Season 1, Episode 4: ‘73 Yards’
Let’s get the straightforward bit out of the way in which. “73 Yards” isn’t just the perfect episode of the season thus far, but in addition the strongest story “Physician Who” has produced in years — regardless of the Physician (Ncuti Gatwa) hardly that includes.
That’s to not say the decade-spanning story’s success relies on Gatwa’s absence. Sure, Episode 4 offers Millie Gibson house to interrupt out of her companion position for the primary time, and he or she offers a nuanced efficiency nicely past her 19 years.
However it’s Russell T Davies’s bold, unpredictable script that may guarantee a spot for “73 Yards” within the Whoniverse historical past books. The episode continuously wrong-foots viewers, performs with folks tales and horror tropes, and finds a genuinely terrifying villain in a nuclear-warmongering politician.
“We’re in Wales. Spectacular!” shouts the Physician 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 “Physician Who”: Davies is Welsh, and the present is a former BBC Wales manufacturing.
In a seemingly throwaway remark, the Physician mentions a future prime minister, a Welshman named Roger ap Gwilliam, who will lead Britain to “the brink of nuclear warfare” within the 2040s. “Sorry, spoilers,” he says, capturing Ruby a smile.
Adventures within the right here and now are placed on pause when the Physician unintentionally steps on a witchy-looking net of threads and stones, often called a fairy circle, on the grass. Ruby reads the notice connected — “Relaxation in peace Mad Jack” — however when she appears to be like up, the Physician 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 appears to be like again, the lady is at all times shut behind, within the model 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 girl, a spaceship officer and a robotic ambulance. This echoes the “Dangerous 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 lady transfer, however the gray-haired determine isn’t far behind.
One of many locals from the pub additionally tries to talk to the lady, and equally sprints away in panic. Ruby leaves Wales, however the girl follows her again to London, at all times preserving 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. Because it has at factors of peril in earlier episodes, snow falls exterior their condo.
A 12 months later, Ruby meets with Kate Lethbridge-Stewart (Jemma Redgrave) from the United Intelligence Taskforce, or UNIT, Britain’s supersecret extraterrestrial activity drive that was first talked about on “Physician Who” in 1968. Kate was launched throughout Matt Smith’s tenure in 2012, because the daughter of the Physician’s outdated buddy the Brigadier, first performed by Nicholas Courtney within the early “Physician Who” years. The UNIT crew additionally tries — and fails — to tackle the mysterious girl.
Deserted once more, Ruby accepts her destiny. Gibson’s efficiency thus far has been rooted in ache, however now a glance of clean resignation clouds her eyes.
Ruby’s life cycles ahead: mid-20s, 30s, 40s. Throughout a breakup in a bar, Ruby sees a populist politician (Aneurin Barnard) on TV: Roger ap Gwilliam, the Welsh politician the Physician warned her about.
The calmly assured Roger immediately evokes an all-time nice “Physician Who” villain. Within the 2007 episode “The Sound of Drums,” the Physician’s longstanding enemy the Grasp took on the type of a person named Harold Saxon (John Simm) and charmed his approach into changing into prime minister, solely to make use of his platform for destruction. Roger isn’t the Grasp (so far as we all know, no less than), 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 avoid wasting the world.
Ruby joins Roger’s marketing campaign crew, and watches him develop into elected prime minister, promising a “greater, bolder Britain.” For an enormous political rally, the crew congregates on the empty Cardiff Metropolis soccer stadium (the large venue is one other flex of the present’s newly bolstered price range). There, Ruby learns Roger’s plan: to purchase Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal and declare Britain unbiased 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. Just like the hiker, Carla and the UNIT crew earlier than him, Roger runs off shouting and instantly resigns, together with his deputy occurring 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 residence. She wakes to search out the lady 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 lady will get nearer, the shrieking rating muddling with Ruby’s audibly slowing coronary heart price and the screaming beep of her hospital monitor. Ruby reaches out her arms, and the scene adjustments.
“We’re in Wales. Spectacular!” In entrance of the older Ruby, the Physician and younger Ruby step out of the TARDIS on the Welsh coast, all these years in the past. Every part 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. Within the season thus far, Ruby’s origins have been a query mark, and this various future deepens the thriller.
When the 2 girls are in one another’s presence this time round, issues are completely different. Younger Ruby notices the lady and hears her whispered name of “don’t step.” She stops the Physician from breaking the fairy circle, they usually go away the notice about Mad Jack unread. The pair skip off looking for journey, enterprise as normal.
There haven’t been many “Physician Who” episodes through which the Physician’s companion drives the story. However this newest providing — arriving midway by the season — proves what’s potential when the present’s creators not solely prioritize daring storytelling, but in addition refuse to carry the viewer’s hand. Let’s hope they will stick with it.
