73 Yards

[Deleted]

I guess this was meant to be more of a conceptual story, which is a bit weird to wrap my head around because Doctor Who is very rarely a conceptual show, it's heavily plot-based. Maybe it would work better on second viewing as a short art film.

[cyberhat]

May 21, 2024 13:46:18 GMT Cherry Pepsi Maxil said:

Apparently this episode is going to be the best in years which means it's probably going to be slightly above average.

Your crystal ball is in fine working order.

Wasn't at all keen on the centrism. Leaving NATO means your more, not less likely to start a nuclear war apparently!!! RTD and co must be great fans of their human exctinction threatening push eastward. 

And if such a politician come Prime Minister was about, MSM hacks like Amol Rajan would be covering his arse with distractions about the evils of any public figure with a working soul. You just know most of the nupoo team were breathing a sigh of relief when Johnson won over Corbyn in 2019.

Come on Cardiff, at least put on the appearance of being faux-radicals.

[henshin]

SPOILERS. DO NOT READ FURTHER IF YOU HAVE NOT WATCHED.









Ok, I liked this episode.

Genuinely for it's tone, soundtrack, pacing, and performances. Excellent stuff. Really.

But the plot falls apart. It can't work.

Ruby is stuck to live the rest of her life from "Year X" while being 'stalked' by the mysterious woman who turns out to be Ruby herself.

Ruby manages to warn herself, upon arriving all those years ago, to not break the web.

How? I love the concept, but in practice it doesn't work.

[Deleted]

Tonally this episode is what I'm after from modern Doctor Who, even if the plot is a bit slipshod. RTD can be a mature writer when he wants to be, certainly more so than Moffat. The divide between this episode and last week's really illustrates to me why his era failed on a dramatic front for me. The stakes always felt low even when they were sky-high, because Moffat just can't write people. It felt immature even when it's supposed to be gritty and dark.

[henshin]

You know, out of any episode this year, this episode offended me the most because RTD can produce a mature show that works for the family.

He clearly chooses to affront the fanbase, given what has preceded it, along with his statements in the media. It's a shame. The guy still has it.

[burrunjor]

Watched it and yeah, not a fan. 

It's a shame as it started out brilliantly with the setting being genuinely creepy, the woman being a frightening image, Ruby's mother turning on her being horrible, Kate abandoning her being a scary no one can help you now moment. 

However it lost its way for a cheap, current thing political bit that went nowhere, and the resolution was stupid. Also why did Ruby age so drastically? She's in fact sorry she's 19, so 40 years on she's 59, yet she is lying in bed barely able to breath, being wheeled around in a wheelchair and when she visits the cliff she needs someone to drive her there and stumbles around with a stick barely able to walk on her own. Fair enough if she's ill, but there is no mention of that. We are just meant to assume it is because she is old. 

Yeah Russell I don't think your average 59 year old has to be wheeled around, walks with a stick or looked after in a nursing home. 



Alison King, 52 years old. 



Katey Sagal about 55-57 (not to get sidetracked but how gorgeous is her nose there?)



Amanda Donohoe in her late 50s.



Big Fam in her 60s!



Lucy Lawless at 57.

Okay fair enough these are all famous actresses who have a vested interest in looking fabulous at their age LOL, but the point wasn't how good you look (who cares in your 60s and there was nothing wrong looking with the actress, any more than any other person in their 60s beyond a big hollywood mega star.) It's that these women still look reasonably fit and healthy. They're not being dragged around in wheelchairs or having the nurse give them a button to call them in the middle of the night in case they don't make it like Ruby was. To be honest these days that would be a bit much to portray an 80 year old that way (again barring a serious illness which sadly can strike you at any age.) Christopher Lee didn't walk with a stick until he was in his 90s. 

I admit I was half watching it, and I'm not feeling that good this morning. Depression flared up again last night and I'm trying to keep myself occupied, but what actually happened?

As far as I can see, the Doctor stood on a fairy trap that was laid by who or what exactly? As a result of that he vanished? Where did he go to? Was he dead. Also this fairy trap is laid out on a cliff top lots of people go? I refuse to believe it hasn't been damaged before. Also why did everybody else turn on Ruby? Was that the work of the fairies? 

How and why did her older self go backwards in time? Also what changed. Her older self went backwards in time and tried to warn her, but it failed obviously as she didn't take her older self's advice, so how did it suddenly work at the end? Also why does the Doctor not do anything about this fairy trap? "We should respect them." Why? What if an adorable wee two year old is running around and stumbles into that trap? Why respect beings that would seemingly kill a hero like the Doctor for stepping on some twigs, and torture a young girl by making her loved ones hate her and seemingly bring a fascist into power because he friend stood on a twig? 

It didn't make even the tiniest bit of sense. To me RTD had an idea for a scary scene of an old woman from the Ring chasing someone and that was it. He built the flimsiest story around it and tried to be clever with a twist. 

To me this is one of those stories like Listen that people will be pretentious about for a while and say is a psychological classic but never mention it again after a few weeks, (like when Paul Cornell said Listen is the best episode of DW ever made.) 

[Deleted]

It explicitly stated that another 40 years had passed since she was 40 years old dude

[burrunjor]

May 25, 2024 9:23:45 GMT @theyakemperor said:

It explicitly stated that another 40 years had passed since she was 40 years old dude

Must have missed it? So does that mean Millie Gibson was playing a 40 year old when she was working with the alt right guy? I thought Ncuti said that there would be an alt right guy in 2026, and that's the one we see come to power, meaning the bits where she has the glasses and is talking to Kate was only two years in the future, then we cut to 40 years later when she visits the cliff and she is walking with a stick. Pretty sure there isn't another 40 years between that and her being in the bed? 

[Deleted]

Yeah she was supposed to be 40 with Roger ap Gwilliam, that was in 2046. It was a bit confusing because she didn't look 40. That's like a really simple makeup job right? Kate was two years in the future, then there was a montage during which she turned 30 and 40 and went through multiple boyfriends without ever being able to settle down. Ap Gwilliam stuff at 40, then another 40 years passed when she visited the TARDIS. I presume a few years more passed when she was in the hospice but I don't quite remember.

[henshin]

Yeah, they do another fast track somewhere in the last five minutes.

Which, yet again, begs the question: how did she see her younger self when her life's journey in this instance is linear, unlike Blink?

Even if you accept the premise that she successfully restored the timeline and, as a symptom of that, got to see her younger self, how did she travel back or, if she didn't, why at that moment did she see herself? It couldn't have been her death because we didn't see her die.

[burrunjor]

May 25, 2024 9:35:29 GMT @theyakemperor said:

Yeah she was supposed to be 40 with Roger ap Gwilliam, that was in 2046. It was a bit confusing because she didn't look 40. That's like a really simple makeup job right? Kate was two years in the future, then there was a montage during which she turned 30 and 40 and went through multiple boyfriends without ever being able to settle down. Ap Gwilliam stuff at 40, then another 40 years passed when she visited the TARDIS. I presume a few years more passed when she was in the hospice but I don't quite remember.

Okay so it was just as ridiculous, but the other way round then LOL. Millie did NOT look 40 just because they gave her some glasses. Also I thought the Doctor said that git she was fighting was supposed to come to power in 2026? Did I just mishear Gatwa's mumbling and it was 2046 or something? Also the world didn't seem to change much in 20 years? Also if she was 80 why would she even consider that her mum might still be alive? 

Also I heard that alt right guy was supposed to be a monster hidden in the fairy trap that was released. Okay fair enough I really wasn't paying much attention. (My head is really all over the place this morning I admit.) 

Still even then did he kill the Doctor? If he's powerful enough to do that, why did he bother trying to take over the world by becoming a Prime Minister? Why if he's so powerful was his prison contained somewhere where lots of people go (there's a pub next to it) and why is it made of twigs? A gust of wind could free this monster that can do what Daleks, Cybermen, vampires, Dinosaurs and gods never did. 

Also who was f*cking with Ruby and making her mother hate her? Was that this guy or her older self? Who sent her back in time? Again why was she able to change history at the end when she didn't before? Why doesn't the Doctor want to investigate the faeries and say "make your prison more secure". 

It just doesn't make any sense?

[Deleted]

I think the point is that there isn't a "Mad Jack", at least not in supernatural terms. The pub punters just made it up as a laugh. The faery circle contained vague portents of what was to come, like how this Roger bloke referred to himself as "Mad Jack". I don't think there were faeries or witches at all, I think the whole thing was Ruby manifesting her fears of abandonment into reality, set in motion by breaking the circle which she assumed would make something bad happen. Like how when you f*ck up in a dream and you just know that something awful is about to go down, even though it's all an invention of your own mind and you yourself are the one willing the awful thing into existence. Your conscious mind rationalises it into a narrative. Notice how she explicitly mentions that she used to be able to make snow fall before all this happened? This entire episode was a facet of her ability to transpose fiction, memories and fears into a corporeal reality. There is no Roger ap Gwilliam, at least not the man the story shows us. At the end Ncuti still bangs on about him, but in a more lowkey way, so in reality he's probably not the red-button-smashing nuclear madman Ruby's mind makes him out to be. Maybe just a backbencher for a Neo-Jonesian party or something. The entire narrative we see is a split-second in time, Ruby's anxiety for the future manifested into a fully fledged timeline. Who else was able to generate alternate realities owing to inconsequential decisions (turning left instead of right, breaking a bit of twine on a clifftop) that tapped into the fears of a singular companion and their experiences of a future Britain heading for ruination without the Doctor? The Trickster's beetle.

Maybe Ruby is the beetle lmao. That's why she wanted to see the Beatles in 1963.

[Cherry Pepsi Maxil]

May 25, 2024 8:37:55 GMT henshin said:

You know, out of any episode this year, this episode offended me the most because RTD can produce a mature show that works for the family.

He clearly chooses to affront the fanbase, given what has preceded it, along with his statements in the media. It's a shame. The guy still has it.

He's a capable writer at times. I seem to click more with the occasional RTD script than mostly anything by Moffat (except the likes of Blink and The Eleventh Hour).  

[Cherry Pepsi Maxil]

May 25, 2024 9:11:42 GMT burrunjor said:

I admit I was half watching it, and I'm not feeling that good this morning. Depression flared up again last night and I'm trying to keep myself occupied

Sucks to hear that. I'll drop you a message later on in the end. I hope you try and enjoy your Saturday.

[Deleted]

I'm slowly coming to the acceptance that Doctor Who will never be exactly what I want it to be. It will never feel as wonderful as it did back in 2008. I think these are just realities of growing up, you can't be totally engrossed in a fantasy show about a mad professor in a flying police box as an adult because there are always other things on your mind; paying the bills, holding down jobs, where the next meal's coming from, family and friends who are slowly starting to fall off the face of the planet.