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Spoilers 73 Yards grade and discussion thread

How do you rate 73 Yards

  • Total voters
    61
Blink and L&M aren't strictly "Doctor-lite" IMHO because the Doctor is still required to save the day.

Turn Left is pure Donna (with a hand from Rose). You could add Father's Day into the mix, since Nine disappears partway through and has bugger all to do with resolving the matter.

I don't think I'm alone in thinking the Doctor would show up to pass some vital message to Ruby during this ep. Then it turned out he gave her the message right at the start. THEN it turned out that message wasn't even the resolution of the problem.
 
Fantastic vibe to this episode. I love the creepy ones.

:techman:

A lot seemed to be left hanging though, and the end seemed kind of abrupt. If she prevents The Doctor from stepping on the fairy circle, does that mean she doesn’t stop the prime minister guy in this timeline? What’s the significance of 73 yards? 1001001? ;)

And what could she possibly say to all those people to make them react like that? Sounds like we’ll never know?

Anyway, I give it an 8 for atmosphere.
 
In more proof of the pointlessness of coming to conclusions based on overnight ratings this episode saw a 28% increase over last week beating even Episode One. It's still only 2.62m though.

The fact that it will probably squeak into the Top 10 for the week on the final figures is more of a worry for the British TV industry as a whole, though.
 
DigificWriter said:
Love and Monsters is bad because it doesn't give us a reason to give two shits about its characters.
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Actually, except for the bad joke ending, Love and Monsters is one of the absolute classics of the original RTD era, and I had no problem relating to the characters. Blink was good, too.

So, I stand by what I said: 'Doctor Lite' episodes almost never work and showrunners/writers should stop making them.
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Or, conversely, they often work just fine, and the problems with 73 Yards have nothing to do with 15's absence.
 
TV Tropes came up with the idea (quite similar to my own theory) that the Old Woman somehow conveys to the scared/disgusted people that they occupy a redundant timeline that purely serves/revolves around Ruby and - as with the people in Extremis - realising they are basically meaningless drives them insane.

Though, as Kate said, this is just folk trying to devise rules to explain what can't be explained. We got this with the Toymaker - the Doctor comes up with a seemingly plausible explanation as to how the Toymaker can do all this, only to subvert it and say NO, that's not REMOTELY what they do because you CANNOT understand it.
 
I quite enjoyed that, and without a single clue about most of it for the duration.

The tension built nicely throughout, even if I had worked out the woman's identity about a third of the way in.

The episode was an intriguing Dictor-lite idea regardless.

9/10.
 
DigificWriter said:
Blink is, speaking honestly, an average episode that the rest of the fandom treats like some holy trail masterpiece when it's not.
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Nuts to that. Blink is absolutely the best episode to introduce anyone to Doctor Who, ever.

Turn Left is honestly the only 'Doctor Lite' episode that works
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Therefore, you disagree with your own opinion.

Love and Monsters is bad because it doesn't give us a reason to give two shits about its characters.
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Love & Monsters is underrated, mainly because until the Abzorbaloff is revealed, its actually an alright Doctor-lite episode. But its not Doctor-lite, as pointed out, because the Doctor resolves the situation at the end of the episode, so there.

So, I stand by what I said: 'Doctor Lite' episodes almost never work and showrunners/writers should stop making them.
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Except, that's not what you said, but whatever.

Steve Roby said:
Actually, except for the bad joke ending, Love and Monsters is one of the absolute classics of the original RTD era, and I had no problem relating to the characters
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Honestly, I like the bits where those fans are on their own. And really, the episode really falters once Abzorbaloff is revealed, and really falls off the rails with the insipid, truly stupid gag ending. Before that, its actually OK.
 
Steve Roby said:
Or, conversely, they often work just fine, and the problems with 73 Yards have nothing to do with 15's absence.
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Nothing to do with Gatwa’s absence. Just terrible writing.

And then RTD basically comes out and says, “It’s not supposed to make sense. It’s up to the viewer to come up with head canon to make it make sense. And if you can’t make sense out of it, you shouldn’t criticize me for not being able to make sense out of it either.”

That’s a crappy attitude, and I hope it’s not a sign of things to come.
 
Captrek said:
And then RTD basically comes out and says, “It’s not supposed to make sense. It’s up to the viewer to come up with head canon to make it make sense. And if you can’t make sense out of it, you shouldn’t criticize me for not being able to make sense out of it either.”

That’s a crappy attitude, and I hope it’s not a sign of things to come.
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And yet, that's the whole fucking Bible.

Mayhap, he is commenting?
 
DigificWriter said:
Blink is, speaking honestly, an average episode that the rest of the fandom treats like some holy trail masterpiece when it's not.
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Insert Principle Skinner "No it's the children that are wrong." meme here. It's not even about fandom, even non fans enjoyed that episode.

Love & Monsters shows RTD at his absolute best, and his absolute worst.

Much as I love Blink I'm not sure it's the best introduction to the show. I'd go with Eleventh Hour or The Pilot personally.

Can I recommend that most people in this thread never watch Picnic at Hanging Rock, or at least half of David Lynch's back catalogue because if you insist on having answers to enjoy a story you're going to be heartily disappointed.
 
Steve Roby said:
Actually, except for the bad joke ending, Love and Monsters is one of the absolute classics of the original RTD era, and I had no problem relating to the characters. Blink was good, too.



Or, conversely, they often work just fine, and the problems with 73 Yards have nothing to do with 15's absence.
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The problem with 'Doctor Lite' episodes is absolutely the absence of The Doctor, and the only two episodes of this type that work even a little bit work because of things in them that end up offsetting the fact that they're inherently conceptually flawed (in Blink, those things are the atmosphere and the Weeping Angels, and in Turn Left, those things are Donna and her family).

TLDR: Doctor Who without The Doctor is a bad idea on its face. Period.
 
I really enjoyed this episode but thought that I must have overlooked or misunderstood something at the end until I looked in here and saw that everyone else seems to have been just as confused. Reading back also on what RTD has said, I guess my thinking on it works.

Millie was great and there was a nice sense of unease and creepiness throughout (nicely punctured by the people in the bar mocking the cliches). It felt more Moffat than RTD in some ways but definitely had shades of Years and Years and other RTD tropes.
I actually expected Susan Twist to be the woman in black, so the fact that she was the first person to be apparently driven mad by her was an unexpected, well, twist.

For all its ambiguity and lack of explanation, I think I probably enjoyed that one even more than Boom.
 
DigificWriter said:
TLDR: Doctor Who without The Doctor is a bad idea on its face. Period.
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Except the Doctor is in Blink, a fair bit actually, even if it's often on screen.

Captaindemotion said:
For all its ambiguity and lack of explanation, I think I probably enjoyed that one even more than Boom.
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You know I think I did as well, which for saying I've always been Team Moff is almost as unsettling as a mysterious figure 73 yards away.
 
Considering Blink is one of the most popular episodes of modern Doctor Who, it's not hard to see why Doctor lite episodes are a legitimate option for the show, even if the production necessities weren't a factor.

Though to be completely honest, I actually do think Blink is overrated. Don't misunderstand, it is a great episode and I do like it, I've just gotten sick of everyone calling it The Best, that it's kind of soured me on it a bit. Even in amongst third season episodes, I'd probably rate Human Nature/Family of Blood or Utopia/Sound of Drums/Last of the Time Lords higher.
 
I don't hate Blink; I just don't put it on the pedestal that the rest of the fandom does.

It's an episode that I feel is based on an inherently flawed concept and that only succeeds to the degree that it does (it warrants an average rating of 3 out of 5) because of its atmosphere and villains. If the Weeping Angels weren't as compelling as they are, the episode would be on par with Love and Monsters (which gets a 2 on a 1-5 ratings scale) because the characters it focuses on don't matter and aren't interesting enough in and of themselves to carry the episode.
 
There are James Bond stories where 007 hardly features, Sherlock Holmes is offscreen (or page) for much of the novel of Hound of the Baskervilles, the Marvels miniseries explored the Marvel universe from the POV of an average citizen and, IIRC, every so often Lee Child will do a Jack Reacher short story told from someone else’s POV. A Doctor Who story in which the Doctor hardly features or is a supporting character is just an idea for a story; whether it’s bad or not depends on whether the story succeeds or not.
 
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