This isn't first time companions get to split themselves, for one to have a better fate. Donna in "Turn left", Amelia in "The woman who waited".

I don't really have a theory about the story - it's one of those stories where I'm happy to let the plot threads hang if they want to because it's an atmosphere story, not a plot story. That said, after getting to the end of the episode and seeing what The Figure is, the timeline in which Ruby lives out all those years is orphaned and is ultimately doomed. It's not real. So maybe that's what The Figure was showing them.

@@MichaelJohnson-kq7qg another theory: the Doctor was meant to stop Mad Jack, but stepping on the circle got him trapped and demanded someone else to do the job.

There are still a lot of questions left unanswered by the end of this episode, but I'm not going to worry about them too much because I'm willing to trust that they will probably be explained by the end of the season. There's obviously a big mystery surrounding Ruby, and when we finally know what that mystery is, those remaining unanswered questions won't be as much of a mystery anymore. Mrs. Flood and Susan Twist are the same way. I'm pretty sure they're both tied into the supernatural side of things that the show appears to be focusing on this season, and both probably tied into the mystery surrounding Ruby as well. And the questions remain because we're not meant to know yet.

Did you notice the fleeting close-up on Kate's *_red nail-varnished hands_* when she took the coffee cup?

@@ftumschk I don’t think she’s the hand. If that were Kate Stewart picking up the gold tooth, on the premises she’s already in charge of, there’d be zero reason to hide that from the audience.

Poor Nell 😢

Reminds me of the haunting of hill house

@@Aurora_Borealis_UKnoooo did you just spoil the series? 😤

Coincidence also being a common thread of all the episodes so far.

Don't say "coincidence" or you'll summon the Goblin King!

Ruby has been giving me Bad Wolf vibes all season. Even when Maestro had her suspended in the air, the first song she started singing before Carol of the Bells was uncovered seemed very similar to the Bad Wolf theme

Midnight, 42.

@@backtoearth1983 Those ones didn't affect me nearly as bad as this. This one was just the right combination of unsettling topics to make me severely uncomfortable - abandonment, inability to see clearly, losing people you trust. The only thing that comes close for me (apart from Midnight or Turn Left) is World Enough and Time/The Doctor Falls, but there at least Bill has people on her side

How did you feel about Listen in season 8? That one and this are the only Doctor Who episodes that have ever truly unsettled me. I think this got me as two things that have always stuck with me after watching were the 'bent neck lady' from the Haunting of Hill House and the movie It Follows, elements of which were echoed in this episode.

Bruh I have to wonder have you ever seen the show before? You find an old sweet lady running around saying dont step scarier than anything else in the show? I hope your mother apologised to you for dropping you on your head as a baby honestly

@@hanonhold I don't remember being as affected by that one as by this. It was still good, but it didn't stick with me like 73 Yards. I can't really put my finger on why, but the fact that we followed Ruby through her whole life here really made it much more intense

Which viewers did this alienate that weren't already just hate watching?

it wasn’t a risky episode, it was just an episode with bad writing with no ending or explanation to ANYTHING, and people are overanalyzing it and taking it for granted

@@pk251 Do you really need an explanation?

There's a difference between a story with a single unanswered question and a story that doesn't answer anything.

@AtticKnight that's a fair point - I do think that RTD will deliver on the buildup though and I think that this will play into it!

​@@AtticKnight As sci-fi legend Isaac Asimov put it "The most useful thing a scientist can say isn't 'Eureka!' [I've found it!], but 'Hmm... why did that happen?'..." (That's not the exact quote, but it's close enough. That is, unearthing a mystery is often more exciting than finding an answer.)

@stressedtoimpress91 Problem is it's been done before their not doing anything new it's another recycled idea.

​@@AtticKnightYes, and they're both good. It's Cthulu-style psychological horror

Brilliant. I’m gonna mull all that over. Great points ❤

i think the lady standing away watching her always is death, scaring away anyone who comes close. Takes that form after Ruby dies, a ghost from the afterlife. When they mess up the fay circle you notice the Doctor apologizes, but Ruby keeps messing with it, unleashing the curse on herself. As punishment she lives a lifetime and the curse is lifted after she "dies".

Clues she's fictional? Just an idea...

that's kinda funny to me that you've not been feeling millie's performance till now, considering this was apparently the first episode she filmed due to ncuti's schedule (he was wrapping up on sex ed at the time of filming so it made perfect sense to film the doctor lite ep first

@@leilanyx_ It is funny but I'm not alone. I think it's the 8 episodes & being halfway through the season, it doesn't quite feel earned yet but Millie had an unenviable task & carried it off extremely well. I want to say more about Millie but it goes too much into spoiler discussion into S2 & Ruby not hitting as well as she could have in S1. Next episode will be interesting because once again it will likely be a somewhat Doctor-lite episode as 73 Yards & Dot & Bubble were filmed during the same filming block but with the same director while Ncuti was inbetween Sex Education & Doctor Who. It will be interesting to see how it will impact the episode

I had a lot of fun with Space Babies, too, so it's four in a row for me.

@@ftumschk yeah same. People expected Shakespeare or something from a season opener. Rtds openers have always been weird and not amazing. Rose and Partners in Crime were the best openers and the latter was still silly as hell. New Earth and Smith And Jones were the lesser openers I feel, especially New Earth which has the Doctor possessed for a chunk of it.

Funny you should mention Lynch, since the elderly lady wearing the red hat is played by Siân Phillips who played the Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam in Lynch’s Dune.

"Don't take HRT hours before watching something emotional" lmao I've been there, friend.

It was actually the first one filmed! Ncuti was finishing up filming on Sex Education, so they shot this Doctor-lite episode first. Millie was amazing!

To your last point: I mean cthuloid whispers or something? It’s a manifestation of abandonment, it literally makes people abandon her. That’s its job. It’s an elemental force beyond comprehension designed to make people abandon her, and does not have exact words in the same way it fails to have shape. The words would need be just as blurry because it would be nearly impossible to pick words perfectly to make such varied people have such similar reactions. They aren’t exactly the same, people who know her better almost seem more disgusted or something, but they do all lead to full abandonment and extrication (and in the case of Mad Jack, resigning).

I think that circle is just mad jack making a wish to become a prime Minister,and it worked,doctor said that to ruby in the beginning,"the most dangerous prime Minister" but doctor break the circle and change the future,causing a paradox,so doctor disappeared,the old woman is ruby's power to remind herself not to break the circle,so that everything is in place

that story about mad jack is just to scare ruby and make fun about her😂

Memories become stories. Memories become songs. Amy's storybook (and cracks in time, girl who waited, I'm loving the many thematic overlaps and lifetimes of wordplay!). Amy makes art such as comics about The Doctor too, both Amy and River SONG have written novels with some real event influences, Amy has already been a parallel universe fictional TV series character in one Who story, the series in question? Doctor Who (this kind of stuff crops up in the non-TV stories, there's a theory one arts based enemy from the non-TV stories could show up and they'd fit this type of entity and art/reality crossover)... River Song's 'no spoilers' diary. What do diaries contain? Notes, and what is music.... The Davina/DNA TV show bit re Ruby overlapping the music in Ruby? DNA being a kind of notation of a living being. 'Space Babies', the monster was created because the babies imagined it (or would be expected to), a story of something to fear and children need stories and something to fear or express fear, 'The Devil's Chord', music, which is written and notated, plus music is interpreted by it performer(s), Ruby having music in her and people needing music, 'Boom', a war with no enemy because the war only existed as that of what had been told to those fighting it, '73 Yards', perhaps a story is made up around a belief around breaking a fairy circle, superstition and perception. 'The Giggle', a musical phrase of a laugh broadcast via TV, the Toymaker's puppet show but suggestion from that trilogy of specials that there may be a metaphorical puppet master (the boss Beep The Meep mentions) and puppet minions of the Toymaker coming (we now know Maestro as one of them). The 'Spice Up Your Life' performance. Plus obviously Toymaster - Play - Creativity/games/imagination/rules. 'The Church On Ruby Road', a belief in- narrative created around- coincidence brings the goblins (I noted the interesting singer, Ruby being a singer, Maestro - connections including red ones?, could the Goblin Song have a songwriter maybe? It felt like it too might be setting the narrative- writing its reality?), superstition with the salt in 'Wild Blue Yonder' and 'The Giggle' a lot like the fairy circle of '73 yards'. But also a lot of duality since the specials but even before them at times so maybe twinned stories- one must end badly for the other to end well? Perhaps explaining the running away. Maybe also/alternatively can they flip between real/story but with a cost to flip which may be tragic or that simply of not existing for real? Plenty of hints- The Beatles not being able to make their music then that being fixed, the two realities of The Church On Ruby Road (Mrs Flood recognizing/ not recognizing The TARDIS for one, another perhaps where we've only seen one 'flip' so far as the character walking away from Ruby at the church may have a flipped version due to the snow) The Doctor has two hearts but also each event has two states timey-wimey wise, it did or did not happen? I feel gravity/mavity is more than a time travel joke. The not-things of Wild Blue Yonder which were the false Doctor/Donna, I wonder if from how they describe themselves they link to the current villain arc, things trying to cross over. Donna having forgotten The Doctor (memories again) and a Rose that's not that Rose in 'The Star Beast'. The bigeneration and the second TARDIS, the latter interestingly borne from being the prize chosen for winning a game thus sort of imagined into being in 'The Giggle'. In 'Before The Flood' The Doctor plays the Doctor Who theme on their guitar and the show breaks the fourth wall with a bootstrap paradox explanation, this seems 'interesting', Mrs Flood's fourth wall break and Maestro's theme tune lead-in (which was so so awesome by the way)?... There's a lot of abandoned/mystery offspring/babies too but that's a whole other theory rabbit hole. Art can be kind of real, I started but never finished writing a story around fiction/reality overlaps and the consequences then went ever deeper into the idea, for example seeing a Shakespeare Romeo and Juliet fight scene so real and emotionally moving I imagined having a character run onto a stage to break up such a fight, maybe some day I'll finish it! But if that's where Who is going with this story arc for obvious reasons I'm gonna love it. Final thought, is the living story character/entity/power Time itself, the one who waits, the circle, fairy from Latin fata ‘the Fates’, flux and it's entities fits this concept too (plus the wording- timeless child), or something linked to time. Capaldi's Doctor: TARDIS, it means life. Could even be the TARDIS itself....

We can see clues dropping back to 'Mavity'. It's all planned.

And we may never know. One thing people pointed out is that none of them screamed or ran immediately after engaging with Old Ruby / The Ghost / whatever you want to call her. They were told or shown something, then they looked at current Ruby, and *then* they freaked out. So perhaps they saw something about Ruby herself that scared them.

I think it was just part of a curse for breaking the circle.

I know right! I struggled with this too, and then someone tried to come up with the explanation. The episode occured in an alternate timeline. And in that timeline, Ruby stopped the PM. When the timeline is reset in the final scene, Ruby does not live a life where she will stop the PM, so it isnt a paradox. Her original timeline is restored. In the final scene, the doctor again tells Ruby that the PM will "lead the world to the brink of nuclear-". Going by the exact words of the Doctor, the PM will indeed come to power in 2046, but clearly doesn't do any catastrophic damage. He simply acquires the weapons for symbolism. This entire episode was in an alternate timeline and trying to be all meta coz in this alternate timeline, Doctor Who does not have a title sequence.

@@user-dy5ku3gd7r Nice theory.

She´s just so young! I can see a great career for her!

it said calendar age they were in the 51st century so she would be 3000 years old from 2004 it meant nothing than the difference between years

I feel the exact same. It's a fun concept for an episode, i just feel like it was written while RTD was drunk. Also, why the evil welsh guy? he really just didnt need to be there. I understand she's his herald or whatever, but then what is he? is he reborn, does he know who he is? its just way too open ended to the point where its nonsensical.

@@Pharaohred Oh, definitely. I was only listing the unanswered questions caused by the it-was-Ruby revelation. There are still a bunch of other questions, like _if_ the whole point was to stop ap Gwilliam then why did the woman continue to plague Ruby for decades even after that? And how does a fairy circle in 2024 connect to a politician from 2046 at all?

She says "I haven't been alone for 65 years" the night before she dies - so if we are doing 20 years from 2024 to mad jack time aged 40, 40 years after that to get old, and then she says "65 years" then that last scene is 5 years later than the one where she goes to visit the Tardis before she gets too frail to travel.

Hopefully this helps. The Old Ruby that follows is a ghost, well more like a memory of the future. At the end before it travels back you hear a flatline. The ghost kills her and she is then sent back to stop The Doctor breaking the Circle. There's a line that Kate says, "this timeline might be suspended along your event." This implies the timeline is a tangent to the main line. In the film Donnie Darko, a similar tangent timeline exists to its main one. Ghost Ruby acts in way like Frank the Rabbit, trying to prevent the Doctor from causing the tangent. As soon as he stops the ghost stops. Why the Ghost causes everyone to run though. I have no idea.

Sounds like you’re looking for rational explanations for a supernatural phenomenon that defies rational explanation. Natural laws have always been wonky in the Whoverse. I recently saw Tom Baker’s final serial Logopolis where mathematicians were able to manifest reality by doing math mentally. No real explanation for how that works. It’s so weird the Master thought it was just their superstition and destroyed their civilization by accident. And nearly took the universe with it. Since then, the Doctor played a game that weakened the laws of reality further by invoking a superstition at the edge of the universe. That let the Toymaker, his legions, goblins, bigeneration, and all manner of other supernatural redefinitions of reality through. From now on ghosts might actually be ghosts instead of cybermen or lost time travelers. So not knowing the folklore of fairy circles or the spells binding them etc., means I’ll have to take them at face value for now. There may not be rational explanations available because the supernatural is by definition unbound by natural law. The best answer for “how does this work,” isn’t going to come with science fiction technobabble. It may just be “magic.” I’m intrigued. I’m curious if this is a permanent decision or will the season finale fix things. I’ve been thinking that the random encounter with Issac Newton wasn’t random and perhaps he’ll be involved with correcting the natural laws (as well as restoring the term gravity in place of mavity.) Perhaps that’s how the Toymaker and his legions will be defeated? So instead of trying to explain the woman using naturalistic terms it may make more sense to look beyond rational explanations. The woman may just be a ghost. Probably Ruby’s ghost from the day she died. And she’s been haunting Ruby ever since she disturbed the circle. We don’t know what she says to people. It may be something as the result of a curse placed on the circle and anyone who disturbs it. Maybe the Doctor vanishes because he actually broke the circle, etc. There’s no way to know for sure if any explanations are valid because it’s not a phenomenon that can necessarily be scientifically studied. Or, if it can, we would only have gotten that explanation if Ruby had studied it or collaborated with others studying it. Since she didn’t do that we don’t get the explanation. And since this is supernatural horror, the explanation isn’t the point. The terror is. I felt the terror so it apparently did its job for me. YMMV

She did say that she thought of it, but that it came with the feeling that if she did, it would kill the figure _and_ her. She was right, because it was her.

Just the two. In the second loop, Ruby says she's been to Wales three times (instead of two) before she ever sees Old Ruby. So she was already remembering the past iteration somewhat; if they'd looped more than that, she'd have remembered more times.

Leaving open questions shouldn’t be seen as a problem, inherently. Sometimes it’s better when a story leaves you asking.

It's confirmed Ruby is in season 2. It's been confirmed for a long time now.

She definitely isn't the Master. If UNIT, or particularly Kate, realized Ruby was the Master, she'd have taken her in right there instead of walking away.