Posted in: BBC, Disney+, Doctor Who, TV | Tagged: bbc, doctor who, Millie Gibson, Ncuti Gatwa, russell t davies

Doctor Who: What Is The Unexplained Horror in "73 Yards" Exactly?

In Doctor Who, we're never told why the old woman in "73 Yards" is terrifying, but we have a theory involving the mystery of Cosmic Horror.

"73 Yards" is a horror story in Doctor Who. The Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa) steps on a little stone circle on a Welsh mountain and disappears, and Ruby Sunday (Millie Gibson) is stalked by a ghostly old woman who never comes near her. She always stays 73 yards – that's 219 feet – away from her, waiting. When Ruby tries to get close enough to her to ask who she is or what she's doing, she backs away to stay at a distance of 73 yards. The locals at the pub tell her that the stone circle was a magickal containment spell, and breaking it might have unleashed something otherworldly. It took The Doctor away, and now Ruby is a target. However, the ghost woman never gets near Ruby to hurt her but destroys Ruby's life, condemning her to a lifetime of solitude with no friends or family to love or cherish.

A Doctor Who Monster That Doesn't Kill Anybody

The high-concept horror in this episode of Doctor Who is that the "monster," the ghostly old woman, doesn't kill anyone but induces terror in anyone who approaches her and causes them to run away. What does she say to them that makes them flee in terror, and particularly stay away from Ruby in terror? Does she even say anything at all? She's shouting something, but neither Ruby nor anyone can hear. So what could it be about the ghostly woman that's so terrifying? We don't know. We'll never know. That is the mystery behind the horror, and all true horror needs mystery behind it. And mystery never has an answer. It's there to linger in your mind. That's what makes them frightening and disturbing. If it has an answer, it's just a puzzle. It's different from the horror of death, where you're afraid a madman will stab or hack you to death. It's horror of the unknown, which is creepier and more insidious because it's unknowable.

But the Ghostly Old Woman turns out not to be a monster after all. The real monster in the story is fascist politician Roger ap Gwilliam (Aneurin Barnard), who wants to fire a nuke the first chance he gets.

A Metaphor for Ruby's Worst Fears

Ruby ends up in the situation she fears most of all: being abandoned, unloved, and alone. The Ghostly Old Man becomes a metaphor for her abandonment, a symbol of growing old and alone, though she doesn't realise it. The old woman following and haunting her causes her to fear settling down with anyone to have a family. Foundlings have a fear of being abandoned again and unloved, that they would be alone forever and not know why. That fear becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy for Ruby because she can't be with anyone because she knows the Ghostly Old Woman is always standing there, 73 yards away. Her greatest enemy is not the old woman but the demon of fear that haunts her mind. She is abandoned but never alone… she is haunted by herself. She doesn't know, and that's a metaphor for not knowing her true self. The Foundling's dilemma.

One Possible Answer for Why The Ghostly Woman Is Scary

In the end, the ghostly woman turns out to be the elderly Ruby at the end of her life. Just before she dies, she goes back in time to follow her younger self until she reaches the moment before The Doctor steps on the magickal circle that causes them to disappear and sets Ruby on her life of solitude. She goes backward in time to erase the timeline that created the path she ended up on that led to her becoming this lonely old woman. That becomes her purpose all along, not to stop a crazed fascist like Roger ap Gwilliam but to erase this timeline and sad life. What she's shouting to her younger self is to warn her and the Doctor not to break the circle. How the circle causes The Doctor to disappear isn't explained. Perhaps it really is magic after all, and perhaps that magic infected Ruby and turned her into a supernatural phenomenon, a cryptid, as it were, that can affect time.

Perhaps that's what made people terrified of Ghostly Elderly Ruby and Young Ruby in the end. The two of them are the same person occupying the same time, linked. They are a thing that should not exist. It's not anything Ghostly Elderly Ruby said that frightened them, it's being close enough to feel her and Young Ruby's existence is very wrong. And on a pure animal level, it drives them away in terror. What else could have terrified Ruby's adopted mother, Clara (Michelle Greenidge), so much that she recoils from rejecting a girl she's raised and loved for nineteen years, or Kate Stewart (Gemma Redgrave) and all of UNIT to want to withdraw all their desire to help and get the hell away from Ruby? That makes sense on a Cosmic Horror level. Ruby has become a split creature and Eldritch Horror – unknowably and unspeakably terrifying.

As for who laid out the magickal circle? That's the other mystery. How could it refer to "Mad Jack," Roger ap Gwilliam's nickname, when he would still have been a child in 2024? Did Old Ruby do it to make sure everything happened so that her younger self would know about Roger ap Gwilliam at his emergence in late 2039 and then stop him in order to get old enough to become her elderly self who would then be able to travel back in time to restore the original timeline with The Doctor after all? Or is it just a fairy circle laid by someone else in a story that has nothing to do with Ruby or The Doctor, a Magickal thing they stumbled upon and disturbed? We'll never know, and we could turn our brains in knots thinking about it. That's the nature of mysteries.

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