Mark Harrison | On 25, May 2024

This is a spoiler-free review – read on at the end for additional spoilery observations.

It’s really difficult to review some Doctor Who episodes without giving anything away. For these reviews, we’re not telling you anything you haven’t already seen in the episode trailers, but when it comes to an episode as sprawling and ambiguous as 73 Yards, the premise is everything and nothing.

This was the first filmed episode of the current season, while Ncuti Gatwa was still working on Netflix’s Sex Education, so for the second episode in as many weeks, the Doctor puts his foot somewhere he shouldn’t. Millie Gibson’s Ruby takes the lead in what turns out to be an old-fashioned “Doctor-lite” episode, backed up by a grey lady that’s always exactly 73 yards away from her.

Writer and producer Russell T Davies has hyped this up as a unique Doctor Who story, rooted in the series’ continuing flirtation with magic and fantasy – as one regular character remarks later in the episode: “Things seem to be turning more and more supernatural.”

And certainly, the opening third of the episode is the most effective and emotional horror we’ve seen the show do in some time. The premise evokes 2014’s It Follows but, without that film’s violence and adult content, Davies comes at it from an altogether eerier angle. It’s spooky, disturbing and ever so Welsh.

Beyond the initial setup, the episode sprawls a little – veering from folk horror into a more specific Stephen King riff (you’ll know the one) unbalances the story a bit and recalls previous RTD scripts, both inside and outside of Who. As the story ratchets up and down – and travels across the UK – it barrels towards a maddeningly ambiguous and ambivalent conclusion. We’re all for a bit of uncertainty and this gets surprisingly far on its A24 horror vibes, but borders on becoming a mood board or a blank slate before the end.

Still, if it’s a blank slate, Millie Gibson covers it brilliantly. Ruby is really put through the wringer in this one but from her first day on the job, Gibson is across it; she expertly slaloms around every funny or dark or sympathetic or heartbreaking turn the episode throws in her way. There are also great guest turns by Aneurin Barnard and Dame Siân Phillips, along with unusual showings for some of the regulars.

What’s more, this is beautifully directed by Dylan Holmes Williams, who brings the requisite atmosphere to the proceedings. The episode boasts the most location shooting that we’ve seen on Doctor Who for a long time, and the visual scope and storytelling is so impressive that it frankly dwarves the story it’s telling.

Operating in the realm of fantasy, magic and dream logic, 73 Yards opens strong with a breathtaking first act. Gibson shoulders most of the story and the craft continues to dazzle throughout but, as the episode branches out into other genres, that horrifying conceit is spread thin. It’s a fun and engrossing first watch, but there’s less to chew on than the impeccable production would suggest.

 

Doctor’s notes – contains spoilers

– First order of business – 73 Yards is by far the best episode of the making-of show Doctor Who Unleashed, so get that watched if you haven’t already. Highlights range from the crew’s POV on the challenges of filming on a moving train or a busy street, to presenter Steffan Powell interviewing everyone about what they think the episode is really about, after a non-committal RTD gives his non-answer.

– UNIT boss Kate Lethbridge-Stewart (Jemma Redgrave) observes that the events of this episode seem to be an alternate timeline for Ruby, evoking memories of another Davies-penned Doctor-lite episode, 2008’s Turn Left. Unlike that episode, this is a standalone outing rather than part of the build-up to a season finale, so it operates primarily as a character study over the next 65 years of Ruby’s life.

– The Woman (played by Hilary Hobson) speaks to various characters (including that Susan Twist again) and causes them to run away in terror or disgust or anger or all of the above. Various pub patrons and UNIT staff vamoose but, in an upsetting turn, even Ruby’s mum Carla (Michelle Greenidge) cuts her out of her life. We do wonder why you wouldn’t simply write the Doctor out the same way and have him leave in the TARDIS – that would have been a more dramatic way to write him out than simply vanishing and returning him.

– The scenes in Y Pren Maw pub (Welsh for The Dead Wood) are good enough that you wish the whole episode had stayed there, but Davies instead revisits his speculative BBC series Years And Years with the plot about Barnard’s Roger ap Gwilliam, a future far-right UK prime minister whose psychopathic patriotism evokes President Greg Stillson in The Dead Zone, with Ruby plotting to stop him by turning her pesky shadow on him. It feels crowbarred in here but, if nothing else, it’s funny and fitting that this came out the weekend after a general election was announced.

– But stopping “Mad Jack” ap Gwilliam from nuking the world doesn’t solve the problem either. By the time the story flashes forward another 40 years and reveals Hobson as the elder Ruby, the circular storytelling undoes itself. The final moments set this in the style of It’s a Wonderful Life, but also robs the characters of the benefit of remembering or learning from the experience. It’s possible that later episodes in Ruby’s story will put this in a different light but, for now, it’s a disappointingly arbitrary slice of fantasy storytelling.

– Per Hobson in that episode of Unleashed, her repeated background dialogue is: “Bless you. Thank you so much. That’s so kind of you. When you gave me that little thing, it was just so precious. How am I ever going to repay you? But we’ll think of something.” What does it all mean to the characters who hear her and flee? Answers on a postcard.

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