\n<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s get the easy bit out of the way. \u201c73 Yards\u201d is not just the best episode of the season so far, but also the strongest story \u201cDoctor Who\u201d has produced in years \u2014 despite the Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa) hardly featuring.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s not to say the decade-spanning story\u2019s success depends on Gatwa\u2019s absence. Yes, Episode 4 gives Millie Gibson space to break out of her companion role for the first time, and she gives a nuanced performance well beyond her 19 years.<\/p>\n
But it\u2019s Russell T Davies\u2019s ambitious, unpredictable script that will ensure a place for \u201c73 Yards\u201d in the Whoniverse history books. The episode constantly wrong-foots viewers, plays with folk stories and horror tropes, and finds a genuinely terrifying villain in a nuclear-warmongering politician.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are in Wales. Spectacular!\u201d shouts the Doctor as the TARDIS materializes on a craggy cliff face. For international viewers, it\u2019s a swift introduction to a nation that has long been associated with \u201cDoctor Who\u201d: Davies is Welsh, and the show is a former BBC Wales production.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
In a seemingly throwaway comment, the Doctor mentions a future prime minister, a Welshman named Roger ap Gwilliam, who will lead Britain to \u201cthe brink of nuclear war\u201d in the 2040s. \u201cSorry, spoilers,\u201d he says, shooting Ruby a smile.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Adventures in the here and now are put on pause when the Doctor accidentally steps on a witchy-looking web of threads and stones, known as a fairy circle, on the grass. Ruby reads the note attached \u2014 \u201cRest in peace Mad Jack\u201d \u2014 but when she looks up, the Doctor has vanished, the TARDIS locked behind him.<\/p>\n
Ruby initially assumes it\u2019s a prank. The strange woman (Hilary Hobson) with fluttering gray hair who\u2019s waving her arms in the near distance? She must be in on it, too. Ruby marches off toward the nearest village, yet when she looks back, the woman is always close behind, in the style of the 2015 horror movie \u201cIt Follows<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n