Doctor Who Series 11: 10 Huge Questions After It Takes You Away
8. Why Was Ribbons In The Anti-Zone?
In the hit Netflix series Stranger Things, the Upside Down is a dark version of this universe, a place of ruin and decay haunted by demonic creatures. It is both alien and familiar at the same time and blurs the distinction between worlds. This ambiguity is neatly avoided in It Takes You Away with the use of two alternative worlds, the mirror universe – a copy of our own, and the anti-zone, an alien buffer zone between this world and the replica. The anti-zone, like the upside down, is occupied by demonic figures - the flesh-eating moths and Ribbons, but it is completely alien.
The moths and presumably Ribbons too are there to prevent travellers successfully crossing from one world to the next. So does that make it a construct that is no more real than the mirror world? If so, then would it not have been destroyed the moment that the Solitract cancelled the illusion, trapping the Doctor forever in the other world? The buffer zone is a physical reality, but its fate is therefore unclear. It’s certainly surplus to requirements by the end of the episode.
Ribbons is obsessed with food and sees everything as organic. It’s not at all clear then why he would want the Doctor’s sonic screwdriver, or what he intended to use it for. Why give him sentience in the first place? Would the episode have been just as effective without him?