The following contains spoilers for “73 Yards.”
Russell T. Davies admits that his writing eschews narrative formalism in favor of things that feel right. Twenty years ago, his detractors pointed to his use of deus ex machina endings as a stick with which to beat his reputation. But we're in a different time now, where atmosphere matters just as much as logic – both in the show's new, more fantastical bias and in the real world. “73 yards” is the the most vibrant episode again Doctor Who so far, but I it was even easy for him to sit back and enjoy what he was doing.
Doctor Who is a complicated show to make, and some series started production on the first day a week or more late. To combat this, the series began creating “-lite” episodes that did not need the protagonists to be as involved. There are “Doctor-lite” episodes like “Love and Monsters” and “Blink”, and even “companion-lite” episodes like “Midnight”. This production process allows the star(s) to not film Episode A while a guest cast takes the spotlight for most of Episode B.
Production on the new series began while star Ncuti Gatwa was still finishing the last of his Netflix work. Sex education. So while he appears in the opening and closing moments of “73 Yards”, he is otherwise absent because the Doctor has been erased from history. This gives us a chance to see what a modern companion would do if they found themselves stranded in uncertain territory without their alien ally. The episode shifts from folk, rural horror to kitchen sink drama before becoming a light homage to Taxi driver. Suffice it to say, this is another episode you wouldn't watch with young children.
The TARDIS lands on the edge of a cliff in Wales, with the Doctor pointing out that this is another liminal space where magic can seep. He even mentions the war between “land and sea”, verifying a name. spin-off rumor fans found out after going through production materials. The Doctor talks about how great Wales is, except for Roger ap Gwillam, a Welsh politician who, in two decades, will lead the United Kingdom to the brink of nuclear armageddon. He then enters a circle of fairies, disrupting his web, and disappears while Ruby reads the paper notes attached to it. The notes mention a Mad Jack, a scary character who resembles a villain from folklore.
Suddenly, Ruby finds herself alone on the cliff but can now see the blurry silhouette of an old woman waving her arms at her in the distance. Ruby tries to approach her but the figure stays the same distance (the titular 73 meters) no matter where she goes. Believing that the Doctor has ghosted her, she tries to solve this character's dilemma herself. Ruby approaches a hiker (Susan Twist) and tries to figure out where she's seen her before (every episode so far), but can't put her finger on it. She asks the hiker if she would be willing to talk to the old woman following her, but when the hitchhiker arrives, everything she says is so horrifying that she runs away from the scene in terror.
Ruby goes to a pub in the next town where the locals mock her, mistaking her hesitation for condescension. She asks one of the customers to go talk to the woman, and when he does, the same thing happens. Ruby comes home and asks her mother to try, this time holding up a phone so Ruby can hear what she says. But the phone call is interrupted and her mother is also horrified by what she hears: locking Ruby out of her home shortly after. Kate Lethbridge-Stewart and UNIT are the next to offer help, until they meet the woman, when they all abandon her.
The entire time, the old woman stays 73 meters away from where Ruby is, unnoticed by everyone unless Ruby directs their attention to her. She can't photograph the woman's face – it's blurry – and can't get close enough to hear her ominous warning. In fact, even until the end of the episode, there are many unknowns that are never resolved.
Ruby is strangely resilient, and once she overcomes abandonment, she seeks to build a new life for herself. She treats her stalker like a friend and wishes him well as we play through a montage of the next chapter of Ruby's life. She finds a job, moves into her own apartment and goes through a series of breakups as she slowly passes her thirties, then her forties. Then, on TV, she sees Roger ap Gwillam on the TV, who even mentions Mad Jack, and remembers both the Doctor's warning and the messages in the fairy ring. It doesn't take Ruby long to be sure that her life's purpose is to save the world and prevent the Gwillam nuclear disaster.
She joins Gwillam's fascist political party as a volunteer and eventually reaches a position where she gets closer to the top. Gwillam's rise is rapid and it's not long before he promises to secede from NATO and puts his itchy trigger finger on the UK's nuclear arsenal, ready to wage war on the rest of the world . Gwillam's inauguration will take place at the Cardiff City Stadium, while Ruby will follow the politician, lurking in the crowd.
Ruby then begins to approach Gwillam, crossing the forbidden grounds of the stadium, and you expect her to pull out a gun. But instead, she takes out her phone and starts measuring the distance between her and Roger until she reaches 73 meters. When she does, she signals the villain to notice the woman, and when he notices her, he hears the horrifying thing she says. The shock is enough to send Gwillam out of the stadium, resigning his role as Prime Minister and preventing nuclear armageddon.
But even though Ruby hoped that would be the end, the character stays with her for the rest of her life. It is only on her deathbed that she realizes she can project herself back in time to warn the Doctor not to enter the fairy circle. She does so, preventing the accident in the first place and paradoxically undoing the entire temporal flow of the process. The story continues on its good path and everything is fine… for now. But given the risks of paradoxes in Doctor Whoand the general feeling that the story is falling apart, that perhaps doesn't bode very well for what's going to happen in the future.
“73 Yards” is an exercise in placing your character in a hostile world and seeing what they will do to deal with it. This is an episode that, when written, doesn't feel like much is happening, as much of its execution is an exploration of Ruby as a character. Doctor Who thrives when the companion role is filled by someone who wants to grab a handful of narrative for themselves. And Ruby Sunday seems almost too perfect in her ability to draw logic from what she's experienced and work with it.
Although you can draw narrative and thematic parallels between the new series and Davies' original tenure, this episode is taken from “Turn Left.” Both tell the story of what happens to a companion when the Doctor is removed from the narrative and what they do to fix it. And it's no surprise that both suggest that the United Kingdom, without the Doctor's intervention, is just days away from descending into fascism.
Ruby's humanity shines through, even to the point where she tries to treat her tormentor with care. She refuses to fly or travel by boat, for fear of endangering the life of the apparition following her, despite the damage it causes her. And when she sees Roger ap Gwillam on TV, she is certain that her destiny is to prevent the nuclear armageddon that the Doctor warned her about. It's another useful thread – the idea that Ruby has an instinctive understanding of the genre she exists in – just as she did in “Space Babies.”
As for the ending, it's probably best to talk about these “vibes”, or the kind of slightly skewed associations within the logic of the series. Ruby, at the end of her life, realizes that she is able to travel, or somehow project herself, back in time to avoid the Doctor's downfall. There's nothing in the episode that indicates this, no indication that the ghostly figure is Ruby, or if it's related to snow or anything else. But maybe the trick in an episode like this is to just relax and enjoy seeing the character develop, rather than doing other things.
Susan Twist Coin
Obviously, Susan Twist is playing the hiker Ruby first meets after the Doctor disappears, and for the first time Ruby notices the familiarity. In the documents sent by Disney, the character of Susan Twist is named the “mysterious woman”.
And speaking of twists and turns, you'll remember at the end of “Church on Ruby Road” that in the post-credits Mrs. Flood (Anita Dobson) breaks the fourth wall. The annoying neighbor, who lives next door to Ruby's mother's flat, turns to the camera and asks if we've “ever seen a TARDIS before?” (Given her surprise at seeing him earlier in the episode, it's clear that her story may have changed over the course of the series.) When Ruby returns to her mother's house, Anita Dobson's Mrs. Flood is back sitting on his walk with his deckchair. out. Interestingly, when she notices the ghostly figure – and Ruby and her mother's attempts to deal with it, she states that it “has nothing to do with me” and enters. Which, again, seems to indicate that Mrs. Flood and the mystery woman are separated.