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Season 1, Episode 4: ‘73 Yards’
Let’s get the simple bit out of the way in which. “73 Yards” isn’t just the most effective episode of the season to date, but additionally the strongest story “Doctor Who” has produced in years — regardless of the Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa) hardly that includes.
That’s to not say the decade-spanning story’s success is dependent upon Gatwa’s absence. Yes, Episode 4 provides Millie Gibson area to interrupt out of her companion position for the primary time, and he or she provides a nuanced efficiency properly past her 19 years.
But it’s Russell T Davies’s formidable, unpredictable script that can guarantee a spot for “73 Yards” within the Whoniverse historical past books. The episode continually wrong-foots viewers, performs with folks tales and horror tropes, and finds a genuinely terrifying villain in a nuclear-warmongering politician.
“We are in Wales. Spectacular!” shouts the Doctor because the TARDIS materializes on a craggy cliff face. For worldwide viewers, it’s a swift introduction to a nation that has lengthy been related to “Doctor Who”: Davies is Welsh, and the present is a former BBC Wales manufacturing.
In a seemingly throwaway remark, the Doctor mentions a future prime minister, a Welshman named Roger ap Gwilliam, who will lead Britain to “the brink of nuclear struggle” within the 2040s. “Sorry, spoilers,” he says, capturing Ruby a smile.
Adventures within the right here and now are placed on pause when the Doctor by chance steps on a witchy-looking internet of threads and stones, referred to as a fairy circle, on the grass. Ruby reads the word connected — “Rest in peace Mad Jack” — however when she seems to be up, the Doctor has vanished, the TARDIS locked behind him.
Ruby initially assumes it’s a prank. The unusual girl (Hilary Hobson) with fluttering grey hair who’s waving her arms within the close to distance? She have to be in on it, too. Ruby marches off towards the closest village, but when she seems to be again, the girl is all the time shut behind, within the fashion of the 2015 horror film “It Follows.”
A pleasant hiker passes by, confirming to Ruby that she, too, can see the mysterious girl. “I haven’t met you earlier than, have I?” Ruby asks the walker. She has: The actor, Susan Twist, has had a small position in all of Gibson’s episodes up to now, beforehand as a tea woman, a spaceship officer and a robotic ambulance. This echoes the “Bad Wolf” arc from Davies’s first season in 2005, and it’s clear that the showrunner needs us to note Twist’s repeated presence — however why?
At Ruby’s request, the hiker goes to talk to the distant girl, and is quickly working away from Ruby. Feeling uneasy however brief on choices, Ruby treks to a close-by pub. She by no means sees the girl transfer, however the gray-haired determine isn’t far behind.
One of the locals from the pub additionally tries to talk to the girl, and equally sprints away in panic. Ruby leaves Wales, however the girl follows her again to London, all the time holding 73 yards away, and turns Ruby’s mother, Carla (Michelle Greenidge), in opposition to her, too. “Even your actual mom didn’t need you,” Carla tells Ruby. As it has at factors of peril in earlier episodes, snow falls exterior their house.
A 12 months later, Ruby meets with Kate Lethbridge-Stewart (Jemma Redgrave) from the United Intelligence Taskforce, or UNIT, Britain’s supersecret extraterrestrial activity pressure that was first talked about on “Doctor Who” in 1968. Kate was launched throughout Matt Smith’s tenure in 2012, because the daughter of the Doctor’s outdated pal the Brigadier, first performed by Nicholas Courtney within the early “Doctor Who” years. The UNIT staff additionally tries — and fails — to tackle the mysterious girl.
Abandoned once more, Ruby accepts her destiny. Gibson’s efficiency to date has been rooted in ache, however now a glance of clean resignation clouds her eyes.
Ruby’s life cycles ahead: mid-20s, 30s, 40s. During a breakup in a bar, Ruby sees a populist politician (Aneurin Barnard) on TV: Roger ap Gwilliam, the Welsh politician the Doctor warned her about.
The calmly assured Roger immediately evokes an all-time nice “Doctor Who” villain. In the 2007 episode “The Sound of Drums,” the Doctor’s longstanding enemy the Master took on the type of a person named Harold Saxon (John Simm) and charmed his means into turning into prime minister, solely to make use of his platform for destruction. Roger isn’t the Master (so far as we all know, at the very least), however the newer character is each bit as charismatic and sinister.
“I used to be a jack-of-all-trades. Mad Jack, they used to name me,” Roger says. Now, it’s Ruby’s time to save lots of the world.
Ruby joins Roger’s marketing campaign staff, and watches him develop into elected prime minister, promising a “greater, bolder Britain.” For a giant political rally, the staff congregates on the empty Cardiff City soccer stadium (the large venue is one other flex of the present’s newly bolstered funds). There, Ruby learns Roger’s plan: to purchase Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal and declare Britain impartial of NATO.
She strides throughout the pristine pitch towards the politician, stopping 73 yards from him. Her mysterious follower is now standing beside him, and begins speaking to him. Like the hiker, Carla and the UNIT staff earlier than him, Roger runs off shouting and instantly resigns, along with his deputy happening to vow “a extra lenient and listening authorities.”
Time skips ahead one other 40 years, and Ruby (now performed by Amanda Walker) dozes off at her high-tech care dwelling. She wakes to search out the girl there — not 73 yards away, however on the finish of the mattress. It begins taking part in out like a horror film: The lights flicker as the girl will get nearer, the shrieking rating muddling with Ruby’s audibly slowing coronary heart fee and the screaming beep of her hospital monitor. Ruby reaches out her arms, and the scene adjustments.
“We are in Wales. Spectacular!” In entrance of the older Ruby, the Doctor and younger Ruby step out of the TARDIS on the Welsh coast, all these years in the past. Everything turns into clear: The older girl following Ruby was herself all alongside, providing a warning from the long run about Roger’s plans for nuclear destruction. In the season to date, Ruby’s origins have been a query mark, and this different future deepens the thriller.
When the 2 girls are in one another’s presence this time round, issues are completely different. Young Ruby notices the girl and hears her whispered name of “don’t step.” She stops the Doctor from breaking the fairy circle, and so they depart the word about Mad Jack unread. The pair skip off seeking journey, enterprise as normal.
There haven’t been many “Doctor Who” episodes during which the Doctor’s companion drives the story. But this newest providing — arriving midway by the season — proves what’s attainable when the present’s creators not solely prioritize daring storytelling, but additionally refuse to carry the viewer’s hand. Let’s hope they’ll stick with it.
