73 Yards: The Most Overrated Doctor Who Story of All Time

 

Fig. 1 Like The Seventh Seal (Bergman, 1957), except
mean and dumb.

C/W: mental health issues, suicide, self-harm, homelessness, sexual abuse, domestic violence, terrorism, fascism.

Sorry about the formatting inconsistencies. Blogger is a bit weird sometimes.

Pilot: A Brief Timeline of Fandom and Anti-Fandom

The first time I remember watching Doctor Who (BBC Television, 2005-present) was in 2005, when the first episode of the revival aired. For the next five years, it was one of my favourite shows and one of my main interests. In 2010, it became my number one fixation, and it was here that I started watching the Classic Series (BBC Television, 1963-1989), among other things. But things soured for me in 2011; I really didn't like Series Six for various reasons, and it essentially coloured my view of the franchise in general. By 2013, I had decided I wasn't a Doctor Who fan anymore and hadn't watched it again until around 2017 or so, when I listened to a couple of the Robert Sheerman-penned Big Finish audio dramas (which I learned about from Stubagful's videos). Those stories being as well-written as they were and even deconstructing the parent show to a certain extent helped rekindle my interest and enjoyment of Doctor Who.

I caught up with the Peter Capaldi era and started really paying attention again around the time Jodie Whittaker was announced as the new Doctor. Although I enjoyed Series Eleven with some reservations, I started losing interest sometime between Series Twelve (2020) and Flux (2021). But I still stuck around to see where the Ncuti Gatwa era was going to go, especially since lots of us were wondering what the Hell was going to happen with former showrunner Russell T Davies in charge of the show again. Well, it's about two years on from that point, and I once again find myself down on the show to the point where even revisiting the Classic Series or expanded universe doesn't really appeal to me anymore.

Professor Jonathan Gray of the University of Wisconsin-Madison has a great International Journal of Cultural Studies article titled “New Audiences, New Textualities: Anti-Fans and Non-Fans”, which identifies this process of changing relationships with a text:

[F]ans can become anti-fans of a sort when an episode or part of a text is perceived as harming a text as a whole, as for instance with Star Wars fans [...] Behind dislike, after all, there are always expectations – of what a text should be like, of what is a waste of media time and space, of what morality or aesthetics texts should adopt, and of what we would like to see others watch or read (Gray, 2003, p. 10).

I often feel stupid for taking Doctor Who seriously; I have intrusive thoughts like, "It's just a dumb kid's show. It's not a good show, anyway, so why think about it? Even the name is silly," etcetera, etcetera. But the reason I still think about it and why I have these negative feelings about where I feel the franchise has ended up is that, for a large portion of my life, it did mean something to me; I connected with it, emotionally and intellectually, as many others have. Whether it's me getting older, the series going downhill, me being spoiled by shows of arguably higher quality, or a combination thereof, I can no longer view this franchise with much, if any, of the fondness I once did.

The thing is, though, in 2023, I was optimistic about this current era. I enjoyed all four specials broadcast that year, I thought Ncuti Gatwa had the makings of a great Doctor, and I thought the new companion, Ruby Sunday (Millie Gibson), had a lot of potential. I think I can pinpoint where things began to fall apart for me. It's one of the most well-received episodes in recent years, and arguably the most lauded episode of the current era. It also happens to be an episode that I didn't particularly like at the time, and for me, it has only got weaker and more problematic the further along I got with this era of the show. That episode is "73 Yards" (2024a). I already discussed the reset button ending that subverted any meaning or significance it was trying to have in my essay "Empathy and Suffering in Narrative Fiction" (2024). But there's so much more wrong with it, and beyond vague and superficial praise about it supposedly being spooky, ambiguous, or highly emotional, I honestly can't understand the acclaim this episode has received. I've got to a point where I don't particularly want to think or talk much about Doctor Who because I no longer enjoy doing so, but I've wanted to vent my frustration with this episode and all the problems I have with it more or less since it first aired. So, you know what, I'm just gonna do that.

Episode One: The Things I Like

I will concede two points of praise for this episode. The first is the direction by Dylan Holmes Williams. There's some genuinely good shot composition in the episode, such as the scene where Carla (Michelle Greenidge) shuts Ruby out of the flat, or the zolly effect on Ruby's reaction shot when Kate Stewart (Gemma Redgrave) succumbs to the entity's influence. The camerawork, colour grading, lighting, and pacing try to present the episode as an abstract, liminal, and/or psychological horror, and it is a good effort.

The second and more prevalent compliment I have for "73 Yards", which I mentioned in my prior discussion of the episode, is Millie Gibson's central performance. It cannot be overstated how much she elevates the material; it is undoubtedly Gibson's best performance during her entire time on the show, and is a superlative candidate for the best acting performance in the Bad Wolf era as a whole. For such a young and up-and-coming actress to do this good a job with what is, in my opinion, such a godawful script - especially considering that "73 Yards" was the first episode Gibson filmed - is a true testament to the notion that if Doctor Who has an enduring strength that is just about always good, it would be the actors. If you really like "73 Yards" and find it particularly moving or poignant, I'd be willing to bet that what you're reacting to on a purely emotional level is not the story itself, but Gibson's performance.

So, those are the things that I agree are good about this episode: Millie Gibson is superb, and it looks nice. Aside from the fact that the only way they can be bothered to show that Ruby has aged twenty-something years is to put a pair of glasses on her and change nothing else about her appearance. In terms of production values, that takes laziness to a whole new level, especially since this is supposed to be Disney money at work. If you're a fan of this episode and don't want to hear a bad word said against it, you should probably stop reading now because it's not going to be pretty from here on out.

Episode Two: Ambiguity as a Marketing Tool

Not every story needs to be conventionally structured, and although Doctor Who is ultimately a commercial product for a mainstream family audience, it has occasionally experimented with more abstract, ambiguous, or otherwise unconventional episodes. This can be done well: "Midnight" (2008a), "Heaven Sent" (2015), and "Wild Blue Yonder" (2023a) are all experimental episodes, but they're also consistent and have a point to make where ambiguity or metaphor fits the message or story they're trying to communicate. The first problem with the experimental approach in "73 Yards" is that it's not applied consistently. The first half of the episode sticks to being a liminal psychological horror about Ruby being stalked and cursed to a lifetime of isolation by the Fairy Circle entity (Fig. 1). This premise comes from a piece of Welsh folklore: supposedly, the Fairy Circle is built to ward off malevolent spirits, and whoever disturbs the Fairy Circle is cursed to be alone their whole life or something like that. I only bring this up because the episode's defenders will lecture me about the cultural origins of the core concept as if that makes the episode good if I don't.

It's a bit weird giving the story a fantasy bent, since Doctor Who is a sci-fi show in which strictly fantastical elements generally only enter the picture in parallel universes, like in "The Mind Robber" (1968), but whatever. In the episode, the Fairy Circle entity is symbolic of Ruby's fear of abandonment (and her presumable self-loathing) that she internalised from a young age due to being abandoned by her birth mother. However, halfway through the episode, it suddenly becomes traditionally plot-driven when Ruby learns about the growing political career of Roger ap Gwillam (Aneurin Barnard) and sets off to try and stop him with the entity's vaguely established power to make people run away from Ruby if they're close enough for it to talk to them.

These aspects of the episode clash narratively and aesthetically: the fantasy of an unexplained monster driving the plot undercuts the attempted political thriller realism of the Roger ap Gwillam story thread, because it ends up being magic rather than cause and effect logic motivating the events. On the other hand, the quest to bring down a rising fascist dictator distracts from the metaphorical character study for Ruby that was supposed to be the central focus. It also doesn't help how underdeveloped Roger ap Gwillam is as a character, or the insufficient worldbuilding for his political career or why he is rising to power, none of which would be a problem if it were reserved for and fleshed out in a separate episode from the Ruby character study. If you're going to present an abstract, metaphorical text, you need to commit to it and not distract from the point you're trying to make, which supposedly requires that avant-garde style, with irrelevant subplots. Even if they were aesthetically and tonally congruent with each other, on a basic narrative level, the rise of Roger ap Gwillam has nothing to do with Ruby's fear of abandonment and presumed internalised self-loathing.

One of the most out-of-place scenes takes place before the Roger ap Gwillam story thread, where Ruby meets with Kate Stewart and UNIT, who also abandon Ruby under the entity's influence. This scene is here to promote the then-upcoming UNIT spin-off show establish that nobody, not even UNIT, can help Ruby rid herself of the entity. But the way it influences Kate and UNIT to ditch Ruby contradicts what is established about how the entity works before and after. Carla, Roger ap Gwillam, Mrs Flood (Anita Dobson), et al immediately run away when the entity speaks to them, except Kate, who just grimaces at Ruby and storms off while UNIT just leave in a seemingly normal fashion. In other words, even the episode's internal logic as it pertains to the abstract mystery element is not applied consistently.

To reiterate, ambiguity and metaphor can be an excellent approach to a text. But when it works, it does because the creator commits wholeheartedly to that approach, and the texts that apply it successfully still have a consistent internal logic to them. The above-mentioned experimental Doctor Who episodes, along with things like 2001: A Space Odyssey (Kubrick, 1968), Persona (Bergman, 1966), Twin Peaks (ABC Television, 1991-1992), and certain episodes of Neon Genesis Evangelion (Animax, 1995-1996), all meet these criteria. "73 Yards" doesn't, because, in truth, it's not dedicated to conveying ideas or experiences that can't be sufficiently articulated with literalism or narrative classicism.

The actual reason the episode is presented this way is to generate content, to get fans speculating about what it all means and what the entity could have been saying to people that made them abandon Ruby so heartlessly. We know this because it fits so well with writer-showrunner Russell T Davies' continuing track record of saying outlandishly enticing things to promote the show and perpetuate it in the attention economy, but also because he has implied this to be his agenda with this era elsewhere. In the behind-the-scenes video (Doctor Who, 2023) for "The Church on Ruby Road" (2023b), he insists on people coming back to find out the 'huge' mystery of Ruby's parentage, and in the Doctor Who: Unleashed (BBC Television, 2023-present) episode for "The Interstellar Song Contest" (2025a), he said this was the intention behind that episode's mid-credits sequence. There's even a YouTube short on the official Doctor Who channel (Fig. 2) whose title encourages viewers to ask what the entity in "73 Yards" was saying the whole time (Doctor Who, 2024a).

Fig. 2 Commodifying the avant-garde for social media
clicks.

What it reminds me of the most is The Cremaster Cycle (Barney, 1995-2002) or Southland Tales (Kelley, 2006), both deliberately obtuse works of art made that way on purpose for marketing reasons. Cremaster had a ridiculously expensive book explaining the abstract and ambiguous imagery in the videos (Folding Ideas, 2015), while Southland Tales had a comic book tie-in supposedly required to understand the harder-to-follow narrative and thematic elements of the film. While these texts use an obtusely unconventional storytelling and aesthetic approach to sell peripheral media and vice versa (what is known in Media Studies as 'synergy'), "73 Yards" utilises social media content and fan discourse to commodify the avant-garde approach itself. I also noticed in the opening scene that the Doctor says the phrase "the war between the land and the sea", which was the title of the recent UNIT spin-off featuring the Sea Devils (BBC Television, 2025). So, apparently, this marketing synergy was the intention with this episode from the start.

This is why the episode lacks narrative and thematic consistency: it's not actually trying to get people thinking about something to which there are no easy answers like good abstract art, it's trying to get people talking about the episode, arguing about it on X (née Twitter), or futilely try to deconstruct and understand it in pretentious essays like the one I'm writing now. Like Cremaster or Southland Tales before it, "73 Yards" is composed in such a way to build a reputation for being genius and ground-breaking, regardless of whether it makes any sense or has as much to say as it wants to convince you it does because, if the aforementioned paratext of how Davies has marketed the show is anything to go by, "73 Yards" is no exception; its real purpose is to boost Doctor Who in the attention economy, and to make it still seem relevant in the contemporary post-streaming mainstream media landscape. There's even a character in the episode who openly says, 'semper distans' and explains that it means always distant in Latin. It's the old 'my idea means something in an important-sounding language' cliche to which all pretentious pieces of media resort.

The Peter Capaldi era of Doctor Who had three allegorical, experimental episodes: "Listen" (2014), "Heaven Sent" (2015), and "Extremis" (2017). These episodes might not be perfect, but all three of them have a consistent tone and style, mostly adhere to being detached enough from reality for us to suspend our disbelief, and are coherent from a screenplay perspective, despite the threat being highly abstract and symbolic. "73 Yards" is nothing like that; it's an episode that needs to hide behind the concept of allegory and abstraction in the hopes that the audience doesn't think critically about it. The saddest thing of all is that it requires that gimmick to have a leg to stand on because, putting aside the artsy, ambiguous presentation, on a basic plot level, "73 Yards" doesn't make any sense.

Episode Three: More Like 73 Plot Holes, hurr hurr

Surrealist art tends not to follow classical storytelling conventions. They typically follow their own narrative logic or marginalise plot to centre on emotional or psychological metaphor. Un chien andalou (Buñuel, 1929), Perfect Blue (Kon, 1997), and Mulholland Drive (Lynch, 2001) are all superlative examples of this: these are almost entirely disconnected from realism, instead operating under a kind of dream logic, which allows them to convincingly portray events or concepts that might not make sense in a classically structured narrative. As already mentioned, much of "73 Yards" is grounded in some sense of realism, which is a problem for the episode because if you look past the abstract imagery and aesthetic, the actual plot is badly written.

I'm not talking about the fact that we don't find out what the Fairy Circle entity says or how it makes people abandon Ruby; those are deliberate ambiguities that are the crux of what the episode is trying to do. Several other parts of the episode are actual plot holes, things that need to make sense but don't, and elements where the episode's point relies on realism but breaks suspension of disbelief in ways that they wouldn't if the episode were entirely surreal and dominated by dream logic. I'm going to start by briefly going over the minor narrative and continuity oversights, and then I'll address in detail the major plot holes.

In the opening scenes of the episode, the Doctor and Ruby inadvertently disturb the Fairy Circle and summon the entity. As a result, the Doctor vanishes, and Ruby is unable to enter the TARDIS. So, she walks until she finds a pub. Needing a room for the night, she asks if she can pay with her phone, and the pubgoers are inexplicably hostile and suspicious of her because of it. They then proceed to prank her by telling this fake horror story about 'Mad Jack', and they basically make fun of Ruby and laugh in her face when she becomes scared by the story. Soon after, the landlady angrily demands that Ruby get out because people keep leaving the pub due to the entity that is stalking Ruby. Why are the Welsh pubgoers like this? There's no reason whatsoever for them to react so harshly to an outsider posing a perfectly normal and innocuous question, to the point of ganging up on her and bullying her when she's already alone and emotionally distraught.

Supposedly, writer Russell T Davies' point with the pubgoers' hostility towards Ruby is not to assume Welsh people are primitive or superstitious, but this approach strikes me as counterintuitive to that purpose. Doesn't it seem like bad representation when the only Welsh characters in the episode (Gwillam included later) are portrayed as this mean-spirited and unlikeable? This isn't like She's Gotta Have It (Lee, 1986) or Castration Movie Anthology I: Traps (Weard, 2024) which mix positive and negative minority representation for nuance and authenticity; the Welsh characters in "73 Yards" are just being dicks to a complete stranger for the sake of being dicks to a complete stranger who, need I remind you, is already clearly upset and in need of some kind of help.

Ruby's introductory story, "The Church on Ruby Road", shows her with a group of friends, including a girl called Trudy (Mary Malone). "73 Yards" is supposed to be about all Ruby's friends and family abandoning her, but we don't see Trudy or any of Ruby's other friends (sans the Doctor) in "73 Yards", or any future episode for that matter. Why not? Fair enough if, logistically, they couldn't get the actors back for whatever reason, but to not even acknowledge them at all just weakens the worldbuilding. Furthermore, Carla Sunday, Ruby's foster mother, was influenced by the entity to disown Ruby (Fig. 3), but Cherry (Angela Wynter), her foster grandmother, wasn't. How did the latter not object to the former locking Ruby out of the flat?

If I were living with my adult daughter and grandchild, and the former viciously disowned and neglected the latter by locking them out of our home, I think I would call the police, or at least do something. Even "Wish World" and "The Reality War" (2025b and c) established that Cherry was just as affected by Conrad (Jonah Hauer-King) and the Rani's (Archie Panjabi) control as Carla was. "73 Yards", on the other hand, leaves this element completely unexplained, and let me tell you, when I can unironically say that "Wish World" and "The Reality War" have any remote advantage whatsoever over another episode, that's a big fucking problem!

In this episode, Ruby is abandoned by the Doctor and presumably all her other friends, viciously disowned by her foster mother, shunned by UNIT, and cursed to a lifetime of inescapable loneliness being stalked by a monster that makes everyone turn against her - and she just... puts up with it? Until she sees the Roger ap Gwillam announcement on television circa 2046, motivating her to use the entity's power to stop him, she just lives with this existentially soul-crushing and traumatic fate. Throughout this season, there's been a motif of Ruby having visions of snow falling like the night she was abandoned by her birth mother. When Carla suggests she no longer considers Ruby her daughter and tells her 'Even your real mother didn't want you,' Ruby has a vision where the snow slows to a complete stop, as if to symbolise that she's given up hope trying to find her birth mother - her defining goal as a character throughout this season - because of Carla's suggestion.

Fig. 3 The episode that ruined Carla Sunday forever.
After only her second appearance. Oops.

Keep in mind, at the time this episode takes place, Ruby is eighteen years old, and supposedly has pre-existing mental health struggles (that is the pretext for this episode, after all). The idea that being hatefully rejected and abandoned by all her friends and family throughout her entire life doesn't drive her to self-harm or suicide strikes me as highly unlikely. I'm not saying that is what should have happened, but that the episode is constructed in such a way that this glaring oversight of contemporary teenage mental health - that self-harm or suicide in this scenario as a remote possibility never comes up - breaks the suspension of disbelief, and undercuts the psychological depth and realism for which the episode is aiming. I'm not even an expert on teenage mental health, but I'm fairly certain this would be an issue for anybody in this situation. One could argue that self-harm or suicide would be an inappropriate subject for a primetime family show like Doctor Who. But that didn't stop them from alluding to domestic and/or sexual abuse, now did it?! But, more on that later.

Speaking of breaking suspension of disbelief, the episode expects us to believe that Ruby, an eighteen-year-old girl with no financial support from friends or family whatsoever, and having just been made unhoused due to Carla kicking her out, was somehow able to afford a London flat. On a shop assistant's salary. In 2024. In the United Kingdom's economy. Under a Tory government. How fucking stupid do they think we are? Hell, how did she get a shop assistant job before finding a new place to live, anyhow? Most employers won't hire somebody who doesn't have an address because they can't verify the person's identity; that's one of several reasons why unhoused people can't simply 'get a job' - because it's not legally feasible for unhoused people to just get a job. Because they have no address. But, hey, this is an episode about serious real-world issues like mental health, abandonment, fascism, and domestic and/or sexual violence - it's not like it would be necessary to do research before writing the script!

Consider this also: the entity stalks Ruby from a fixed distance throughout her entire life. People clearly notice the entity, even if it's just from afar. Some people even try to interact with it. UNIT, a government and military organisation, tried to confront the entity in broad daylight with many people in the vicinity. The entity is visible and noticeable to potentially everybody as it stalks this one person from a fixed distance for decades. How is this not a national news story? How is it that no headlines and social media discussions are questioning what the entity is, where it came from, and why it's stalking this one woman, and occasionally having an effect on other people? How is Fox News not leaping at the opportunity to make fun of a supposedly liberal government-funded organisation like UNIT for failing to stop the creature, or otherwise inventing an excuse to blame it on Joe Biden? How are there no podcasts and conspiracy theory TikToks about 'the mystery of Ghost Girl' or some shit like that? If a dark, presumably non-corporeal apparition were to mysteriously stalk one person throughout their entire life, Mulder (David Duchovny) and Scully (Gillian Anderson) would be all over that shit; Bethany Ghostfucker (Erika Henningsen) would be all over that shit! How does nobody else try to solve this bizarre case of a creature that everybody can see for all those years?

Again, these are the kinds of things where we could suspend our disbelief if the episode were entirely abstract and psychological, like, say, Mulholland Drive (Lynch, 2001) or I Saw the TV Glow (Schoenbrun, 2024), rather than anchoring key elements to some sense of waking reality. Keep in mind, "73 Yards" is not a dream or a simulation; it's an alternate timeline; in some other reality, these events definitely happened. We know this because in "Wish World", Ruby claims to have seen what the future will look like, proving that Conrad's world is not the true reality, and they cut to a flashback of "73 Yards". Canonically, the events of "73 Yards" happened in the show's universe (even if it was a split timeline), and not just in Ruby's imagination. So yes, nobody else doing anything about the creature of their own accord after the UNIT scene breaks the suspension of disbelief, not purposefully because the episode is trying to break the fourth wall for any kind of thematic or metatextual purpose, but because the writer is forcing the events to arbitrarily take this course to make the desired plot happen, if you can call this a plot.

The episode's logic is that after being rejected by Carla, the Doctor, and even UNIT, Ruby is unable to form any other friendships, as the entity would cause them to reject her. The scene in which she learns about Roger ap Gwillam in 2046 shows her on a date with a man, complaining that she is too distant, indicating that Ruby can't even maintain the one romantic relationship she attempts because of the monster symbolising her fear of abandonment. However, after Ruby uses the entity's power to defeat Roger ap Gwillam, we cut to several decades later, and in her old age, Ruby has a support worker who is never shown to reject her despite the entity still being there. The elderly Ruby says, 'Even though everyone’s abandoned me, I haven’t been alone for sixty-five years,' referring to the entity always being there. She's explaining that everyone in her life has abandoned her because of the entity being there, to a person who hasn't abandoned her despite the entity still being there. Do you see what I mean about this episode's lack of consistency?

May I ask what may be an odd question: does Ruby consciously remember the events of the alternate timeline or not? She goes from saying she'd been to the Welsh coastline twice at the start of the episode to saying she had been there three times; she even recognises Roger ap Gwillam briefly in "Empire of Death" (2024b). However, in future episodes, she still trusts all the people who abandoned her in the alternate timeline and doesn't confront them about it at all, as though she doesn't consciously remember the alternate timeline. If she does remember the alternate timeline, why does she not talk to the Doctor, Carla, or Kate about what she went through? Even "Can You Hear Me?" (2020) had Graham (Bradley Walsh) talk to the Thirteenth Doctor (Jodie Whittaker) about the nightmare he had about his cancer coming back once they were both awake again. Sure, the Doctor's response was flippant and unhelpful, but at least they talked about it.

So, let's talk about Roger ap Gwillam, probably the biggest problem with this episode's plot. As the Doctor explains, Gwillam was an infamously dangerous fascist politician before the Doctor stopped him in the main timeline. But, in the "73 Yards" timeline, the Doctor has disappeared, meaning that Ruby has to stop Gwillam. How? By infiltrating Gwillam's campaign by getting a job at his Albion party, waiting until the day of the broadcast, where he receives the nuclear codes in a football stadium, walking to exactly seventy-three yards from where Gwillam stands to give his speech, making the entity appear, and triggering its power to make Gwillam run away, thus ending his political career, and stopping the fascism he would have ushered in. Here's the problem...

The British political system doesn't work the same way as the American presidency. For Roger ap Gwillam - or any politician, for that matter - to become Prime Minister, he first needs to be the leader of a national party, as every member of the British Parliament, including the Prime Minister, is elected by the specific constituency they represent. When the leader of the ruling party steps down or is removed by a no-confidence vote in the Houses of Parliament, the members of the ruling party must elect a new leader who then becomes Prime Minister, unless there's a general election where a different party wins. So, Ruby sabotaging Gwillam's political career after he's already become Prime Minister doesn't really mean anything, because his party, Albion, is the ruling party in the House of Commons; therefore, if Gwillam steps down, they'll simply elect a new party leader, and they will become Prime Minister, continuing more-or-less the same fascistic policies that Gwillam has. How do I know this? Because it happened in real life with not one, not two, not three, but four Conservative Prime Ministers between 2016 and 2022.

Speaking of that, if you genuinely believe that a right-wing Prime Minister abasing himself in public the way Gwillam does by running away from the broadcast would end their career, much less their entire party or, for that matter, the values and policies they represent, you're giving the British political landscape way too much credit. In 2019, then-Tory Prime Minister Boris Johnson infamously hid in a refrigerator to escape a television interview (Duncan, 2019), having already been publicly mocked by Channel Four for dodging a climate change debate (Chaplain, 2019) - and the Tory party won the next general election! In a landslide (House of Commons Library, 2020)! The British political status quo is so retrograde that a Tory Prime Minister could make a public mockery of himself more than once after he was already Prime Minister, and people still voted Tory in droves. If this episode had any actual basis in real-world politics, seeing Gwillam run from a television broadcast would not end his career at all, especially when it's the result of a creature that everyone can see - now on camera in front of the entire country! The only way this would make sense is if it were a dream or something, which we know it isn't because we see the Doctor and Ruby arrive on the Welsh coastline from the entity's point of view at the end of the episode - but, more on that later.

It's not like the creature's influence forces its victims to hide away indoors: Carla's reaction when the entity spoke to her was to catch a taxi to get away from Ruby before returning to the flat to change the lock while Ruby was out. What's Ruby going to do when the next fascist leader rears their ugly head? She can't pull the same trick again; whoever comes after Albion wouldn't hire her because she sabotaged the Albion party live on television. After Ruby has defeated Gwillam, we see her practically beg for the entity to disappear and finally leave her alone, but then we cut to several decades later to Ruby in her old age, and the entity is still there. So, if defeating Roger ap Gwillam wasn't the answer to making the entity stop haunting Ruby, why was this subplot even included in the episode? It's pointless and, again, has nothing to do with the theme of Ruby's psychological trauma! This isn't 'ambiguous', or 'abstract', or 'open to interpretation'; this is stupid! Yeah, I said, and allow me to repeat myself again - "73 Yards" is pure bullshit from start to finish!

I'm sure this episode's defenders will argue that these screenwriting oversights don't matter because it's all symbolic or even that it's self-contained. Putting aside the fact that this is a cop-out and an excuse not to think critically about the episode, it relies on continuity to achieve its intended effect. Like the snow motif established in "The Church on Ruby Road", the Doctor saying 'the war between the land and the sea' to aloofly set up a spin-off series, and, uh, oh yeah - the fact that it's supposed to be about Ruby's fear of abandonment, which has been planted since her first appearance. Speaking of Ruby, now is a good time to pick apart just how cruel and mean-spirited this episode is.

Episode Four: Cruelty for Cruelty's Sake (and The Diminishing Returns of Misery Porn)

Tone is a difficult thing to get right in storytelling. When we talk about tonal consistency, what we mean is the writer's ability to shift from one tone to the next as required to maintain the audience's emotional and intellectual engagement as the story progresses to its organic conclusion. In most circumstances, it's ideal to ease the audience from one tone to the next, to make the narrative progression and overall mood of the piece feel natural and seamless. Only a handful of writers can jarringly snap from one tone to the next in a way that feels purposeful and effective. Creators like Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Quentin Tarantino, Edgar Wright, and Vivienne Medrano have honed their skills over the years to crash from comedy to tragedy, or vice-versa, on the occasions when it works and without breaking the suspension of disbelief.

What tonal consistency does not mean is having the exact same tone from start to finish without variation or counterpoint. That would be implausible and grow boring quickly. This is what we call the Law of Diminishing Returns. Screenwriting expert Robert McKee explains it like this:

The more often we experience something, the less effect it has. Emotional experience, in other words, cannot be repeated back-to-back with effect. [...] The first time we experience an emotion or sensation[,] it has its full effect. If we try to repeat this experience immediately, it has half or less than half of its full effect. If we go straight to the same emotion for the third time, [...] it delivers the opposite effect. [...] Suppose a story contains three tragic scenes contiguously. [...] In the first, we shed tears; in the second, we sniffle; in the third, we laugh... loudly. Not because the third scene isn't sad - it may be the saddest of the three - but because the previous two scenes have drained us of grief and we find it insensitive, if not ludicrous, of the storyteller to expect us to cry yet again (McKee, 1998, p. 244).

Although McKee does offer an exceptional scenario wherein the contrast from one positive to the next, or one negative to the next, is so great as to make the previous scene have its opposite effect in retrospect (p. 245), I don't think this is the case with "73 Yards". With its negative-to-negative scene changes, the emotional charges progress as they normally would. This is the fundamental tone problem with "73 Yards", and one which it has in common with the movie Joker (Phillips, 2019), as I mentioned in my previous essay on the subject. It's just one tragic event in this character's life after another with little, if any, respite or counterpoint.

Now, in a good Russell T Davies-penned experimental episode, "Turn Left" (2008b), there is a tonal counterbalance. Scenes of the socio-political state of affairs in the United Kingdom worsening and life getting harder for Donna Noble (Catherine Tate) and her family are contrasted with scenes of them comforting each other, enjoying each other's company, and making friends with the refugees with whom they end up living. This makes it all the more affecting when tragedy strikes for these characters with whom we have connected, and is a better mastery of tone, but is also simply truer to life. For most of us, life has its ups and downs, not just one or the other. "73 Yards" is nothing like that; it's a trauma conga line, to put it in TV Tropes terminology (no datea). It's not like The Passion of Joan of Arc (Dreyer, 1928) or Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (Lynch, 1992), where they show you a character suffering in such a way that makes you empathise with them and realise their humanity. Nor is it like Truth of the Divine (Ellis, 2021) or Hazbin Hotel (Prime Video, 2019-present) that contrast a specific character's repeated misery or depression with them experiencing joy, comfort, or a meaningful connection with other members of the cast.

Supposedly, "73 Yards" pays homage to films like An American Werewolf in London (Landis, 1981) and It Follows (Mitchell, 2014). The ending sequence of the elderly Ruby merging with the entity just as she is about to die also invokes David Bowman (Keir Dullea) merging with the monolith at the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey. But the nuclear annihilation threat in the Roger ap Gwillam subplot is highly reminiscent of Threads (Jackson, 1984). I bring this up because, whereas that film's back-to-back negative emotional charges are a debatable weakness in what is otherwise a really strong political drama, in "73 Yards", this is one of many major flaws in a story that ultimately falls apart under scrutiny.

In fact, let me briefly recap this episode's central conceit: our main character is followed everywhere by an eerie figure, tries to complete a complex task to vanquish said figure to no avail, and ultimately joins with the figure as they pass into death. Does it sound like I am talking about The Seventh Seal? That was one of the greatest films of all time, and again, it was consistent and focused in its aesthetic and tone, and communicated some very complex ideas through its symbolic imagery. "73 Yards" is beginning to feel more and more like something that borrows from other profound works of art to seem profound itself without actually being so.

To be honest, the fact that this episode barely has a plot and what little plot it does have is so full of holes, you could keep a hamster inside it without fear of suffocation, wouldn't bother me quite so much if this episode weren't so fucking unpleasant. We spend a whole episode watching Ruby Sunday, an eighteen-year-old girl - who, up to this point in the show, has done nothing wrong - be psychologically traumatised over and over again by the people who are supposed to be her friends, family, and allies, throughout her entire life, with no significant relief or counterpoint (Fig. 4). You know, apart from the episode's big dumb reset button ending, where they take us back to the beginning with only the faintest hint that Ruby might remember the Hell she went through in this episode. A little bit. That would be fine if later episodes acknowledged what Ruby went through or the difficult emotions "73 Yards" brought up, but that doesn't happen. The only impact "73 Yards" has on the remainder of the series is a few split-second continuity references in "Empire of Death" and "Wish World". The fact that the events of "73 Yards" have no relevance outside this one episode means that the creators essentially put a hitherto innocent character through her worst fears and potential traumas just for the sake of it.

Fig. 4 An episode all about putting an eighteen-year-
old girl through Hell just because.

As a matter of fact, the full picture might be even worse. Supposedly, the idea behind "73 Yards" is to explore what is essentially an irrational fear on Ruby's part, that all the people in her life actually hate her and will turn their backs on her one day. Well, amidst flippantly suggesting that Ruby's birth father caused her further trauma by rejecting her once they finally met, Season Two introduces Conrad Clark, who, in "Lucky Day" (2025d), tricks Ruby into a fake romantic relationship only to publicly humiliate her and instigate stochastic terrorism against her whilst revealing, in his own words, that he was pretending to like her the entire time amidst several misogynistic insults. In "Wish World", Carla (under the influence of Conrad's wish) calls the secret police to have Ruby taken away for questioning his authority; the emotional impact of this betrayal is never acknowledged after the wish has ended and the world restored to normal. Having essentially been made unhoused and on the run from her own family, numerous supporting characters harangue Ruby for supposed ableist microaggressions.

In "The Reality War", her employer, Kate Stewart, sends Ruby alone and unprotected to deal with Conrad, the armed psychopath who has tried to kill her at least once. Later, everybody else at UNIT heartlessly dismisses Ruby when she tries to help them remember the Doctor and Belinda Chandra's (Varada Sethu) daughter, Poppy (Sienna-Robyn Mavanga-Phipps), who was erased from existence after the wish ended. The Doctor himself proceeds to gaslight and pathologise her for it, saying her memory is a glitch, stuff like that. Even after everybody realises Ruby is right, nobody apologises to her, and the Doctor, knowing he may be about to regenerate and this is the last time Ruby will see him, just shuts the TARDIS door and flies off without a proper farewell. Oh, wait, I apologise, he said they were family, so that makes it perfectly okay that the Doctor inflicted these emotional scars on his supposed best friend(!) Are these the actions of Ruby's friends and comrades, the one big happy family that is the UNIT team? No, clearly, these characters give not one fuck about Ruby's feelings, her well-being, or even her physical safety, as Kate shows by throwing her to the wolves, sending her unsupported and unarmed to face Conrad.

I know I'm going into a lot of detail about episodes that came after the one central to this essay, but I felt it necessary to put it in the wider context of the rest of the show. "73 Yards" should have been about deconstructing and disproving one of our main characters' deepest irrational anxieties, but instead, this entire era proves Ruby's fears right in the worst possible way. The Bad Wolf era of Doctor Who is a heartless and nihilistic world dominated by petty, hostile, and mean-spirited people who, honestly, couldn't deserve Ruby's loyalty, trust, or efforts to protect humanity less. Even Carla can't be counted on to care for Ruby because it's only a matter of time before she becomes influenced to betray her in the worst possible way again. Honestly, I don't know why anybody would write the story like this unless it was just to make Ruby Sunday the butt-monkey (TV Tropes, no dateb) of this franchise as a metatextual take-that to Millie Gibson. But why would the creators want to do that? Well, a better question would be, why did they sell a fake rumour to the British press that threatened to sabotage Gibson's public reputation and future career prospects?

Do you want to know why Gibson only ended up doing one season when it was originally planned that she would do more? Well, that's because British tabloid The Mirror claimed that 'insiders' had told them that Gibson was a 'diva' who was difficult about night shoots (Yaqoob, Fahey, and Armstrong, 2023). That was a complete lie. But these rumours led to Gibson being asked to do only one season with a reduced role in Season Two. The Mirror reported that Gibson was leaving and consequently being replaced after Season One, before it even aired (Methven, 2024). Depending on how much The Mirror editorialised in their original article, we can confidently say that somebody from Bad Wolf, the company producing Doctor Who, spread a lie to the press to smear Gibson (who was only eighteen at the time). It gets worse: Bad Wolf inhibited Gibson from speaking out against these rumours and publicly defending herself:

I couldn't be like, 'It's a lie!' [because] they'd be like, 'Well, that's spoilers.' It was quite hard to stand up for myself without ruining the show. I was like, 'Oh, this is horrific because it just looks like it’s true.' [...] Oh, it was awful [...] What was frustrating was the amount of people that were like, 'Oh, sorry, this has happened mate,' and I was like, 'Yeah, it's not [happened], but thank you.' (Gibson, quoted in Anderton, 2025).

As far as I'm concerned, the creators making what is essentially a running gag out of how often and how severely they can put Ruby through Hell tracks far too well with this disgusting mistreatment the company inflicted on Millie Gibson in real life. I can't find a source for it anymore, but I remember reading in the 2010s that then-showrunner Steven Moffat had said something to the effect of, 'the test of a Doctor Who episode is how bad a time you can give Amy Pond (Karen Gillan)'... Has the show always been like this?

"73 Yards" is the most depressing episode of Doctor Who ever made, but for all the wrong reasons. The whole purpose of it is to put an innocent young character through the worst possible traumas just for the sake of it, presumably because somebody close to the creators (if not the creators themselves) had some inexplicable grudge against the actress playing that character. Even the Steven Moffatt-penned episode "Boom" (2024b) sees Ruby get brutally shot to death early on before being revived at the very end of the story, robbing her of a whole episode's worth of screentime and development; as if to say, 'Fuck you. I can't be arsed to write for your character, so I'm just gonna kill her for most of the episode.' Think the show's going to acknowledge how traumatising that would be for an eighteen-year-old? Yeah, right. The worst part is that "73 Yards" doesn't work as a companion spotlight episode either because, despite being an episode dedicated to putting Ruby through as much emotional pain as possible, it still somehow manages to make even Ruby unlikable. What do I mean by this? Well, let's talk about Marti Bridges (Sophie Albett).

Episode Five: All Edge and No Point (Makes Rusty a Dull Boy)

God, do you think that's enough puns? Anyway, Maya of the Your Take is Excrement podcast said this of A Serbian Film (Spasojevic, 2010): 'It's like a pizza cutter: all edge and no point' (Maya and Leitz, 2022). This is one of the best one-sentence movie reviews I have ever heard, albeit embedded in an hour-long podcast. Far too many artists think that arbitrary controversy and darkness are synonymous with quality, and that putting harsh subjects in their art is a substitute for exploring those subjects. A Serbian Film is Exhibit A. There is a huge, fundamental difference between evocation and exploitation. Evocation goes into experiences or ideas with depth, nuance, and a justifiable purpose. "Goodbye Blue Sky" (Pink Floyd, 1979) earns every ounce of its emotional reaction; it's poignant because of the sincerity with which it explores war and the loss of innocence. In contrast, exploitation dumps contentious or disturbing concepts into a text carelessly and with little to no respect for those subjects; it says, 'Look at how edgy and serious I am!' Where the Dead Go to Die (Creamer, 2012) rubs child abuse, murder, sexual violence, and the like in the audience's face purely for shock value, or just for shits and giggles.

My point is, if you're going to include heavy real-world topics in your story at all, you'd better have a damn good reason to do so, have something meaningful and relevant to say about those topics, and approach them carefully and when necessary. "73 Yards" is principally concerned with mental health and trauma. Personally, I don't think the Bad Wolf creatives are qualified to lecture us about mental health or trauma, and not just because The War Between the Land and the Sea sees Kate Stewart blackmail her therapist and threaten a complete stranger at gunpoint for dropping a plastic bottle, like a psychopath with the implied excuse of 'she has trauma.' Russell T Davies, for his part, considers the former 'a great scene [...] such a laugh' (Doctor Who Production News, cited in MrTARDIS, 2025). Then there's "The Interstellar Song Contest", which arbitrarily uses the Doctor's trauma of Gallifrey being destroyed as an excuse for the out-of-left-field faceheel turn where he intimidatingly threatens and subsequently tortures a Hellion named Kid (Freddie Fox), even after he has already stopped Kidd from killing his targets with a delta wave. The "I was triggered" line sounds almost like something you'd hear in a Daily Wire production or South Park  (Comedy Central, 1997-present), strawmanning the 'woke left' as oversensitive and overly aggressive.

As already mentioned, "73 Yards"' trauma conga line and the borderline farcical hostility and mean-spiritedness of everybody else in the episode towards Ruby make this a very shallow 'exploration' of mental health and trauma. It also doesn't help that the episode feels the need to make fun of her in the process. There's a shot of Ruby, several years after UNIT ditches her due to the entity's influence, of her alone in a flat, drinking a glass of wine (Fig. 5). This is the most stereotypical depiction of a lonely, single woman in the history of pop culture (and, no, I'm not buying the 'it takes place at Christmas' excuse.) Why not just have her sobbing with a tissue box in front of The Notebook (Cassevetes, 2004), and surrounded by cats, while you're at it? I mean, one minute, the episode says, 'this is an extremely serious and dramatic story about some super heavy real-world issues, about this young woman's mental health struggles and trauma'; the next it says, 'she's a single woman, so she turns into Bridget Jones, lol!' Do you see what I mean when I say this episode has a tone problem? Much like "The Interstellar Song Contest" and The War Between, "73 Yards" lacks the emotional intelligence and focus to address, much less explore, mental health or abandonment in any meaningful way.

Fig. 5 'She's a woman who lives alone, so she drinks
wine, get it?' Fuck you, Russell.

But, not content with exploiting these issues for misery porn, this episode also feels the need to exploit domestic and/or sexual violence for shock value, as well. Enter Marti Bridges, an Albion employee who, it is heavily implied, Roger ap Gwillam abuses. It's unclear whether it's domestic violence, sexual abuse, or both. Ruby's plan to take down Gwillam is to stand exactly seventy-three yards from him to make the entity appear before him, thus causing him to run away. She could have done that at any time. Keep in mind, Gwillam is a politician, and he likely gives interviews and speeches in which he's standing or sitting still all the time. Now, if Ruby was a respected enough member that she was allowed to attend the massive televised ceremony where Gwillam receives the nuclear codes in the football stadium, she could probably be permitted to come along to just about any event Gwillam attends where the other Albion members watch from behind the scenes.

Before walking the necessary distance to make the entity appear before Gwillam at the football stadium, Ruby says this to Marti: 'I’m sorry I took so long. Because I think I only get one chance. And I had to be sure I was right. But I wish I could’ve helped you.' But, like... she could. She could have helped Marti by enacting her plan any time she wanted. She thought she'd only get one chance? Um... why? Why would that be the case? There's no reason that I can think of as to why Ruby had to wait so long before enacting her plan. She knew pretty much the whole time that Marti was being abused, but she still arbitrarily waited to use the entity's power to get rid of Gwillam and stop the abuse. For months, if not years, Ruby let Marti suffer at Gwillam's hands. For no. Fucking. Reason.

If "73 Yards" was trying to make us sympathise with Ruby, then having her knowingly stand by and let an innocent woman be abused when she could have stopped it with her magic ghost stalker lady whenever she wanted, completely undercuts that. More to the point, the domestic and/or sexual abuse subplot is totally unnecessary. The whole point of the episode is supposed to be deconstructing Ruby's fear of abandonment, but they arbitrarily shoehorned in a subplot about this extremely sensitive subject purely for shock value, or to show off how 'edgy' and 'realistic' they are. Look, I get it, they can't be expected to go into too much detail about domestic or sexual violence because Doctor Who is a family show on primetime with lots of children in the audience. Well, you know, that's a good reason not to allude to domestic or sexual abuse at all in what's supposed to be a family show. If you can't approach these subjects with the depth, nuance, and respect that they deserve, you probably shouldn't approach them at all. Including adult topics as arbitrarily and flippantly as this doesn't make a show more mature; it makes it more childish.

Say what you want about David Lynch. Blue Velvet (Lynch, 1986) and Twin Peaks, respectively, tackle sexual and domestic abuse maturely: they depict these issues as complex and serious, with empathy towards victims and survivors, and they justify approaching these issues by making it feel purposeful within the context of the stories they are telling. "73 Yards" does the opposite: it throws these issues in when it is irrelevant to the story without giving them the care and attention that an actually mature story would, because they're only here as a gimmick to say 'Look how serious and 'grown-up' we are.' Furthermore, it fucks up the intention of making Ruby sympathetic because of how she allows this abuse to happen for months, if not years, with a phoney excuse.

I'm sure I'll receive responses from defenders of this episode that I 'just don't get it.' Well, there is some truth to this, mainly because I simply can't figure out what writer Russell T Davies is trying to say with this episode. Going back to Ruby's plan to defeat Gwillam, is this what the episode is saying is the solution to authoritarianism: summon a magic ghost that makes people run away from you (most of the time), have it appear in front of a fascist politician, and hope that somehow brings down his entire party? At the episode's end, the entity merges with the dying Ruby (again, a la 2001) and then Ruby appears at the episode's beginning, seeing herself and the Doctor when they first arrive on the Welsh coastline, but from the entity's perspective. This implies that the entity is Ruby, in a manner of speaking; even the video of this scene on the Official YouTube channel (Fig. 6) insinuates this in the title (Doctor Who, 2024b). However, throughout the episode, the entity causes everyone in Ruby's life to abandon her and stalks her until the day she dies, ensuring she remains isolated and alone forever. So, what is the episode trying to say, exactly, that Ruby's doing all these things to herself? What kind of message is that? The elderly Ruby says she has hope, but like, hope for what? This is the scene right before the one where she dies.

Fig. 6 What the fuck is the episode even trying to say
with this twist, anyway?

If I didn't know any better, I would think that the sequence of the Welsh pubgoers being so hostile to Ruby is meant to imply that she deserves all the horrible shit that happens to her. 'How dare you inadvertently insinuate that Welsh people are primitive and superstitious! Here's a lifetime of isolation and abuse based on a piece of Welsh folklore to teach you a lesson! Yeah, take that, Ruby! That'll teach you to... ask if you can pay for something with your phone.' This maps so cleanly onto the rest of the era's overly simplistic and antagonistic approach to being 'progressive', which essentially boils down to, 'Shut up, Ruby, your brain is a glitch! You're being ableist, Ruby! Stop being ableist, Ruby!'

"73 Yards" was a godawful episode when it first aired, and it's a godawful episode now, and I still can't understand the acclaim it has received since its initial broadcast. All the praise I've heard for this episode praises it for incredibly superficial reasons, like 'it's dark' and 'it doesn't explain itself.' But that doesn't make it a good episode. I mean, it takes effort for an episode to fail this hard at everything it's trying to do. It barely has a story, and what story it does have is full of holes and crippling logical oversights. It fails as a character spotlight episode because it makes that character look bad. It's needlessly cruel to its main character, whilst periodically mocking her. It's inappropriately glib about harsh real-world topics, which it doesn't need to include in the first place. It gets tone wrong because it can't decide whether to be dreamlike or realistic. It negates all its potential for character development or long-term acknowledgement of what it brings up because of its reset button ending. To tell you the truth, I've decided that "73 Yards" is the worst Doctor Who episode I have ever seen; nothing works about it except Millie Gibson's performance and Dylan Holmes Williams' direction.

In fact, you know what this episode reminds me of? Slaughtered Vomit Dolls (Fedorchuk, 2006). I'm not just being hyperbolic here, think about it: it's a deeply cynical and pretentious product that fetishises the on-screen pain and misery of an innocent young woman whose creators were allegedly treating the actress who played that character like shit in real life. Of course, Bad Wolf's mistreatment of Millie Gibson is a far cry from what Shawn Fedorchuk allegedly did to Amera LaVey, but at the very least, Slaughtered Vomit Dolls had the courtesy to be for adults only. Doctor Who doing something this similar and selling it to kids really rubs me the wrong way -  and again, the fact that I can unironically say that Slaughtered Vomit Dolls did something better is a really big problem for this episode.

Finale: If You Stop Enjoying It, Give It Up

I always remember this scene from "Resurrection of the Daleks" (1984):

If anybody reading this essay is going to accuse me of overthinking this episode, I would remind you that, with its faux arthouse style and consiliatory political gesturing, "73 Yards" is constantly encouraging us to think about it. I don't think I even ranted this much about "The Reality War", and I reviewed that piece of shit twice (2025a and b)! But of course, "The Reality War" was going to suck because it's a Doctor Who series finale, and Doctor Who series finales always suck. "73 Yards", on the other hand, is a crushing disappointment. I fucking love liminal horror; Perfect Blue (Kon, 1997) is one of my all-time favourite movies. But I was just frustrated and miserable coming out of this episode, for all the wrong reasons. So, yes, for me, "73 Yards" is worse than "The Reality War". I waited for weeks for the rest of Season One to do something to make my soul-crushing experience with "73 Yards" feel justified, but it never happened. Furthermore, Season Two made it even worse by confirming that this show's universe under Bad Wolf was as nihilistic and hateful as it seemed after "73 Yards". In retrospect, this may have been merely the catalyst; however, over the last couple of years, Doctor Who has lost its appeal for me.

At the time of writing, I am twenty-nine years old. Although Doctor Who is basically for all ages, it feels weird thinking this much about it, considering its reputation for being a kids' show. When I introspect about this, I realise that for a good chunk of my life, the show did mean something to me, as it does to many other people. It honestly did bring me joy and stimulated my imagination and sense of adventure. But in the last couple of years, the Doctor Who universe has become much more shallow and unpleasant. The people of Earth face no consequences for joining in a far-right podcaster's stochastic terrorism, and laugh their arses off at UNIT employees' public humiliation and suffering. The fact that they're dumb enough to let something like Think Tank gain traction in The War Between, after everything they did in "Lucky Day" got exposed as being based on lies, shows that there is no hope for the human race in this show's universe. Meanwhile, the UNIT members themselves will gang up on you and gaslight you if they feel like it, as they do to Ruby in "The Reality War". Even the Doctor is perfectly content torturing a genocide survivor to defend space Eurovision.

Since "The Reality War", I basically lost my respect for Russell T Davies and Bad Wolf in general after all the false promises throughout this era of the show and all the terrible creative decisions. I resented what I saw as them stringing us along all this time for so little pay-off, and I still do to some extent. But, in the last few months, I would periodically look into what was happening with the franchise and laugh to myself when I saw anything written about negative wider fan reception or low viewing figures because of that resentment. Then I realised that I was following a franchise just to get off to watching it fail, and that's really not a good feeling or a healthy mindset for anything.

Thinking about this franchise as it is right now just puts me in a bad mood. Even indulging in the Classic Series doesn't feel fun anymore because of how much the current creative team have milked the Classic Series to death for nostalgia. It's honestly got to a point where, for the sake of my own mental health, I just have to move on from Doctor Who. It might not be the only episode that made me feel this way - the other would be "The Interstellar Song Contest" - but I do blame "73 Yards" for this to a certain extent, because it's the earliest I can remember feeling this way since this new era began. If you had told me back when Russell T Davies' return as showrunner was announced that I would feel this way only a few years later, I would find it hard to believe. Maybe it will get better eventually, but for now at least, I think I just need to focus on things that I do still enjoy. I might still shitpost about it on Bluesky or even do the occasional Classic Who review on Letterboxd, but for the most part, I have decided to walk away from Doctor Who. 

I want to rebuke the strawman arguments that "73 Yards" detractors dislike it just because it's different or unconventional, or that they weren't paying attention, they lack the media literacy or frame of reference for other ghost stories or whatever, to appreciate the episode. You always seem to get these platitudinous responses when you criticise an artsy or experimental text, regardless of whether it works or not. Well, I paid attention to the episode, I've analysed it, I went into it with an open mind because of my aforementioned fondness for liminal and psychological horror, and I've concluded that "73 Yards" is a bad example of the genre and a bad example of a Doctor Who episode being 'daring' and 'unique'. It may sound like an overreaction to some, but, like Professor Gray said in his article on anti-fandom, this episode really has coloured my view of the show to the point where I can't enjoy it anymore. And you know, that just really sucks. 

WORKS CITED

FILMOGRAPHY

Films

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). Directed by Stanley Kubrick [Film]. UK/USA: Warner Bros.

American Werewolf in London, An (1981). Directed by John Landis [Film]. UK/USA: Universal Pictures.

Blue Velvet (1986). Directed by David Lynch [Film]. USA: De Laurentiis Entertainment Group (DEG).

Bridget Jones's Diary (2001). Directed by Sharon Maguire [Film]. Ireland/UK/France/USA: United International Pictures (UIP).

Castration Movie Anthology I: Traps (2024). Directed by Louise Weard [Film]. Canada: Matchbox Cine.

chien andalou, Un (1929). Directed by Luis Buñuel [Film]. France: Les Grands Films Classiques (GFC).

Cremaster Cycle, The (1995-2002). Directed by Matthew Barney [Video]. USA/France/UK: Celluloid Dreams.

I Saw the TV Glow (2024). Directed by Jane Schoenbrun [Film]. USA/UK: A24.

It Follows (2014). Directed by David Robert Mitchell [Film]. USA: RADiUS-TWC.

Joker (2019). Directed by Todd Phillips [Film]. Australia/Canada/USA: Warner Bros.

Mulholland Drive (2001). Directed by David Lynch [Film]. France/USA: Universal Pictures.

Notebook, The (2004). Directed by Nick Cassavetes [Film]. USA: New Line Cinema.

Passion de Jeanne d'Arc, La (1928). Directed by Carl Theodor Dreyer [Film]. France: Gaumont.

Perfect Blue (1997). Directed by Satoshi Kon [Film]. Japan: Rex Entertainment.

Persona (1966). Directed by Ingmar Bergman [Film]. Sweden: Svensk Filmindustri.

Serbian Film, A (2010). Directed by Srdjan Spasojevic [Film]. Serbia: Revolver Entertainment.

Seventh Seal, The (1957). Directed by Ingmar Bergman [Film]. Sweden: Svensk Filmindustri.

She's Gotta Have It (1986). Directed by Spike Lee [Film]. USA: Island Pictures.

Shining, The (1981). Directed by Stanley Kubrick [Film]. UK/USA: Warner Bros.

Slaughtered Vomit Dolls (2006). Directed by Shawn Fedorchuk [Video]. Canada: Kingdom Of Hell Productions.

Southland Tales (2006). Directed by Richard Kelly [Film]. France/Germany/USA: Samuel Goldwyn Films.

Star Wars (1977). Directed by George Lucas [Film] USA: 20th Century Fox.

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Where the Dead Go to Die (2012). Directed by James Creamer [Film]. USA: Unearthed Films.

Television Series

Doctor Who (1963-1989). British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) Television.

Doctor Who (1968). British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) Television, Originally Broadcast 14 September - 12 October.

Doctor Who (1984). British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) Television, Originally Broadcast 8-15 February.

Doctor Who (2005-2022). British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) Television.

Doctor Who (2008a). British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) Television, Originally Broadcast 14 June, 19:10.

Doctor Who (2008b). British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) Television, Originally Broadcast 21 June, 18:40.

Doctor Who (2014). British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) Television, Originally Broadcast 13 Sep, 19:30.

Doctor Who (2015). British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) Television, Originally Broadcast 28 Nov, 20:05.

Doctor Who (2017). British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) Television, Originally Broadcast 20 May, 19:25.

Doctor Who (2020). British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) Television, Originally Broadcast 9 Feb, 19:10.

Doctor Who (2023-present). British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) Television.

Doctor Who (2023a). British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) Television, Originally Broadcast 2 December, 18:30.

Doctor Who (2023b). British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) Television, Originally Broadcast 25 December.

Doctor Who (2024a). British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) Television, Originally Broadcast 25 May, 18:50.

Doctor Who (2024b). British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) Television, Originally Broadcast 22 June, 18:40.

Doctor Who (2024c). British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) Television, Originally Broadcast 18 May, 18:50.

Doctor Who (2025a). British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) Television, Originally Broadcast 17 May, 19:10.

Doctor Who (2025b). British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) Television, Originally Broadcast 24 May, 06:50.

Doctor Who (2025c). British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) Television, Originally Broadcast 31 May, 06:50.

Doctor Who (2025d). British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) Television, Originally Broadcast 3 May, 06:40.

Doctor Who: Unleashed (2025). British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) Television, Originally Broadcast 17 May, 20:00.

Hazbin Hotel (2024-present). Amazon Prime Video.

Helluva Boss (2019-present). YouTube.

Neon Genesis Evangelion (1995-1996). King Records.

Simpsons, The (1989-present). 20th Century Fox Television.

South Park (1997-present). Comedy Central Television.

Twin Peaks (1990-1991). American Broadcasting Company (ABC) Television.

War Between the Land and the Sea, The (2025). British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) Television, Originally Broadcast 21 December, 20:05.

X-Files, The (1993-2018). 20th Century Fox Television.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Blog Post

Break Down Cinema (2024) 'Empathy and Suffering in Narrative Fiction', Blogger, 31 July. Available at: https://breakdowncinema.blogspot.com/2024/07/empathy-and-suffering-in-narrative.html (Accessed: 9 January 2026).

Books

Ellis, L. (2021) Truth of the Divine. London: Titan Books.

McKee, R. (1998) Story: Substance, structure, style, and the principles of screenwriting. York: Methuen.

Journal Articles

Gray, J. (2003) 'New Audiences, New Textualities: Anti-Fans and Non-Fans', Journal of Cultural Studies, 6(1), pp. 64-81.

News Articles

Anderton, J. (2025) 'Doctor Who's Millie Gibson finally breaks silence on "horrific" and "frustrating" show rumour', Digital Spy, 21 October. Available at: https://www.digitalspy.com/tv/a69107686/doctor-who-millie-gibson-frustrating-rumour/ (Accessed: 9 January 2026).

Chaplain, C. (2019) 'Channel 4 Climate Debate: Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage replaced by ice sculptures after snubbing programme', The i Paper, 28 November. Available at: https://inews.co.uk/news/politics/channel-4-climate-debate-boris-johnson-ice-sculpture-nigel-farage-368852?ico=in-line_link (Accessed: 9 January 2026).

Duncan, C. (2019) 'Boris Johnson hides in fridge on live TV while dodging interview on eve of election', The Independent, 11 December. Available at: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/boris-johnson-hides-fridge-general-election-piers-morgan-good-morning-britain-live-tv-a9241631.html (Accessed: 9 January 2026).

Methven, N. (2024) 'EXCLUSIVE: Doctor Who companion Millie Gibson dropped from next series of BBC show as replacement revealed', The Mirror, 20 January. Available at: https://www.mirror.co.uk/tv/tv-news/doctor-who-companion-millie-gibson-31924485 (Accessed: 9 January 2026).

Yaqoob, J., Fahey, N., and Armstrong, L. (2023) 'EXCLUSIVE: Dr Who star Millie Gibson branded a 'diva' after being 'annoyed' about night shoots', The Mirror, 17 June. Available at: https://www.mirror.co.uk/tv/tv-news/dr-who-star-millie-gibson-30258693 (Accessed: 9 January 2026).

Podcast

Maya and Leitz, M. (2022) '', Your Take is Excrement, Podtail [Podcast]. 11 May. Available at: https://podtail.com/podcast/your-take-is-excrement/ (Accessed: 9 January 2026).

Song

Pink Floyd. (1979) ‘Goodbye Blue Sky’, The Wall [CD]. UK: Harvest. 

Web Pages

BreakDownCinema (2025a) 'Doctor Who: Wish World & The Reality War (2025) review by BreakDownCinema', Letterboxd, 31 May. Available at: https://letterboxd.com/breakdowncinema/film/doctor-who-wish-world-the-reality-war/ (Accessed: 10 January 2026).

BreakDownCinema (2025b) 'Doctor Who: Wish World & The Reality War (2025) review by BreakDownCinema', Letterboxd, 28 June. Available at: https://letterboxd.com/breakdowncinema/film/doctor-who-wish-world-the-reality-war/1/ (Accessed: 10 January 2026).

House of Commons Library (2020). 'General Election 2019: full results and analysis'. Available at: https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-8749/ (Accessed: 9 January 2026).

TV Tropes (no datea). 'Trauma Conga Line'. Available at: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TraumaCongaLine (Accessed: 9 January 2026).

TV Tropes (no dateb). 'Butt-Monkey'. Available at: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ButtMonkey (Accessed: 9 January 2026).

YouTube Videos

Doctor Who (2023) 'The Church on Ruby Road: Behind The Scenes | Doctor Who'. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MIKeuC3IE9c (Accessed: 9 January 2026).

Doctor Who (2024) 'Ruby is the Woman? | 73 Yards | Doctor Who'. Available at: https://youtu.be/2QT77QkEH5E?si=S_D908WD4HjfE-fV (Accessed: 9 January 2026).

Doctor Who (2024) 'What do YOU think she was saying? 🧍‍♀️ #DoctorWho'. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Qh0bsMRS6Fg (Accessed: 9 January 2026).

Folding Ideas (2015) 'Folding Ideas - The Cremaster Cycle (Part 1 of 2)'.  Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=usfTxTXlCFc (Accessed: 10 January 2026).

Internet Investigator, The (2021) 'Lucifer Valentine: The Horror Genre's Most Elusive Predator (Allegedly)'. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hffvUtXe4Y8 (Accessed: 10 January 2026).

MrTARDIS (2025) 'A HISTORIC Fumble of a Finale - The War Between The Land and The Sea Episodes 3, 4 + 5 REACTION'. Available at: https://youtu.be/X3VP0Pm7tZ8 (Accessed: 9 January 2026).