Doctor WhoPut Its New Companion Through a Perfectly Creepy Crucible

Thelatest era of Doctor Whohas been all over the place — fromfestive fantasy , to madcap sci - fi silliness , tojauntily scratchy camp , and toanti - capitalist wartime thrillers . But its a la mode jook house lands itself somewhere familiar but entirely new for the series , and finally decides to give Millie Gibson ’s Ruby Sunday the limelight to show what she ’s capable of . And boy howdy , did it put her through it .

“ 73 Yards ” is , perhaps , the Steven Moffat episode sports fan depend forrard to last week ’s Steven Moffat episode were anticipate before they develop their socksproverbially tap offby “ Boom”—another twist in this season ’s overall vibe with play with the very innovation and prospect of storytelling . With Russell T Davies back in the author ’s backside , this time we ’re pull back to the UK in the modern twenty-four hours , as the Doctor and Ruby ground in Wales and directly find themselves thrust into a deep creepy-crawly fib that gives Ruby her opportunity to really show the audience what she ’s made of . We got some of that last week in “ Boom ” of row , but “ 73 Yards ” take away it a step further by , not even five minutes into its runtime , completely removing the Doctor from the situation , as the duo encounter a strange ritualistic R-2 of folk charm and substance that , as Ruby read one aloud , figure the Doctor on the spur of the moment go away from beside her side … and off in the aloofness , a foreign , out of focus elderly woman determine her , never coming closer , never getting further away , but always gesturing , always signalise something , but rather , finding concern for the audience and Ruby alike in just subsist .

This is no longer the case of Ruby having to establish herself to someone , or show that she can match her secret new friend on an even standing , as it was in “ Boom ” with the Doctor rooted in one place . She ca n’t get close enough to the adult female to pass on with her , or find out what she wants , and any attempts she render to make through a third party — other citizenry can see her , but do n’t really notice the remote char until Ruby points her out — to make contact leads to the charwoman sending them screaming away from Ruby in panic and disgust . So , Doctor Who demand , even this ahead of time into her time with the Doctor of the Church , what is Ruby ’s heart made of when she ca n’t rely on him to be there at all ?

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What follow is both an incredibly chilling ghost story — one where everyone can actually kind of see the ghostwriter — but also a prospect for Davy to hand over something in Doctor Who that feel a little closer to his post - Who life history after leaving the show in 2009 , particularly in the vein of his near - future political dramaYears and Years . Through Ruby , and through this mystical womanhood ’s ability to essentially get people to somehow suddenly sour on Ruby the 2nd they make close touch , Davies promote an absurdist mirror to modern Britain , and see how much ugliness is obscure just beneath the surface — and how it does n’t necessarily need a supernatural entity to convey it bubbling up . Really , the awe of “ 73 Yards ” is not the creep broker of this woman perpetually being the titular distance from Ruby , butthe utter lonelinessand isolation her exponent imparts on Ruby over and over . But that solitariness is twisted even further and more potently by the bitterness it leave in its wake .

First the Doctor goes , leaving Ruby stranded in a tiny Welsh village , where cold , virulent locals gaslight the foreigner with tales of an ancient spirit named “ unhinged Jack ” and the real ability behind the circle Ruby and the Doctor came across , finally force her out , despite her having no real position to go with the Doctor lost and the TARDIS locked down . When Ruby heads home to London to her female parent , Carla not only discover herself smite by the inscrutable woman ’s exponent , but hyperbolize them by not just running away from Ruby , but returning , locking her out of her own home , and then cruelly slinging barbs and insults over her nascency female parent to crusade Ruby away even further . Even , years later — scraping by in a deadened - close job to make ends run across , perfectly cut off — a chance meet with Kate Lethbridge Stewart and UNIT lead to this one moment of hope , that the Doctor ’s human race and her affiliation with it could lay aside her , is lost when , for all their own psychic and supernatural guard , they too are deform against Ruby , lead her distraught and ostracise by the passers - by witnessing her dislocation — not the armed law building block that just charged through a busybodied street and then immediately fly , but because this youthful , distressed woman is sweep up against that loaded - upper reserved nature of public British culture .

It ’s here that “ 73 Yards ” really takes its big step to feeling like a Doctor Who spin out on Years and Years ’ treatise on the UK . As the literal years and years pass by , say through a montage of Ruby losing boyfriend after boyfriend as they all chastise her for seeming remote and distrait , as she ’s unable to excuse the supernatural phenomena get it , Ruby finally overhears a tidings programme that puts two offhand elements from ahead of time on in the episode together . An audience with an up and coming far-right Welsh political leader Roger ap Gwilliam ( Aneurin Barnard ) , who the Doctor had jokingly mentioned to Ruby upon set ashore in Wales as Britain’sfuture worst quality minister — Doctor Who could not have asked for better timing than to have this instalment air days after theUK ’s next cosmopolitan electionwas anticipate — go steady the politician call upon his working class backcloth by invoking “ Mad Jack ” as an sometime nickname . With that , Ruby substantiate that she has the chance to avoid the vanquish forlornness she ’s endured the past few years and go be in a MD Who story , with a baddie to fight , a nub of hope , a chance to make everything this mysterious entity has put her through on the face of it for no ground into circumstance .

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Instead , it just charter ugliness Ruby has endured on a personal scale and brings it to a national one . infiltrate ap Gwilliam ’s political party , Albion , as a volunteer to get close to him , Ruby and the audience likewise are instead exposed to this fascinatingly grim imitation of modern politics . Ap Gwilliam does n’t have a laid - out manifesto or pipe dream as a politician that ’s made clear to us — both because this is an episode of Doctor Who rather than The Thick of It , and because also that ’s the point — but he has an absurdly unhinged nationalistic vibe . All that ’s made clear to us about ap Gwilliam ’s desire to direct the UK is to make it a sulphurous , isolated res publica , endorse by a comprehensive atomic armoury it would be unafraid to utilize at the free fall of a hat . But rather of people questioning it , all we ’re shown is that from within his political party and beyond into the general populace , there is somehow a feverish hungriness for such an malevolent desire . Other countries are cruel bullies , why not us too ? Albion is sweeping the polls , as the Doctor warned , ap Gwilliam becomes Prime Minister handily , and yet all we know of his deprivation is aggregate atomic destruction for little reason other than hatred — and with that hate , he ’s commanding the rapturous attention of tens of chiliad of sulphurous British citizen that want the earth to note them .

It ’s only Ruby that sees ap Gwilliam for what he is — and eventually click that before he can conduce Britain into a horrific new age , having purchased a Brobdingnagian nuclear armoury for the country to deploy , she has to use the presence of the mysterious woman , and her supernatural fear generalization , by standing 73 railway yard away from the now - loss leader of the UK and get her to crop on him . “ 73 Yards ” does n’t immediately terminate there though , and it ’s where the instalment get a little messy lessen over itself in the wrapper - up : there ’s not some sudden snap - back as time corrects itself , that Ruby has saved the twenty-four hour period and gets to be at once reinforce with being back to normal . The mystic womanhood might have been the tool she uses to stop ap Gwilliam , but it ’s still there after he ’s fled and resigned in sudden , fearful disrepute . She ’s still isolated and cut off from the Doctor , and her kinfolk , and UNIT , and innumerous other hoi polloi from the yr of this entity ’s cosmos alongside her , and still has to keep living . It ’s only as we dash forward another 40 years to an senior Ruby ( now played by Amanda Walker)—and see that she ’s had to live that life alone and be at peace with it , take back to Wales one last time to say goodbye to the Doctor and the overgrown TARDIS for good . Ruby did the right thing , but she still had to put up terribly for it .

It ’s then that the episode unveils its last gadget : the entity itself was some self-contradictory variant of the sure-enough Ruby , who had to become her and face all that grief and ugliness in the first place , so she could be sent back to that mo Ruby and the Doctor come up across the fairy lap in the first place and stop it from being disturbed . It ’s here the episode take a piece of a modest stumble . That supernatural loop is unopen , sure — demented Jack ’s cryptic heart , and whatever connection it had to ap Gwilliam , is left to rest , and the entity disappears as the Doctor and Ruby go off on whatever their adventure was go to be in the first berth , pass on unseen . But we spend so lilliputian time with the older Ruby that a few thing do n’t quite click the way they did in the early beats of the sequence . The political commentary about ap Gwilliam ’s rise is kind of left to fall apart in the backdrop — cut off by a single newscaster line of credit in the background about Britain spend a penny a sudden pin to kinder , skillful political relation ( the Government he left behind still bought all those atomic missile though , so how exactly kinder is left obscure ! ) . likewise , we largely quickly move on from the sudden twist about the entity ’s lawful nature , leave to disappear in whatever caused the close eyelet with little in the mode to gratifyingly or emotionally establish up its connection to Ruby ’s part in that grommet , allow the episode ’s ending palpate a small too sudden for its own good .

Image: BBC/Disney

Image: BBC/Disney

These stumbles by however , the material creepiness of “ 73 Yards ” we ’re left with as it ends is that Ruby has some vague remembrance of this obviate timeline — and with it , all the ugliness that was dredge up in the name of prevent it . An wickedness , that , for all we know , is still buried just underneath the open , from the tiniest Greenwich Village , to the multitude we love most , to the universal public , waiting for anything to drag it up into evident sight . A meet fear for Doctor Who to leave us on through this twisted lens , perhaps — a creeping wariness that is perpetually just out of pile . puddle as its conclusion might be , in induce that fear just an inherent reflection of human nature , rather than some supernatural evil , might be one of the most compelling steps this new era of the show has bring so far .

New Doctor Who episodes premier Fridays at 7 p.m. ET onDisney+ , and will broadcast through the BBC iPlayer at the same time in the UK , at 12 a.m. local fourth dimension on Saturdays before pass around on BBC One later that daytime .

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Image: BBC/Disney