A Ghost Story for Christmas? 73 Yards
A Christmas Eve interlude, as guest writer Dale Smith offers some thoughts on this year’s instant classic, 73 Yards.
The consensus on 73 Yards already seems to have split. It is self-evidently a “good” story: dark, atmospheric, spooky. But - despite writer / producer Russell T Davies assuring the readers of SFX Magazine that it all makes sense - there is a growing belief the story is all atmosphere and no explanations. And perhaps that is true, but the more interesting question is why.
RTD describes 73 Yards as “Welsh folk horror” - at least to begin with. At its heart, the genre mines the myths and folklore of a time or place to scare its audience: it presents a world where the supernatural is real, waiting to punish the unwary or unwitting for not following rules they might not even know exist. At the time, knowledgable commentators pointed out that this was a genre Doctor Who had visited before, particularly in The Daemons (1971, inspired by Barry Letts’ early exposure to novel The Devil Rides Out) or Image of the Fendahl. It is true that both stories are replete with the tropes of the genre: corrupted churches, ancient ghosts and satanic covens. But there is one crucial difference between them and 73 Yards.
It is often claimed that Doctor Who can be any kind of story, that its format is so flexible that it can and has dispensed with all of the things that the casual observer might believe essential to the show: history, monsters, the TARDIS, companions and even the Doctor have all disappeared from stories at one point or another.
But there is something that unites the vast majority of Doctor Who, an essential outlook that makes even the most disparate stories feel like they belong to the same universe. Doctor Who, from its earliest moments, had an essential rationalist view: things like ordinary police poxes containing vast space and time ships might resemble magic, but were explained as Arthur C Clarkean science. And this is the case with those supposed antecedents to 73 Yards: in both cases, the supernatural elements are categorised and explained as alien science, as befitting Doctor Who’s core trope of scientific rationalism.
But this is antithetical to the folk horror genre. RTD has cited the Mabinogion as being the kind of tale he was trying to make 73 Yards into, but what it most resembles is a little later: MR James’ 1904 story Oh, Whistle, and I'll Come to You, My Lad, which was adapted twice by the BBC as Whistle and I'll Come to You - once in 1968, and again in 2010, this time starring War Doctor John Hurt.
In the story, a visitor to a seaside town disturbs an ancient artefact and is pursued by a distant figure in black rags who eventually attacks the lead for his transgression. No rational explanation is offered for the presence of the ghost, and it cares not that the hero was not deliberately trying to provoke it. Ignorance of the law is no defence, and he must suffer the consequences. This is the way with folk horror: the dread comes from the unresolved mystery at the heart of the story, as explained by another of the genre’s great writers Robert Aickman:
Nothing is more lethal to the effect that a ghost story should make than for the author to provide alternative materialist solution. This reduces a poem to a puzzle and confines the reader’s spirit instead of enlarging it.
73 Yards plays fair by the rules of its adopted genre in a way that earlier stories did not: it appears to give no explanation for its ghostly apparition, and there is no way to appease it or undo the slight to it, no matter how much rational thought Ruby puts into the problem. She is cursed and haunted for life for an error she had no way of knowing she was making, disturbing Mad Jack’s circle. This makes 73 Yards unique within Doctor Who, in that it breaks the tropes of the show in a way that threatens to make it not Doctor Who at all.
This isn’t the show wandering into A Ghost Story for Christmas and bending it to fit its own conventions: this is the TARDIS genuinely landing in a completely different genre and leaving Ruby to play to its rules and die. That is why there are fans who see 73 Yards as making no sense - by the rules of all Doctor Who, it doesn’t - and why it is evidence that RTD has not returned to the show to go over old ground. Like The Devil’s Chord - which subverts the usual structure of a story by allowing The Maestro to decide what happens when - 73 Yards shows RTD pushing against the previously established boundaries of Doctor Who to find what new ground it can move into, what kind of show it still hasn’t been in all its 60 years.
But what makes it even more impressive is that RTD cheats. Even as he presents a story that is true to the folk horror genre without apology or explanation, he hides within it a traditional Doctor Who story where the supernatural can be explained and rationalised.
After broadcast, RTD has said on many occasions that there is an explanation of what is going on in the story. Some have seen this as him trying to talk fans down from not liking some aspects of it, an act of post-hoc defusal of negative criticism by rewriting the interpretation of a story after the fact.
But it isn’t: There is a rational, Doctor Who explanation of everything that happens in 73 Yards hidden inside the story, and I can tell you what I think it is. But RTD hasn’t explained it, and quite the contrary has vowed that he never will. Because he knows that once you see that explanation, it turns 73 Yards from folk horror into just another Doctor Who story. The power of the story is in the mystery, not in explaining it. That mystery makes it unique, and perplexing, and keeps it stuck in your head. The explanation can only take away from that, not add to it.
But here you still are, so here’s what I think RTD is hinting at.
His first statement is that Mad Jack is a red herring, a local dog buried on the cliffside. Some have seen that as frustrating, but it is the key: in the folk horror 73 Yards, the whole story is set in motion by the breaking of the circle: taking the significance of that away removes all the supernatural elements of the story, and states quite clearly something else is going on.
What we have instead is the woman, standing 73 yards exactly away from Ruby, at what we learn later is the edge of the TARDIS’ perception filter. When spoken to, the ghostly woman turns to point back at Ruby, says something to the person as she directs their attention back and whoever she speaks to sees something so terrifying in Ruby that they run and never come back to her. Again, RTD has clarified what is happening here: it isn’t, he says, the words that make the person run. Nothing could be said that would make Carla abandon Ruby in her moment of need. Again, fans have been frustrated at this seemingly contradicting everything the story tells us is true. Again, this is a key fact: if it isn’t what the Woman says that is terrifying, it must be what she shows them.
And the thing that she shows them is Ruby, at the centre of a circle the exactly size of the TARDIS’ perception filter. In effect, at that moment, Ruby stands where the TARDIS stands. She is the TARDIS. More importantly, she is the TARDIS seen from just the right distance that the TARDIS cannot hide its true nature. And we now know that clinging to the TARDIS, hiding behind its perception filter, is the God of Death, Sutekh himself. So terrifying that he could make even Kate Stewart think twice.
The Doctor Who version of 73 Yards revolves around the TARDIS. It begins as Ruby steps out, at the centre of its perception filter. The TARDIS knows it has been hijacked, and wants to warn the Doctor and Ruby about Sutekh. So it makes Ruby the main player in a story that makes her the TARDIS, the unwitting carrier of something so terrifying no-one can face it. It tells her about Roger ap Gwilliam, whose regime will be an important factor in the eventual defeat of Sutekh. It fights against Sutekh’s control to pre-warn her, and when the story ends she finds herself back where she started, with only vague memories of it retained but armed with enough information to help steer the Doctor along the right path. There is nothing supernatural going on, just advanced alien science that might look, just for a moment, like magic. Mystery solved, and folk horror story successfully exorcised on the altar of Doctor Who’s rationality.
And for me, and RTD too, the story is broken. What is a mysterious, dangerous, brave break from tradition becomes another Doctor Who story. Which is why I’m here to tell you not to believe me. I am just another in a long line of dusty academics in folk horror stories, trying to rationalise the irrational and not understanding the true nature of the terrors that lurk beneath the surface of my carefully ordered life. Believe the stories, marvel at the mystery, and be very careful just where you put your feet.
DALE SMITH
