Doctor Who: 73 Yards ★★★★★

“The clifftops are a boundary between the land and the sea – a liminal space, neither here nor there, where rules are suspended” – Enid Meadows

Storyline
When the Tardis lands on a clifftop in Wales, the Doctor and Ruby stumble upon a magical "fairy circle". Once interfered with, it creates a timeline in which the Doctor has vanished and Ruby is haunted by the figure of a woman – always present but always at an intangible distance of 73 yards. Anyone who has contact with the woman flees and abandons Ruby, throughout her life, for decades, until in 2046 together they can save the world from a wicked prime minister, Roger ap Gwilliam. Only at Ruby’s death in old age does the woman come close; it is Ruby and now she has the power to reach back through time and stop the Doctor stepping into the circle.

First UK broadcast
Saturday 25 May 2024

Cast
The Doctor – Ncuti Gatwa
Ruby Sunday – Millie Gibson
Enid Meadows – Siân Phillips
Roger ap Gwilliam – Aneurin Barnard
Old Ruby – Amanda Walker
Kate Lethbridge-Stewart – Jemma Redgrave
Carla Sunday – Michelle Greenidge
Cherry Sunday – Angela Wynter
Mrs Flood — Anita Dobson
The Woman – Hilary Hobson
Hiker – Susan Twist
Lowri Palin – Maxine Evans
Eddie Jones – Glyn Pritchard
Thin Lucy – Elan Davies
Ifor Jones – Gwïon Morris Jones
Joshua Steele – Sion Pritchard
Frank Hinchey Graham Butler
Sanjay Miah – Ali Ariaie
Rufus Bray – Albey Brookes
Craig Deloach – Miles Yekinni
Himself – Amol Rajan
Marti Bridges – Sophie Ablett
Akhim Patil – Shane David-Joseph
Groundsman – Jason May
Security officer – Dylan Baldwin
Armed policeman – David Constant
Newsreader – Deeivya Meir
Eizabeth Campbell – Rhyanna Alexander-Davis
Nurse – Vee Vimolmal

Crew
Writer – Russell T Davies
Director – Dylan Holmes Williams
Music – Murray Gold
Producer – Vicki Delow
Executive producers – Russell T Davies, Julie Gardner, Jane Tranter, Joel Collins, Phil Collinson

RT review by Patrick Mulkern

This is ludicrous nonsense and I love it to bits. A cotton-thin premise but written with such skill, played with such conviction and beautifully filmed that it is riveting to watch from start to finish. It’s like being inside someone else’s mind – Ruby’s – and sharing her delirious dream.

In a short run of eight, you wouldn’t expect a "Doctor-lite" episode (Ncuti Gatwa had to dash off to Sex Education), but it throws light on Ruby, and the extremely impressive Millie Gibson – only 18 here in her first-filmed episode – carries the story alone. Every emotion, every doubt and every revelation. She’s excellent throughout, even if the ageing process doesn’t entirely convince. But you go with it, as if in a spell, until at last Amanda Walker (in her late 80s with a career stretching back to the 1950s) takes over and gives a similarly poignant and persuasive performance.

Russell T Davies’s fast-forward narrative and the pernicious politician, Roger ap Gwilliam, recall the events of RTD’s Years and Years (2019) and PM Vivienne Rook, played by Emma Thompson. In scant screen time, Aneurin Barnard nails "the most dangerous PM in history", eg Mad Jack, and it’s very funny when he freaks out in the stadium, unmanned by the spectral woman.

Any drama that powerfully evokes a mystical landscape has me on side. That’s one reason why I enjoyed the forgotten 2017 episode The Eaters of Light by Rona Munro, which imbued the Scottish Highlands with ancient forces. Here it’s Wales, where the clifftops feel like the edge of reality.

I love how supernatural elements are creeping in, from the fairy circle that mustn’t be broken, to the mysterious woman, a familiar spirit always at an intangible, unidentifiable 73 yards’ distance. I guessed early on that she was a version of Ruby communicating across time, but the deathbed reveal is still chilling and satisfying. Like the end of 2001: a Space Odyssey. Simultaneously revelatory but opaque, beyond time and explanation.

We don’t discover why the Doctor disappears. It's not clear why those who closely encounter the woman flee in fear. It’s as if they’ve seen a ghost, albeit one from the future; but they also succumb to the power of a spell that has Ruby at its heart. They deny her the truth, and of course in narrative terms they could never tell Ruby what or whom they’ve seen or the threads would collapse.

The story is Ruby’s, a foundling since birth and now rejected by all."Don’t worry," she says. "Everyone has abandoned me my whole life. But I haven’t been alone for 65 years." In death, she reaches back to her younger self, only just audibly warning, "Don’t step…" to break the spell.

I love that 73 Yards doesn’t entirely add up, it doesn’t fully explain itself or need to, and that is part of its magic. Its enchantment keeps working long after the finish.

Read more:

• Episode 1 – Space Babies review
• Episode 2 – The Devil's Chord review
• Episode 3 – Boom review

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