Doctor Who (2024) 73 Yards – A Genre-Bending and Potentially Era-Defining Episode (Review)

If you’re a Doctor Who fan, you’ve heard of the phrase “Doctor-lite story” and know what it refers to. It’s an episode that features minimal appearances from the Doctor (and in most cases the main companion as well), instead focusing on another group of characters battling a monster or some other situation. Oftentimes, these are put in the filming blocks to accommodate for potential scheduling issues, and to allow for filming of two episodes simultaneously. For example, Midnight and Turn Left were filmed at the same time – one of them barely features Catherine Tate, the other barely features David Tennant. 

It’s been a while since we’ve seen this Doctor-lite tradition put into practise, but for 73 Yards, this companion showcase was necessary not because Ncuti Gatwa was filming another episode – rather, he was busy filming his scenes for Barbie and the final series of Sex Education. I had no idea that this would be a Doctor-lite episode, and so was really shocked at how little Gatwa appeared here. Even for a Doctor-lite episode, this is minimal. Instead, the entire episode serves as a tour de force for Millie Gibson, as she acts out one of the strangest, most obscure and downright crazy Doctor Who episodes that Russell T. Davies has ever written.

You can tell Russell has been busy in his time away, as not only does this remind me of episodes like Turn Left and also The Curse Of Clyde Langer, one of the better Sarah Jane Adventures stories, but it feels like Russell’s excellent 2019 show Years & Years. Strikingly so, in fact, since this features a desperate attempt to take down a politician over the course of decades, in a similar way to how Emma Thompson’s far-right Prime Minister Vivienne Rook dominates so much of that show. 

The way that 73 Yards balances all its different genres is really admirable. It starts out as a dark Welsh folk horror, before turning into a story of alienation and family drama, then a political thriller, before turning into a dreamlike supernatural in its conclusion. I’ve found that seamlessly blurring the lines between genres has become more of a thing this series, but 73 Yards makes that new change really pronounced. It’s got more shifts in narrative and genre than most full series, a healthy sign that Doctor Who is going for it in this new era.

I’ve also got to give props to Millie Gibson, who is just phenomenal here as Ruby. It must have been pretty daunting, what with this being the first episode she filmed, and without the support of the show’s new leading man, but if there were any nerves it does not show in her performance at all. The little acting touches she brings out in the pub, as well as when her own foster mother abandons and disowns her, really help to sell scenes that could have potentially been very ham-fisted (this is RTD we’re talking about here, he’s infamously subtle as a sledgehammer). 

You can definitely tell right away that the episode’s going to be unusual. Going straight into the episode with no opening titles, something that’s only been done a small handful of times, the Doctor accidentally steps on a fairy circle (you’d think after last week he’d be cautious over where he puts his feet) and vanishes seconds later. The tone really takes a shift into something surrealist, dark and oh so chilling. Although the pub’s visitors are leading Ruby on, there’s palpable tension in the scenes where she’s trying to interact with them, looking even more of an outsider as she does. 

Perhaps the most powerful scene though is when the mysterious woman manages to scare away Ruby’s own foster mother, who disowns Ruby and banishes her from her life. It’s a fairly short scene but it did everything it was trying to achieve emotionally, and was an unexpectedly bleak but much-needed aspect of the story that really helped to sell Ruby’s loneliness over the next 60 years.

After this is where the episode turns into something of a political drama, and this is where the comparisons to Years and Years really ramp up. Sadly, Aneurin Barnard’s charismatic Roger ap Gwilliam is nowhere near as fleshed-out as Emma Thompson’s Vivienne Rook in that show, but considering the limitations of both a single episode (as opposed to the 6 of Years and Years) and the inability to take this character in places as dark as that series, Barnard still manages to deliver a really strong and subtly creepy performance, and the resolution itself with his character was really clever.

The small scene with UNIT worked too. It was a surprise seeing Jemma Redgrave here but it’s always a delight, and it really helped sell not only Ruby’s loneliness, but the terror of the situation as even Kate and the soldiers run away in fear after being spoken to by the mysterious woman.

The last ten minutes is where the episode turned really surreal. It proves more than anything that this new Doctor Who era is playing fast and loose with its narrative, as 73 Yards is definitely one of the more abstract episodes to come from the show as a whole. Many things are left ambiguous, particularly regarding what the old woman was saying to those who passed by her (although I like to think it was something different each time that would affect each person individually), but it manages to come together in a really clever way, and deliver an ending packed with emotion and even some horror. 

The image of a dilapidated TARDIS sitting there and gathering dust on the side of a cliff is a really powerful one, but the brief thirty seconds where Ruby sees the woman approaching her in hospital, powerless to stop it, is one of the scarier shots I’ve seen, not just in this recent era, but in all of modern Who. That was a terrifying little moment that proves Doctor Who still knows how to really scare people. Plus, I’ve got to hand it to director Dylan Holmes Williams, who offers us some amazing shots, inventive camerawork and a truly unique flair that we need to see more of going forward in this era.

I’ve heard people class 73 Yards as being up there with Blink, Vincent and The Doctor and Heaven Sent i.e one of the show’s greatest ever episodes since the revival. While I don’t think it quite touches that gold standard, with the script being just a little underdeveloped in places, silver is still pretty damn impressive. 73 Yards is probably up there with The Giggle as my favourite episode of RTD2, and serves as a daring and experimental piece that I wouldn’t necessarily want from the show every week, but I love it when we get it. It’s ambitious, timey-whimey, scary, character-driven and emotionally investing. In other words, it’s the very essence of what makes Doctor Who great.

All that said, I’m not sure how I’m feeling about Dot & Bubble next week.

Alex’s Archive – Doctor Who, 73 Yards