 "73 Yards" was written by Russell T Davies, directed by Dylan Holmes Williams and one of the show's most mysterious stories yet, with little revealed about its plot prior to transmission.
In this story, the TARDIS arrives at the top of a Welsh cliff where the Fifteenth Doctor (played by Ncuti Gatwa) suddenly disappears after breaking a fairy circle. His travelling companion, Ruby Sunday (played by Millie Gibson) spends a lifetime without The Doctor while being followed by a mysterious woman who is always 73 yards away from her. Taking place in an alternate timeline, this story explores the theme of abandonment. It focusses on Ruby being abandoned by her birth mother and the impact it has had upon her when taken to the extreme of everyone close to Ruby also abandoning her.
Russell T Davies described this story as being a ‘Welsh folk horror’ and the antagonist to be the ‘strangest villain you'll ever see’. He further explained that this story would show Ruby living ‘a life of penitence’, required to do ‘something good’ to earn forgiveness for The Doctor's unintentional ‘lack of respect’ in breaking a fairy circle. Ncuti Gatwa stated that this story was important to Ruby's overall development throughout this season.
During this story we see Ruby at different stages in her life - all with the woman still following her. A pivotal scene then takes place in a hospital, when Ruby is an old woman and about to pass away. The woman in the distance appears in the hospital room, right in front of Ruby. As they see each other, we are transported back to the clifftop to when The Doctor and Ruby first stepped out of the TARDIS - but this time we see things from the woman's perspective and this time, Ruby manages to stop The Doctor from breaking the fairy circle. He doesn't disappear, and everything is set right. The older version of Ruby now disappears, with younger Ruby seeming to not remember anything - except for the idea that she has visited Wales a third time in her life - rather than the two that she mentioned at the very beginning of this story.
Russell T Davies went some way to explaining this ending when speaking in a behind-the-scenes video on the Doctor Who YouTube channel. He revealed that this story’s cyclical plot: ‘Something profane has happened with the disturbance of that fairy circle. There’s been a lack of respect. The Doctor, who’s very respectful of alien cultures and alien lifeforms and alien mythologies, he’s just walked through something very, very powerful. So something has gone wrong, and something has just corrected. It’s like Ruby had to spend a life of penitence, in which she eventually does something good, which brings the whole thing full circle, which kind of forgives them in the end’.
As to the significance of 73 yards - Russell T Davies has said that it seems that 73 yards is the perfect distance to be able to see the figure in the distance but not see any distinguishing features. It also had to be shorter than the length of a football pitch for the scene with Roger ap Gwilliam (played by Aneurin Barnard) to work.
Russell T Davies revealed on Doctor Who: Unleashed: ‘It’s 73 yards simply because, when I was writing this... I have no idea about distance, so to get the distance I went out to Swansea Pier. And on Swansea Pier the railings are three and a half feet long, so I could measure. So I literally stood on Swansea Pier until I could stare, just at people passing by, until a woman was eventually about 73 yards away. And I thought, “That’s the right distance. She’s a blur, but she’s not a blur, I can just about see her”. And I handed the script in saying, “It’s not exactly a very scientific method, I think that’s right. It might be 90, it might be 60”. Turns out, I was right! My scientific methods using railings on Swansea Pier were exactly right, and we’ve stuck with 73 yards’.
Casting for this story was announced on the 9th January 2023. As well as Aneurin Barnard appearing as the antagonistic Prime Minister Roger ap Gwilliam, Hilary Hobson portrays The Woman, while Siân Phillips portrays Enid Meadows. The older version of Ruby was played by Amanda Walker.
Before broadcast there was a myth that this story would be about Susan Twist's recurring roles, and she would be the woman Ruby was referring to in the teaser trailer. Even though this did not happen, Susan Twist's recurrence in this season continued when Ruby encounters a hiker played by Susan Twist. Ruby believes she has seen the hiking woman before, but does not recall from where or when. Susan Twist also portrayed the face on the screen of the Ambulances depicted in the previous story, "Boom", was also the tea lady in "The Devil's Chord" and Mrs Merridew in last season’s Fourteenth Doctor story "Wild Blue Yonder".
This story features several other returning characters including Jemma Redgrave as Kate Lethbridge-Stewart, the leader of UNIT who has acted in a recurring role in the show since it was revived in 2005 - last appearing in "The Giggle". Anita Dobson reprises her role as Mrs Flood in a brief appearance. Amol Rajan makes a cameo as a fictionalised version of himself. Real broadcast journalists were used as extras in the scenes filmed at the BBC Broadcasting House.
This story is deemed as a ‘Doctor-lite’ story - which refers to a story that features limited screen time for The Doctor - and the first Doctor-lite story since the 2008 story "Turn Left" and the fourth overall (the others are "Love & Monsters" and "Blink"). It is also the first Doctor-lite story to include an incarnation of The Doctor other than the Tenth Doctor.
While previous Doctor-lite stories were devised in order to allow the crew to work on two stories at once, The Doctor's absence throughout the majority of this story was due to Ncuti Gatwa only being available for one day of filming as he was still working on his last series of Sex Education.
This was the first story of Season Forty One (New Series 14) to be filmed (as part of the first production block along with the following story, "Dot and Bubble"). Location filming took place in various locations around Wales in late 2022 and early 2023. The scenes of Ruby aged thirty years-old, in her flat, were the first that Millie Gibson shot for the show.
The opening scene was filmed near the West Wales town of Tenby. Two TARDIS props were used during filming because the production team needed it to appear aged and would not have had time to re-paint it on location.
Filming for the pub scenes took place at the White Cross Inn in Caerphilly, which had also previously been used as a filming location in the spin-off series Torchwood. Some scenes were also filmed at BBC Cymru Wales New Broadcasting House and Cardiff City Stadium.
Russell T Davies mentioned this story in a Digital Spy interview in March 2023 - stating: ‘I sat here and I watched episode four last night and I think it’s one of the greatest things I’ve ever made in my life, so I’m very, very happy with it’.
Director Dylan Holmes Williams also revealed: ‘As the lucky man who got to direct this incredible script, I’ve got to say I’m very excited about what we created’.
Ruby, on describing The Doctor, states that he is a ‘Black guy, 5 foot 10’.
At the beginning of this story Ruby reveals that she has visited Wales twice before: to see a show in Cardiff and when she was 16 years old while on a date with a boy in the Mumbles.
Ruby mentions she could once make it snow, recalling this occurrence in "Space Babies" and "The Devil's Chord".
Ruby recalls in 2086 that she never found out who her birth parents were, recalling her failed efforts to do so in "The Church on Ruby Road".
Kate Lethbridge-Stewart remarks that she is still part of UNIT, as she has since the events of "The Power of Three", and that they have increasingly been dealing with the supernatural, referencing her encounter with The Toymaker in "The Giggle".
Kate Lethbridge-Stewart states that UNIT has recently made a habit out of recruiting The Doctor's former companions, as seen in "The Power of The Doctor", "The Star Beast" and "The Giggle".
Kate Lethbridge-Stewart remarks that Ruby's timeline has been suspended along an event. The Tenth Doctor once remarked how the time beetle from the Trickster's Brigade had done this to Donna Noble during the events in "Turn Left".
Carla Sunday, Cherry Sunday and Mrs Flood also exists in the alternate reality and still live in London, as first established in "The Church on Ruby Road".
Mad Jack mentioned in this story turns out to be Roger ap Gwilliam who becomes Prime Minister during this story. He is revealed to be a dangerous politician, who Ruby gets close to in order to formulate a plan to get rid of him.
We first hear the name Mad Jack when Ruby reads a piece of paper in the fairy circle saying: ‘Rest in Peace, Mad Jack’. During the 2040s, Ruby sees Roger ap Gwilliam on television revealing his nickname was ‘Mad Jack’.
During this story Roger ap Gwilliam makes chilling political promises, as well as it being made clear that he is harassing staff members.
Ruby manages to force him to resign during a visit to a football stadium. Standing exactly 73 yards away from him, she causes the woman in the distance to stand right next to him. Terrified, he runs away from her and resigns from his role as Prime Minister.
The TARDIS still uses a perception filter as established in "Boom Town".
Ruby still has the key to the TARDIS that The Doctor gifted to her in "Space Babies" - However, after The Doctor disappears Ruby discovers that the key no longer works.
With The Doctor banished, the TARDIS sits abandoned on a clifftop and is occasionally visited by people, who lay flowers and messages around it. The Fourteenth Doctor once imagined a similar fate happening to the TARDIS if he were to die during the events of "Wild Blue Yonder".
One of the few amusing scenes in this story is when Ruby is looking for The Doctor behind the TARDIS, she is heard to comment ‘I hope you're not having a pee 'round the back’.
The name of the pub Ruby visits is named Y Pren Marw. This translates to ‘The Dead Wood’. This pub has been used as a filming location once before in the Torchwood episode "Countrycide".
One of the customers in the pub drinks a beer named Llanfer Ceiriog. This town was visited by the Seventh Doctor and Ace in the Virgin Books' The New Adventures novel "Cat's Cradle: Witch Mark" written by Andrew Hunt.
The Albion party name used in 2046 references to an ancient Celtic name for Great Britain in real life.
The fairy circle’s curse of causing people who interact with Ruby's older self to cause them to be overcome with fear and instantly despise and resent Ruby resembles the curse Clyde Langer once had placed on him in the 2011The Sarah Jane Adventures story "The Curse of Clyde Langer".
It is not clear what the woman says to those that approach her to cause them to run away and abandon Ruby.
When Carla attempts to call Ruby while speaking to the strange woman, Ruby is unable to hear what she is saying.
This story was first released in the UK on the BBC iPlayer and aired on BBC One on the 25th May 2024. It was released simultaneously on Disney+ in the United States on 24th May. Disney also handled international distribution of the story outside of the United Kingdom and Ireland.
This story marks the fourth time that a Doctor Who story has had no opening theme song or title sequence. This previously occurred in the 2015 story "Sleep No More", the 2018 story "The Woman Who Fell to Earth" and the 2019 story "Resolution".
The end titles include the caption: ‘Produced with the support of Incentives for the Irish Film Industry provided by the Government of Ireland’.
The BBC One overnight viewing figures for this story was up on the current most-watched story for this season, "Space Babies", with 2.62m viewers.
This story received positive reviews from critics, with Millie Gibson's performance being widely praised.
A novelisation of this story written by Scott Handcock is due to be released on the 8th August 2024 in paperback as part of the Target Collection. An audiobook edition, read by Susan Twist, will be released the same day.
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The Firsts:
The first Doctor Who story to be directed by Dylan Holmes Williams.
The first Doctor-lite story since the 2008 story "Turn Left" and the first to include an incarnation of The Doctor other than the Tenth Doctor.
The scenes of Ruby aged thirty years-old, in her flat, were the first that Millie Gibson shot for the show.
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