Fiction Reviews
Doctor Who: 73 Yards
(2024) Scott Hancock, BBC Books,
£9.99 / Can$19.99 / US$13.99, pbk, 145pp, ISBN 978-1-785-94883-1
Don’t look over your shoulder! She’s behind you! Here, we have Scott Hancock’s novelisation of the Doctor Who story 73 Yards which was written by Russell T Davies, and has been described as a folk horror episode with comparisons made to the work of M. R. James and Robert Aickman. These BBC/Target book adaptations are always entrusted to a safe pair of hands, and here the task of bringing the story to life in book form is given to Scott Hancock who is already a member of the Whovian-fold, having worked for Big Finish on Doctor Who and Torchwood audio adventures, and now works with Bad Wolf on Doctor Who and Tales of the TARDIS.
The story is told over 15 chapters, and the book is graced by one of Dan Liles’ best covers showing a pensive Ruby sitting on some rocks with the TARDIS only a few yards away. Keen-eyed readers might spot that the TARDIS looks sort of lost, and abandoned, lifeless with scratched paintwork and also some grass growing out of the top. The cover also features a figure of a woman in the background, and there are some campaign fliers billowing about showing a face, a portion of the Union Jack, and the promise of a “Bigger. Better. Bolder. Britain.”
Since the return of the Doctor in the form of Christopher Eccleston and those who followed, there has been a tendency to have a creepy episode and possibly an episode where the Doctor and his companion hardly appear with the story falling to others to take it forward. Think of episodes like “Blink”, “Love and Monsters”, “Father’s Day” and “Turn Left”. In a way the Doctor and Ruby have already had their “lite” episode in the story “Dot and Bubble” in the same season, but here we have another one with the Doctor disappearing very early on in the story, and it is left to Ruby to deal with a creepy, menacing threat, and another, more tangible one that threatens the future of the world.
As for the story, Ruby and the Doctor land on the rugged Welsh coast, and the Doctor makes a throwaway, yet foreshadowing remark about a future nuclear war that was averted, and then he makes the mistake of breaking a memorial pattern of “things”, and promptly disappears. Ruby thinks he might be relieving himself behind the TARDIS, but he isn’t, or he might be inside the time machine which is now locked from the inside. She can’t get in, and he doesn’t seem to be inside either, and the TARDIS seems slightly different, almost lifeless in a way.
With the Doctor gone, and unable to access the TARDIS, Ruby has no choice but to walk away, yet there is someone walking behind her. A woman who is mouthing words and making gestures over and over again. But the strange, creepy thing is that Ruby can’t get closer to her, even if she tries. The woman maintains the same distance away from her, and after encountering a lone hiker, Ruby rushes towards the nearby village and her future, and a future world, without the Doctor in it.
To be fair, a novelisation of '73 Yards' was never going to be as creepy as the screened version, but Hancock really gets inside Ruby’s head as she tries to find the Doctor, and with him missing, and unlikely ever to return, she has to intervene years later to save the world. Hancock expands on some of the minor characters that Ruby encounters on the way, and we get some additional scenes such as Ruby meeting Ace at UNIT, and politician Roger Ap Gwilliam showing himself to be even more of a threat to humans and aliens alike.
Scott Hancock’s version of '73 Yards' is a solid entry to the ranks of BBC/Target adaptations and one that Whovians will enjoy reading, and if they want to read more, there is a section after the story ends showing the covers of other Target books from Ncuti Gatwa’s first season, and new hardback adventures featuring the Doctor and Ruby from BBC Books.
Ian Hunter
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