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Dept. of Who
73 Yards: Nightmare Logic
I rarely get creeped out by a show to the extent that I wake up in the wee smalls going "It's wrong." Nor do I often wake up again and think, "Oh, now I get it. Dream logic!" before falling back, relieved, to sleep.
Then I woke up today and thought more about 73 Yards and realized that the episode isn't about dream logic. It's about a child's nightmare. And where dream logic comes at a premium, but does exist (think Moffat's fairy tales; you might have to take a while to ferret out the code, but you can do it - hell, even the snow that falls intermittently in this season feels like it will make sense eventually) ... nightmares don't have logic.
Nightmares just have fear.
Fear drives out logic; fear that's bad enough drives out thought. And there's the awful, bloodstained rub; without thought and logic, it's almost impossible to escape the fear. Talk about a malevolently ugly ouroborous.
I'm a very linear person, and after the closing scene in 73 Yards, I reacted the way I think a lot of us very linear people might react to stories like this - I tried to figure out how it really worked. Time loop? We're familiar - boy howdy, are we familiar - with timey-wimeyness, so maybe? No, that didn't ring true. Diverging timelines? Same problem.
The woman - why did she make certain arm and hand movements? Why 73 yards away, no nearer, no farther? Why did Mad Jack forbid people from stepping on the green pitch?
What was it she said to everyone, that made them run away? More importantly, what was it that she said that made everyone reject and even hate Ruby? And how did Ruby turn into her?
What parts were real? What was imaginary? And where the hell was the Doctor?
I was, in short, in danger of becoming one of those fans that cries out, irritating and piteous, bUt ThaT's NoT HoW tImE wORkS!!1!
Then I went to bed and had my half-asleep epiphanies. Followed by my daylight twigging to the final piece of the puzzle. It was the look Ruby's mother gave her as she drove by in the taxi; the change in Kate's face as she looked at Ruby and said "disengage".
No child can understand being abandoned. Not truly. It makes no sense, and a child's nightmare could quite easily consist of nothing but people pushing them away, locking the door against them, running away, for no given reason. For no reason at all.
Ruby's nightmare.
And then she got older, and started realizing she didn't have to understand everything about the creature dressed in black, making strange hand signals and whispering terrifying things to all and sundry. She could use that creature. She didn't have an easy growing up, no, but Ruby figured out how to save the world using the thing that terrified her the most. She saved the world, and that was enough for her.
By the time she died, Ruby was all grown up. And if she had nightmares as a grown up, they were going to be different types of nightmares than the one where her mother looked at her with loathing.
Sometimes, you know, you can be caught in a nightmare, and then you realize that there's a door out of the nightmare, or you realize you can wake yourself up.
And she did.
And I stopped worrying about linearity.
And yes, it's still about children.
I rarely get creeped out by a show to the extent that I wake up in the wee smalls going "It's wrong." Nor do I often wake up again and think, "Oh, now I get it. Dream logic!" before falling back, relieved, to sleep.
Then I woke up today and thought more about 73 Yards and realized that the episode isn't about dream logic. It's about a child's nightmare. And where dream logic comes at a premium, but does exist (think Moffat's fairy tales; you might have to take a while to ferret out the code, but you can do it - hell, even the snow that falls intermittently in this season feels like it will make sense eventually) ... nightmares don't have logic.
Nightmares just have fear.
Fear drives out logic; fear that's bad enough drives out thought. And there's the awful, bloodstained rub; without thought and logic, it's almost impossible to escape the fear. Talk about a malevolently ugly ouroborous.
I'm a very linear person, and after the closing scene in 73 Yards, I reacted the way I think a lot of us very linear people might react to stories like this - I tried to figure out how it really worked. Time loop? We're familiar - boy howdy, are we familiar - with timey-wimeyness, so maybe? No, that didn't ring true. Diverging timelines? Same problem.
The woman - why did she make certain arm and hand movements? Why 73 yards away, no nearer, no farther? Why did Mad Jack forbid people from stepping on the green pitch?
What was it she said to everyone, that made them run away? More importantly, what was it that she said that made everyone reject and even hate Ruby? And how did Ruby turn into her?
What parts were real? What was imaginary? And where the hell was the Doctor?
I was, in short, in danger of becoming one of those fans that cries out, irritating and piteous, bUt ThaT's NoT HoW tImE wORkS!!1!
Then I went to bed and had my half-asleep epiphanies. Followed by my daylight twigging to the final piece of the puzzle. It was the look Ruby's mother gave her as she drove by in the taxi; the change in Kate's face as she looked at Ruby and said "disengage".
No child can understand being abandoned. Not truly. It makes no sense, and a child's nightmare could quite easily consist of nothing but people pushing them away, locking the door against them, running away, for no given reason. For no reason at all.
Ruby's nightmare.
And then she got older, and started realizing she didn't have to understand everything about the creature dressed in black, making strange hand signals and whispering terrifying things to all and sundry. She could use that creature. She didn't have an easy growing up, no, but Ruby figured out how to save the world using the thing that terrified her the most. She saved the world, and that was enough for her.
By the time she died, Ruby was all grown up. And if she had nightmares as a grown up, they were going to be different types of nightmares than the one where her mother looked at her with loathing.
Sometimes, you know, you can be caught in a nightmare, and then you realize that there's a door out of the nightmare, or you realize you can wake yourself up.
And she did.
And I stopped worrying about linearity.
And yes, it's still about children.