Episode 4 of this new season 1 A doctor who is is titled 73 yards. Title from concept: Ruby is followed by an elderly woman who always stands 73 yards (66.7 meters) away from her, while she is trapped in a strange time loop.
The first season of the “soft reboot”. A doctor who is it goes its own way, further Disney+ In France. After an episode written by Steven Moffat, which represents a future companion, episode 4 is one of the first in a long time to be “Doctor-lite” (where the Doctor is almost absent). Therefore it is Ruby (Millie Gibson) holding the reins 73 yards. A very strange episode, which brings a time loop that many have had a hard time understanding. But don’t panic: we’re taking over the narrative elements 73 yards point by point. Warning, SPOILERS.
Fairy circle
IN 73 yards, The Doctor and Ruby arrive in Wales, on the coast. Outside the TARDIS, a mysterious circle of death, called “fairy circles”, is interrupted when Ruby accidentally steps on it. He also reads a sign that reads, “Rest in Peace, Mad Jack. » From then on, the Doctor completely disappears and the TARDIS remains locked. Ruby also begins to see an old woman, in the distance, who always stands, no matter what, 73 yards (or 66.7 meters) away from her. In a nearby Welsh pub, the villagers claim that Ruby has defiled the circle of a “Mad Jack”, a dangerous lunatic.
Added to this is the strangeness: all people who approach this woman at a distance hear “something” that immediately terrifies them – they systematically run away. Even Ruby’s own mother flees and banishes her daughter from her life after hearing the old woman’s words. On the UNIT side, a military group led by Kate Stewart also fails to stop this mysterious woman. What’s worse, they end up running away too.
crazy jack
Years pass, the woman continues to follow Ruby at 66.7 meters for twenty years. Until Ruby hears about a certain Gwilliam, a presidential candidate in the United Kingdom. During the interview, Gwilliam reveals that his nickname is “Mad Jack”. And here it all makes sense: just before the disappearance, the Doctor mentioned a certain Gwilliam. He described him as a dangerous, fascist politician who brought the planet to the brink of nuclear war in the 2040s.
At that moment, Ruby becomes convinced that her role is to stop Mad Jack at all costs to save humanity from chaos. She decides to join Gwilliam’s presidential campaign to get closer to him. There she meets Marti, who tells her that this man ” monster » — we understand, during the script, that he is a sexual attacker.
After the election, Ruby finds the perfect opportunity: Gwilliam’s speech in a huge football stadium. She makes sure she is exactly 66.7 meters from Gwilliam so that the mysterious woman is standing right next to him and he is talking to her. At that moment, the woman utters a sentence that terrorizes and frightens everyone. In fact, Mad Jack resigns as Prime Minister and disappears. Long story short, Ruby defeated Mad Jack by mobilizing the old woman to the right place at the right time.
How does this time loop work?
Strangely, defeating Mad Jack does not release Ruby from this timeline. She continues to live her whole life, until she herself becomes an elderly person. As her death approaches, the old woman bonds with Ruby for the first time… then the older Ruby finds herself teleported back several decades, to the Welsh coast, as the Doctor and Ruby exit the TARDIS. Seeing the woman in the distance, earlier than last time, Ruby stops and does not walk around the circle of fairies.
When the Doctor asks Ruby how many times she has been to Wales, she doubts and replies “three times”. During the first dialogue, at the beginning of the episode, she answered “twice”.
But what happened? One thing is clear: the old woman, standing 220 feet from Ruby, was Ruby herself, the elder.
When the fairy circle was broken and Mad Jack’s spirit was released, the defilement trapped Ruby in a time warp that she had to fix. An older version of Ruby was there to ensure that Ruby reached the end of the loop smoothly. It remains to be seen why the Doctor disappeared during this loop. It’s probably a time lock. This is a term that has already been introduced in A doctor who isespecially via Weeping angels : They send people somewhere in space-time, where the Doctor can no longer access. The loop of the fairy circle blocked Ruby like that, any space-time travel was impossible.
Why 73 yards / 66.7 meters? The showrunner explains, behind the scenesthat it was the distance from which he had the feeling that he could see a silhouette without actually seeing who it was.
What does the woman say?
There are still a lot of unclear areas, explanations that will never be given about the reasons for this time loop and its progression. For example, it is not known what the older version of Ruby says to the people who come to meet her and what makes them afraid. Russell T. Davies explained that we will never know: he believes that uncertainty, left to our imaginations, is even more terrifying.
” You’ll never know. I’ll never tell you what she says. It’s up to you to wonder what anyone could possibly say to make a mother walk away from her daughter forever. You may ask yourself, ‘What would make me do this?’ And when you start doing that, you get into a really horrifying story.’. “.
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