73 Yards

[grok_mctanys]

That didn't work for me.

I've been enjoying this series so far, and there were a bunch of individual things I liked about the episode, but overall it left me just feeling WTF.

I liked the UNIT segment, and was especially amused how it ended: "We know how to handle weird situations." Lol, no. I liked that Ruby came to see the woman as a benevolent companion, and not as someone to be resented, feared or hated - I think that says something really interesting about her. I liked that we never found out what the woman said to the people who noticed her. And (as an English person) I was amused by the "prank the English tourist who thinks we're a bunch of yokels" shtick.

Also, I'm generally not opposed to having a mystery that's never solved. Midnight is a great episode along those lines, which I really enjoy.

But this one? Something about the ending didn't work for me.

Maybe because the bit they kind of explained - who the woman was - didn't make much sense. Knowing who she was doesn't help explain anything about why she was acting the way she did - it just makes it weirder. But also, we end up with a paradoxical time loop that erases itself from existence. So... Ruby, having found out about the terrible future PM, finds a way to avert disaster... but only in a closed-off timeline which never actually happens? Meanwhile, in our current timeline where Ruby didn't step on the thing and the woman doesn't exist, the future PM will still do the terrible thing? So what was the point?

Comments

[rich_jacko]

Yeah, I had similar problems with the ending. I think the idea was that, by doing what she did, Ruby trapped Mad Jack back within the circle again and so the future PM would never do the terrible thing in our current timeline. But that doesn't make sense, because the Doctor had heard of what he did before the circle broke (I went back and checked!).

Oh well, it was still a really enjoyable episode. Boom and 73 Yards have been a welcome return to form after a string of really silly episodes. I don't object to silliness in Doctor Who (it's always been there, and the whole concept of the show is silly), but there had been too much of it on the trot and it's been nice to get back to being tense and scary.

[grok_mctanys]

Thinking about it more, I'm not even sure which mystery we're supposed to be focussed on, or is meant to be left unresolved.

Is it - who created the faery circle, and why?

Is it - where did The Doctor go, and will he reappear?

Is it - what is the woman saying to everyone to make them act that way?

Is it - how does the timey-wimey resolution work?

I don't mind being temporarily confused, if I get a moment of clarity eventually. I don't mind one or two ineffable mysteries implying a greater universe that we may never fully understand.

But this one had too much of nothing making any sense at all, and then she woke up and it had all been a dream!

(Space Babies was definitely the good kind of silly though, and I thought The Devil's Chord had a good balance of tense and scary with the silly all bound up together in Maestro. Boom also fun, if a little on the nose at times - I do prefer it a bit more when The Doctor leads other people into figuring out the answers for themselves, rather than just beating them over the head with the exposition stick - and interesting themes reminiscent of the 12th Doctor episode Oxygen.)