{"id":3785,"date":"2024-05-27T10:21:25","date_gmt":"2024-05-27T09:21:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/?p=3785"},"modified":"2024-05-27T10:21:25","modified_gmt":"2024-05-27T09:21:25","slug":"so-what-did-i-think-of-73-yards","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/2024\/05\/27\/so-what-did-i-think-of-73-yards\/","title":{"rendered":"So… what did I think of 73 Yards?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t know we were getting a Doctor-lite episode.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been trying to avoid spoilers \u2013 I didn\u2019t know that Boom<\/em> was about the Doctor spending the whole episode standing on a landmine until about a day before the episode aired \u2013 and so it came as quite a surprise when we followed Ruby away from the TARDIS. It came as an even greater surprise when the \u201cWelsh Folk Horror\u201d aspect of the story turned out to be one of several narrative feints. It\u2019s easy to get fed up with a tale in which nothing is ever what it seems because sometimes the audience stops trusting the storyteller. But this is such a beguiling installment, built around such a chilling image, that that never bothered me.<\/p>\n

And it\u2019s about something. It\u2019s not a puzzle to be solved \u2013 we\u2019ll come back to that in a minute \u2013 it\u2019s rather a deep, sad, meditation on loss and loneliness and the fear of abandonment. Ruby\u2019s mother locking her out and telling her that the woman who gave birth to her didn\u2019t want her either is savage in its ferocity. How does anyone bounce back from that? Well, in a typical edition of a fast-moving science fiction adventure anthology show, they kill a monster or defeat a badguy and then it\u2019s all smiles. But in reality, you just keep on living.<\/p>\n

And amazingly, that\u2019s what happens to Ruby. UNIT can\u2019t help her, the Doctor can\u2019t help her, she can\u2019t help herself, and so she just lets the years roll by. And sure, after the first time jump, the prospect of a reset button at the end of the episode looms very large, and by the time she\u2019s an elderly woman, it\u2019s pretty much guaranteed. But a reset button need not render the entirety of the preceding action moot \u2013 even if none of the characters can remember anything. Sometimes the journey is worthwhile. And this was so creepy, so suspenseful, so heartfelt, so bleak and yet so sunny, that it really was.<\/p>\n

Various people are complaining online that the ending didn\u2019t make sense or wasn\u2019t resolved, but I was thrilled not to have to wade through endless turgid minutes of science fiction plot admin. Ruby loses the Doctor when they break the circle which trapped Mad Jack. Ruby has to neutralise Mad Jack to have any hope of putting things back the way they were, but she still has to go the long way round. When future Ruby stops the circle from being damaged, the cycle is broken and she and the Doctor can go on their way. If you wanted to be told that the was all due to the Galactic War between the Zagbars and the Zoobles and that the old lady was the Zagbarian Ambassador caught in a temporal flux and trying to stop Earth from being caught in the crossfire, I understand your frustration, but I think you have to accept that that wasn\u2019t what this story was trying to be. This was something much more allegorical, much less literal.<\/p>\n

And so, no, I don\u2019t think threads from that ending will be returned to. Clearly there\u2019s a lot going on already \u2013 even Ruby has started to notice that Susan Twist keeps cropping up \u2013 but the ending of the episode didn\u2019t give me the impression of a writer saying \u201cAnd here are some unanswered questions that you need to keep in mind for next time.\u201d It felt final, complete and for me at least completely satisfying. Much of this is due to the extraordinary work done by Millie Gibson who makes every aspect of Ruby\u2019s bizarre journey totally believable. As sad as I was not to see more of Ncuti this time round, this was an exceptional episode of Doctor Who which kept me guessing right to the very end.<\/p>\n\"5\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I didn\u2019t know we were getting a Doctor-lite episode. I\u2019ve been trying to avoid spoilers \u2013 I didn\u2019t know that Boom was about the Doctor spending the whole episode standing on a landmine until about a day before the episode aired \u2013 and so it came as quite a surprise when we followed Ruby away […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[11],"tags":[18,19],"class_list":["post-3785","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture","tag-doctor-who","tag-reviews"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5JY5l-Z3","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3785","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3785"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3785\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3788,"href":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3785\/revisions\/3788"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3785"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3785"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3785"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}