Doctor Who‘s latest season was quite the ride, huh? Whether you call it season 14 or season 1 (as Disney Plus has branded it), Ncuti Gatwa’s first run as the Fifteenth Doctor certainly felt like a brand new start for the immortal time-traveling series, one which took a bold swing essentially every week. Take the season’s spooky highlight, “73 Yards,” for example.
A ‘Doctor-lite’ episode (Ncuti Gatwa was unavailable because he was still filming Sex Education), “73 Yards” sees Millie Gibson’s companion Ruby Sunday abandoned in sleepy, creepy rural Wales when the Doctor vanishes after accidentally stepping into a “fairy circle,” a local bit of superstition. What’s more, Ruby becomes haunted by a figure who follows her wherever she goes, always staying exactly 73 yards away.
Unusually for Doctor Who, but common for the classic ghost stories it was emulating, “73 Yards” ended without providing many concrete answers on, well, basically anything. At least the season finale ultimately offered us one big clue as to what it was all about…
What happens in Doctor Who: “73 Yards?”
“73 Yards” explores its own alternate timeline, as Ruby lives an entire life in this world where the Doctor vanished, even if she’s never able to escape the mysterious woman who’s following her. What’s more, whenever she sends anyone to talk to the woman for her, they end up running away screaming and refusing to talk to Ruby again. Just what does the woman say to them?
Even so, Ruby somewhat makes peace with the constant specter of the woman and her isolated existence. When she’s in her 40s, she decides to do something about Roger ap Gwilliam, who the Doctor told her in the episode’s opening scene was the most dangerous Prime Minister the U.K. has ever had. Ruby works hard to enter his inner circle and discovers just how insane and power-hungry he is; he’s planning to start a nuclear war.
Just as Roger’s preparing to trick NATO into giving him the nuclear codes, Ruby cleverly uses her own curse against him. She maneuvers herself 73 yards away from ap Gwilliam, the woman speaks to him, and he runs away. Whatever the woman tells him causes Roger to become a shell of his former self and he resigns as PM.
Fast forward four more decades and an elderly Ruby is on her deathbed, pleased with herself for saving the world, when the woman finally approaches her. As alt-Ruby dies, she realizes the truth — the woman has been her elderly self all along. Old Ruby finally touches hands with her specter and she is taken back to that long ago day in Wales. Except, this time, she is able to get her younger self’s attention just a fraction earlier, stopping the Doctor from stepping into the fairy circle and averting the entire alternate timeline.
Doctor Who: “Empire of Death” explains the significance of 73 yards
There’s much about “73 Yards” that remains a mystery — its time travel logic, for instance, is curious, as it’s more like three related but separate timelines than a neat time loop — but at least the finale, “Empire of Death,” explained the significance of the 73 yards distance.
In one scene, the Doctor explains how the TARDIS is able to blend into any location because it has a perception filter, meaning it makes it difficult to look at. He specifies that the range of the perception filter is 66.7 meters exactly. “73 yards,” Ruby points out, instinctively. The Doctor asks her how she knows that, but she’s unable to answer. “I don’t know,” she says, confused. “I just do.”
Clearly, then, the woman — and therefore Ruby — has TARDIS-like powers of her own, which makes sense given that she was able to travel in time. It’s possible that’s all the answers we’re going to get on “73 Yards,” but with the mystery of Ruby’s origins not entirely concluded it definitely feels like there’s more to be explored when Doctor Who returns for its 15th (or second) season in 2025.
In the meantime, a novelization of the episode releases this August.
