Doctor Who Reviews: "73 Yards"

Ever since it was announced that Russell T. Davies would be coming back to run Doctor Who, the question was, would he live up to his prior accomplishments. His era is venerated by many Doctor Who fans, especially in my age bracket, for not only revitalizing the show, but injecting it with an enormous amount of creativity, intrigue, pathos, and heart. There’s a reason that his run seems to stand alone and apart -his voice was so particular and so meaningful. And there was a lot of expectation around whether or not he could do it again. I adore those first four series -and I don’t think Doctor Who since has equalled them, but I have been a sceptic around Davies’ return to the program (those comments about making it more like the MCU still trouble me). And that old spark hasn’t quite been apparent, even in those nostalgia-baiting 60th anniversary specials.

“73 Yards” proves undoubtedly that it is still there -an episode that may rank among the best of Doctor Who’s modern era. Not only is it formally audacious, it is properly chilling and effective through every strange avenue it goes down -taking many forms and expanding its story to epic proportions, though still fundamentally personal.

During Davies’ former tenure on the show there was a tradition, beginning in the second series, of Doctor-light episodes -one episode per series where the Doctor would barely appear at all for a story carried by either the companion or a new character altogether. The first one of these was a notorious disaster we don’t talk about, but the second was of course the oft-mentioned classic “Blink”, and the third, “Turn Left” also a pretty amazing instalment of the show. And that latter episode seems to be the primary influence on this one, Davies’s revival of the tradition -wherein the Doctor disappears in the first couple minutes as the episode is handed over entirely to Ruby.

The context is that the TARDIS lands in Wales, on a cliff overlooking the water. Without realizing, the Doctor steps into a circle of curiously placed stones, wool, and charms (it’s the second episode in a row, he really needs to watch where he’s going). Not quite sure what it is, he and Ruby examine it, and Ruby reads a little note off a scroll left there: “rest in peace Mad Jack”. When next she looks up, the Doctor is missing and the TARDIS is locked from the inside. More disturbing though, Ruby becomes conscious of a woman in black and with long white hair off in the distance, looking at her and making strange gestures with her hands. As she tries to get closer though the woman recedes further away. And yet as she wanders through the hills, the figure remains just off in the distance, though never approaching. She attempts to get a hiker to talk to the woman, ask if she’s seen the Doctor, but as she observes their conversation the hiker simply looks back at Ruby and then runs away.  

It’s a rather haunting image, this woman at a distance, never threatening but always there, eerily fixated. Kudos to Davies for recognizing a very acute kind of horror in this spectre of uncertainty that we’ve all probably seen, only with the advantage of being able to either approach or get away from it. Ruby can do neither. She makes her way to a small village pub full of coarse, unfriendly locals -one of whom played by the legendary Siân Phillips- who see the woman but curiously don’t seem concerned about her. What does seem to bother them though is Ruby’s account of breaking that circle -a fairy circle that in old Welsh folklore has supernatural properties, casting a spell on anyone who breaks it or disturbs its tranquillity. Phillips’s character gravely explains the mysterious power of the land, frightening Ruby at what she may have unleashed -and another patron on trying to approach the woman has the same response as the hiker- but the baleful talk turns out to be a mere prank on the locals’ part over her perceived stereotyping and gullibility.

If you watched the teaser from the end of “Boom” you might think this setting and problem is all that the episode would entail. A spooky story about Ruby and a gang of pub denizens grappling with some effect of old Welsh mysticism. But that ad hid the episode’s real scope, it goes well beyond that and in terrifically compelling ways.

Visually as much as anything -this is the most dynamically directed episode of the series thus far. It is a first for Dylan Holmes Williams, who directed episodes for M. Night Shyamalan’s Servants, alongside the likes of Julia Ducournau and Kitty Green, and certainly he shows a great flare for creeping horror -keeping this mysterious woman out-of-focus yet menacing, both in the lamp-lit dark of a village or city street or in broad daylight -one of my favourite shots is one where you can just register her in the distance behind Ruby as she looks out to sea. And the reactions by others to this woman is played with an affecting underlying terror too, as it’s not her they are frightened of, but Ruby for some unknown reason. Williams also brings to the episode’s style a real compelling visual versatility. He shoots the exposition scene of this magic with all of its tellers in successive close-up, he allows for more fluid long takes, and is especially sharp with match cuts centred on Ruby. Her whole stay in this tavern (which is somewhere more than a week) is conveyed simply through cutting between her in the bar looking out the window and back at the TARDIS, unable to get in or contact the Doctor at all.

Eventually she makes her peace and decides to go home, hoping the Doctor will find her instead; and hoping to get away from this distant figure. But even on the train back to London, she is there every time Ruby glances out the window; and then just down the block when she returns to her mum. What happens next is truly the scariest part of the episode, as Carla determines they can solve this mystery if she approaches the woman while talking to Ruby on the phone. “She is what she is” is all that Carla can say grimly before even she runs away in fright from a distraught Ruby. We see her in a cab being driven away, and then coldly returning one of Ruby’s endless messages after changing the locks on the flat, telling her bluntly not to contact her and cruelly denouncing her as somebody who nobody wants. Michelle Greenidge is utterly brutal here, and the emotional devastation on Ruby is extremely palpable.

It should be noted that this episode of course gives Millie Gibson ample opportunity to shine and allows the Ruby character to be seen with more dimension. There is some serious aching vulnerability she brings to the fore in this episode, and is more than capable of carrying the drama on her shoulders. She makes for a great audience surrogate, but also a believable character in her own right coming into maturity out of difficult circumstances. That is taken more literally than expected, when we see her next at an outdoor cafe where she is met by none other than Kate Lethbridge-Stewart coming to help her; more than the welcome return character though the surprise of this scene is the casual mention that the incident with Carla happened over a year ago. Time jumps shouldn’t necessarily be out of the ordinary on a time travel show, but it happening to a normal mortal companion makes a real difference.

Clearly Davies and Williams’s intent with both the Carla scene and this appearance by Kate -an instantly coded understanding ally who’s bringing the full force of UNIT to Ruby’s aid- is to raise the stakes and show how monumentally dire the situation is. It’s not enough for her to lose someone she loves from her life over this curse, it’s another to have seemingly the only person left who could help abandon her as well -which happens in spite of UNIT’s strict psychological training and Kate’s efforts at empathy. After this, Ruby is forced to resign herself to this phantom, over years upon years. A montage runs through more than two decades in the life of Ruby Sunday, staring out the window on her Christmas birthday as she turns 30 then 40 to find that woman still there; her attempts at a normal life, at relationships fail due to her nascent obsession with this woman whose exact distance she has figured out at 73 yards, just far enough away to make her features impossible to assess with any lens or human eye.

She finally determines a potential way out when she sees a politician on TV, connecting his name, Roger “Mad Jack” ap Gwilliam, with a future Prime Minister from Wales the Doctor had accidentally revealed to her led the world to the brink of nuclear war in 2046 just before breaking the circle. She decides to volunteer with the campaign of this populist leader of the Albion Party, played by a great Aneurin Barnard -working her way up in the ranks until she is part of his premier team. Once again there is a lot of stringent and relevant political commentary put forth, Davies framing Gwilliam in contexts applicable to other modern U.K. poiticians, with specific rhetoric and goals that play to the far right in Britain today as much as in 2046. This is subtly part of the horror in its own right. As Gwilliam is on the eve of victory and the cusp of purchasing all of Pakistan’s nukes to back up a bid to leave NATO, Ruby positions herself in the open Cardiff stadium exactly 73 yards from him. Kate had figured out that the woman had a perception filter equivalent to the TARDIS, that only those in her immediate vicinity comprehend her. Using this, Ruby puts her right next to Gwilliam, who sees her, turns and flees, immediately resigning. Believing the purpose of the woman was ultimately for Ruby to save the future through her, it is a surprise that she remains.

Why does she stay, the episode asks us to ponder. What is her purpose then? Why doesn’t Ruby’s successful effort to free the future from one of its fascists result in her being sent back in time or bring back the Doctor? Forty years later, she goes back to the TARDIS now overgrown with fungus as an old woman (Amanda Walker) to speak symbolically to the Doctor for the last time, explaining that her mother died without her being told, that she never found her real mother, and that she has wondered constantly about this woman all her life. But that an undetermined hope has kept her going. Finally in the hospital on her deathbed, Ruby Sunday notes how everyone has abandoned her through her life but that she has not been alone -the woman has been there watching her, and after Gwilliam even became something of a comfort in a lonely life. Left alone, she is shocked to see the woman one more time, but close now -as the lights flicker and the atmosphere becomes incredibly ominous, the woman at last comes to her. At the moment of reveal Ruby, rather than give in to terror, extends her arms openly in a manner very close to the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey -and flashes of her life and youth come to mind before she finds herself on that cliff in Wales, exactly 73 yards from her young self and the Doctor disembarking the TARDIS. She, the mysterious woman, catches her counterpart’s attention and is able to psychically convey the message not to step on the fairy circle. Young Ruby saves the Doctor and herself from that fate and old Ruby disappears. “Let them rest in peace” the Doctor says in caution against Ruby’s curiosity with the notes. “Like your mysterious woman.”

He intends it in jest -he never saw the woman. But Ruby did, and her older self from this branched timeline has the opportunity finally to rest in peace, her true purpose, to correct the mistake and preserve the sanctity of that simple shrine, now fulfilled. The ending as I mention bears a certain similarity to 2001 -it also is reminiscent more recently of the “Bent-Neck Lady” episode of The Haunting of Hill House, certainly in terms of its twist. But where applied there it was one of the most chilling horror reveals I’ve ever seen, here it feels more cathartic even as a certain element of horror underlines it. Ruby was essentially haunting herself for her transgression. But there was no malice, and there’s even something profound to the idea that the figure she sought to escape but never could is herself. And that what allows her this chance at redemption is embracing herself in the end. The fact that she does this without the Doctor makes it even more powerful, and reflects wonderfully on Ruby’s own strength and capacity for conviction.

Apart from what it says and consolidates about Ruby, “73 Yards” is just a fantastically executed piece -a surprise given how many story blocks it is divided into. This works to its advantage though, of illustrating the span of time and the gravity of this magic’s effects -you almost forgot about Josh (Sion Pritchard), one of the young pub lads, by the time you see his name inscribed post-mortem on a stone at the TARDIS. It lives up to the story’s breadth in the harshness of its tone, the versatility of its filmmaking, in Gibson’s performance, and even in its unexpected emotional weight. It reminded me of the kind of stuff I liked the most from Davies’s era of Doctor Who, while feeling authentic to its own era and characters. And it’s just so utterly unique. A brilliant, captivating show as only Doctor Who can realize!

Support me on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/JordanBosch

Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Jordan_D_Bosch

Letterboxd: https://letterboxd.com/jbosch