do the necessary.   Exactly what her follower could possibly say to get that result, I don’t know.   Possibly it wasn’t just words, maybe it also induced a psychic state akin to a ‘panic attack’.     (I – just once – experienced a panic attack, or maybe a brief intense depression.   It lasted a couple of hours and it was terrifying.   A feeling of being trapped and helpless.   All this, despite the fact that I knew I was in no danger, and the circumstances were all positive – weather was fine, I was staying with our daughter who I get on well with – there was absolutely no reason to feel depressed and that, in a way, made it worse, I was terrified that it might be permanent.   Eventually managed a short sleep and when I woke up the fear was gone and it was a lovely day.)    So maybe Ruby’s ‘follower’ had the power to induce that mental state in people.

@nerys not watched the episode recently but wasn’t the part of the  theory at the time that Ruby was experiencing an alternate universe created by the breaking of the “magical” circle/item in which she experienced an accelerated time line and that the “woman” was some kind of guardian/entity created by the Tardis that was kept at the perception filter effect limit to watch over her.

@dentarthurdent @devilishrobby @nerys

I must admit of all this series, 73 yards is the most erm… enigmatic.

The distance is about the Tardis in some way: who the woman is; what she says to third parties at 73 yards, I’ve no idea. Nor why Mad Jack should be imprisoned in the ring BEFORE he manifests Roger ap Gwillem…. but that’s magic… or timey wimey or whatever.

I did have theories re Rog…

1. echo of Harold Saxon… name, missile obsession, toxic masculinity… which makes me wonder anout his other obsession… DNA. Obviously, half the genetic heritage/history social media posts are stirring the alt right pot. But could it also be about Gallifreyan dna?

Also, what did all the Zygons do?

2. Then the interpretation (translation) of the name… ‘renowned spear’ and ‘helm of domination’… the rod and coronet of Rassilon?

But that would make the arc a ‘Mindrobberesque’ Virtual Reality… eventually including other Virtual Realities in a recursive loop reminiscent of… Castrovalva?

RTD has a new (brief) interview. The Special has been written ‘in his head’ since 2021… because it was the initial idea apparently. So, resolution of the arc, or a tease?

Wonder if there are some surprises in tWBtLatS that may feed in?