Doctor Who: 73 Yards – oh so many spoilers

So this post talks about the plot in detail and offers various ways of summarising the story. Don’t read it if you want to make your own mind up unspoiled.

I know some people find the plot unsatisfying so I am going to offer some plot summaries that may or may not be correct. I dislike most of them.

It Was Mad Jack All Along

The Doctor breaks a magic circle. Ruby reads a scroll and in doing so unleashes the being Mad Jack. It is Mad Jack who banishes the Doctor and who curses Ruby. He will go on to become Roger ap Gwilliam who in the future will unleash a nuclear war. In that nuclear timeline Ruby (still cursed) dies and as a ghost travels back in time to haunt Ruby. Ruby’s ghost is still under Mad Jack’s curse and cannot approach live Ruby and if she tries to warn anybody she fills them with irrational fear. Eventually, Ruby works out how to use her own ghost to defeat Roger ap Gwilliam but to complete the circular timelne must still die (of old age) to become her own ghost. She then warns herself in the past and so prevents the circle being broken and thus breaks the circular timeline. The End.

It was Ruby all along

Ruby clearly is special in some way based on previous episodes. She can make it snow and attracts goblins in airships. The magic circle triggers some power in Ruby and it is this power that traps her in a time loop. Her own power of suggestion creates the “Mad Jack” connection to Roger ap Gwilliam who is just a charismatic Welshman with a nuclear war fetish. Ruby’s own insecurities creates the ghost of herself that ensures she is always abandoned and locked out from people she loves (first The Doctor then her own mum and then many potential romantic partners). She dies alone because that is how she has always seen herself. At the moment of death she recognises that she has never truly been alone. She has always had herself. This allows her to move on from her feeling of abandonment thus breaking the cycle/circle.

It was the circle all along

In The Church on Ruby Road, The Doctor realises that the ropes in the goblin airship are a language in themselves. The twine and objects of the fairy circle are a self-enclosed story and by reading the scroll Ruby enters the story. The story is a circle and a circle is defined by a central point and the locus of a point a fixed distance from that point. Both points are Ruby. She traverses the story as two bodies in orbit around each other and finally exits the story at death at which point she finds herself outside of the story and is able to to avoid entering the story again.

It Was Susan all along

Well there are many big hints being dropped about The Doctors granddaughter Susan who way back in Dalek Invasion of Earth left The Doctor and was never seen again. Is Susan the Mrs Flood character who turned up in the episode and who appears to know what a TARDIS is? Is Susan something to do with the recurring older lady who keeps appearing in every episode and who is listed as Susan Twist (there is always a twist at the end)? Is this just a ton of misdirection from Russell T. Davies who knows how to wind up Doctor Who fans? I don’t know and even it was that doesn’t explain anything.

It was those people in the pub all along

Many years ago, an Australian visitor to the UK (of some significance to me personally) asked me in all honesty whether she’d need to get out extra cash to visit Wales because she wasn’t sure if they had ATMs there. The joke about paying with your phone was spot on but it was a joke on the audience as well. We didn’t know if Ruby was back in, say, 2010 or 1990. It was a pub but there weren’t many clues that would pin down the time period beyond the past 30 years really. Or it could have been an alternate reality. The jokes by the people in the pub were funny but they crossed a boundary into cruel. Ruby had food and drink in a place that, well, had a lot in common with faerie. It was a fairy circle and she’d passed into fairy through a space that woman in the pub EXPLAINED was a liminal space. Wales itself is a liminal space. The whole country is a gateway to faerie. She went in, they messed with her as fairy folk do and she got out again at the end. Don’t mess with fairies. Note that Ruby already had a run in with goblins so a run in with elves etc was to be expected.

It was some other thing

There is something going on with Ruby. There is something going on with the supernatural intruding into reality. There is something going on with being like the Toymaker and Maestro. The mystery of this episode is missing key elements that will only be revealed in the final episode or in the next Christmas special or in episode several seasons hence when Ncuti Gatwa regenerates into Tony Shaloub.