Doctor Who – “73 Yards” Review – “Love & Monsters” (Sans Love . . . and Monsters)
Clint Hassell gives his SPOILER-filled commentary on the fourth episode of Series 14.
Note: this review contains full SPOILERS for episode 4 of Series 14.
For the second week in a row, Doctor Who plays with convention to deconstruct and examine key elements of the series. Where “Boom” physically sidelined the Doctor, allowing the audience to watch the Time Lord save the day using only his gifts for observation and empathy, “73 Yards” completely removes both Fifteen and his time machine, sending Ruby’s life careening down a new timeline in a heartbreaking episode that studies Doctor Who’s three central features—the companion, the Doctor, and the TARDIS.
“73 Yards” is about Ruby. Separated from the Doctor, Ruby Sunday is shown to be resilient and resourceful, prioritizing her well-being while also trying to reconcile whatever offense she has caused the sempre distant lady. Falsely believing that the Doctor has locked her out of the TARDIS, she returns day after day to wait for his return. Modern Doctor Who has occasionally dealt with the fallout of being abandoned by the Doctor, with Rose, Jack, Sarah Jane, Martha, Amy, and Bill all floundering after their time in the TARDIS was abruptly interrupted or ended. In “73 Yards,” Ruby is the first companion shown dealing with the logistics of getting home, letting go, and moving on. It’s a narrative that showrunner Russell T Davies has obviously considered. Only five episodes into her tenure as companion and Ruby delivers perhaps the most heart-wrenching exit speech since Rose in “Doomsday.” “Look, maybe I should just go home. I haven’t even known you for that long anyway . . . maybe this, this is what you do,” Ruby says ruefully, before hopefully adding, “But, if you come back, I would love to see you again. God, I’d-I’d-I’d just absolutely love it! Bye bye.”
Having lost the Doctor, Ruby is even more determined to hold onto to her found family of Carla and Cherry, kicking at the door when she realizes that she has again been locked out of a place she considers a haven. It is not until Carla denounces Ruby as her daughter and files an injunction that the former companion is forced to move on with her life. Still, the episode is quick to show an undeterred Ruby. Despite her significant losses, she recognizes that—while the Doctor ostensibly defeated Roger ap Gwilliam in his relative past—in the Doctor’s absence, the responsibility for protecting the world from nuclear warfare now falls to her.
“73 Yards” is about the Doctor. Roger ap Gwilliam only resonated with Ruby because the Doctor had mentioned him shortly before disappearing—a conversation Ruby has undoubtedly replayed in her mind thousands of times, looking for insight. The episode is clear in demonstrating that, like Sarah Jane before her, Ruby Sunday continues to be a force for good, having been inspired by the Doctor. It is a testament to the Time Lord that a middle-aged Ruby is finally invigorated when she finds her purpose is tied to the Doctor and the life she never wanted to leave.
The appearance of UNIT is also evidence of the Time Lord’s importance. UNIT places such value on the Doctor’s work that they have even taken to tracking and caring for his former companions. Kate Stewart remarks that she has worked “with him, despite him, [and] against him, sometimes. And I adore him,” before stating that UNIT is similarly lost now that the Doctor has gone “silent.” Despite extensive training and immense resources, the secret scientific and military agency has only narrowly managed to protect the Earth.
Contrast Kate’s admiration of the Doctor with Carla’s dismissal that he is merely “inside his shed.” As Ruby herself mistakenly believes that the Doctor has locked himself within the TARDIS, Carla’s explanation might seem sensible—even plausible for the Doctor’s Eleventh and Twelfth incarnations—but Davies has never written the Doctor in this manner. This scene offers the non-omniscient audience, knowing no more than Ruby, to consider their opinion of the titular Time Lord.
Despite their separation, Ruby never forgets her time with the Doctor, returning near her life’s end to tell him about never reconciling with Carla, not finding her birth mother, and how it never snowed again. Still, after a lifetime of loss, Ruby remains optimistic—a quality she ascribes to the Doctor. “I think, at the end, I have hope,” she states, “‘Cause that’s very you, isn’t it, my old friend? I dare to hope.”
“73 Yards” is about the TARDIS. Yet again, the show’s narrative proffers yet another twist on the theme of Ruby-as-time traveler. In “73 Yards,” her consciousness experiences a recursive loop, traveling forwards and then backwards in time—ostensibly apart from the Doctor’s time machine—forcing the audience to consider the importance of the TARDIS and its place within the series’ mythology.
The episode hints that the Doctor vanishes as a result of breaking the fairy circle, but never explains the sudden appearance of the sempre distant woman, later revealed to be Ruby at the moment of her death. Was this also the result of fairy magic, or some aspect of Ruby’s mysterious origin? Perhaps, but the episode offers greater evidence that the phenomenon was a trick of the TARDIS. Note how the woman’s appearance is described as the result of a “perception filter,” a term often associated with the TARDIS. This would also explain why everyone who encounters the woman flees screaming. They suddenly see the sempre distant woman for what she is—an inexplicably aged specter of the girl to whom they were just speaking. Surely this, combined with a telepathic nudge from the TARDIS, would be enough to terrify a person.
Consider also that the TARDIS locks Ruby out, effectively forcing her to return to her old life and pushing her towards a future where she encounters Roger ap Gwilliam. Did the sentient time machine recognize that, with the Doctor missing, Gwilliam’s rise to world domination would be otherwise unobstructed? Despite this, Ruby’s final act in life is to return to Wales to see the TARDIS once again. She finds it overgrown with moss and decorated with flowers, charms, and notes—a ghostly monument-cum-fairy circle—paying off the Ninth Doctor’s farewell speech to Rose in “The Parting of the Ways”:
The Doctor:“Let the TARDIS die. Just let this old box gather dust. No one can open it. No one will even notice it. Let it become a strange little thing standing on a street corner, and over the years, the world will move on, and the box will be buried.”
“73 Yards” is about trauma. Everyone has something from their past that haunts them—an ex that “got away,” a missed opportunity, a mourned loved one. For Ruby, it’s her brief time with the Doctor, which “felt like a lifetime.” A montage capitalizes on this statement, demonstrating that Ruby’s adult life is defined by the loss she experienced in Wales. At 25, she is incapable of committing to travel plans; at 30, she struggles to be present in her conversations with others. At 40, Ruby is surviving but not thriving, her meager savings an indication that she cannot imagine—much less plan for—a future where she is happy.
Davies’ Series 2 episode, “Love & Monsters” examines these same issues. Elton Pope struggles with a sense of ennui as he enters adulthood, having never dealt with the childhood trauma of his mother’s death. When Ruby states, “Don’t worry. Everyone has abandoned me my whole life, but I haven’t been alone for 65 years,” it is clear that Davies is repeating the central theme of “Love & Monsters”—grief makes companions of us all. “73 Yards” presents Ruby’s trauma as sempre distant—just out of reach, never out of sight, constantly pushing others away. It is not until Ruby’s heroic actions bring meaning to her life that she is able to move on from her traumatic separation from the Doctor, allowing her to return to Wales and the TARDIS, in her old age.
Note how Davies structures his script for “73 Yards” to mirror Ruby’s journey. The elderly former companion goes back in time to prevent her trauma—perhaps with the help of the TARDIS, perhaps because of fairy magic—making the narrative loop of this episode a true “fairy circle.” The Doctor describes a fairy circle as “charms, and spells, and hopes, and dreams.” Here, it is Ruby’s hopes and dreams that the Doctor inadvertently crushes by stepping into the ring. Is this a portent of what is to come?
The episode hints at Series 14’s ongoing mysteries—just as it snowed the night Ruby was abandoned by her birth mother, snowflakes fall when Ruby loses the Doctor and her adopted family; Ruby seems to recognize the face of the hiker as that of a woman she’s seen before; and Mrs. Flood appears—yet solves none of them, instead using the ambiguity of the narrative to imbue the episode with a melancholic atmosphere. Will this episode hold up to repeated viewings, once the mystery of Ruby’s origin is solved? Because of its masterful examination of trauma and the character portrait of Ruby’s post-companion life—and of the Doctor and the TARDIS in absentia—“73 Yards” is destined to be remembered as an off-beat, moody thriller.
Random Musings
(Time) Capsule Review
A haunting character study of the post-companion experience, “73 Yards” recalls “Love & Monsters” in its examination of the lingering effects of childhood trauma on adult life. Bolstered by breathtaking cinematography, the episode celebrates both the Doctor and his TARDIS—despite both being largely absent from the episode’s recursive narrative.
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