This is a spoiler-free review of 73 Yards, episode 4 of the latest series of Doctor Who. The spoiler-filled review will go live after the BBC One broadcast of the episode on Saturday evening.
The new series of Doctor Who has certainly run the gamut of Doctor Who and the kind of stories that the show can tell. It doesn’t feel as though this is the same show that started with Space Babies,
I think, of all of this series so far, 73 Yards is the most difficult to review. It is a story that feels as though it is significant for the series as a whole, but I think it’s safe to say that I am unsure how I feel about this story in the immediate aftermath of watching it at midnight on iPlayer. I will rewatch before my main review goes live this evening. There are elements of this that work really well, and I think that it is effectively spooky and certainly really captivating. That being said, the story does introduce a villain relatively late on and I don’t think that the story ever really does enough to convince the audience that this foe is truly as despicable as the story makes out. The development of the character feels rushed and I think that the conclusion of the story suffers as a result.
I haven’t really written about Murray Gold very much, except to criticise the song at the end of The Devil’s Chord, so I think it is only right to state that I really enjoyed his work in this episode, and it does a lot to establish the tone early on. I also thought that the direction by Dylan Holmes Williams was really good. There is some really lovely imagery around the TARDIS on the clifftop that put me in mind of some other stories, but I’ll talk about that more in my full review.
If there are flaws, there is one shining light, which is the performance of Millie Gibson. Gibson really does excel in this story, which is all the more remarkable when you learn that this is the first story that she filmed in the story. This is a story that features a reduced role for the Doctor, which I think is pretty commonly known, but Gibson proves that she is more than capable of holding her own. There are appearances here for characters that I did not expect and it is safe to say that the story plays out over a longer timescale than I anticipated, which means that Gibson really goes through the wringer.
I think this might be my shortest spoiler-free review but this story really has a lot that I do not want to spoil. It is captivating and engrossing, but I think that the ending left me feeling a little cold. And for why, you’ll have to come back later!
Other Spoiler-Free Reviews:
The Impossible Blog 
5 thoughts on “73 Yards – Spoiler-Free Review”