Last week, Sony published a seemingly innocuous round of interviews that centered the company’s nebulous “creative entertainment vision”. Neil Druckmann, head of the Sony-owned game studio Naughty Dog, was one of those — but his interview wasn’t quite what it seemed.
Druckmann, who headed the team behind The Last of Us series, was apparently wildly misquoted by his own employers. A few days after the interviews were published, he took to X and said, “This is not quite what I said.” He even posted a section of the original interview transcript, which was hugely different.
Sony has since pulled the interview and issued an apology on the old page, saying the article had significant errors and inaccuracies, encompassing “animation, writing, technology, AI and future projects.” So, if all that was inaccurate, what was accurate?
Japan’s hit virtual pet, Punirunes, comes to the US this summer. A play on puni-puni, which means ‘squishy’ in Japanese, it’s a slightly different kind of digital pet. There’s a doughy button at the center of the device that simulates physical contact with your Punirunes. When you pet it, your finger even appears on the device’s screen. Punirunes makes its US debut in August for $40.
Amazon is permanently offering free Grubhub+ restaurant delivery as part of its Prime subscription. If you pay $139 per year for a Prime subscription and are up for spending more to eat, you’ll pay no fee for eligible GrubHub orders over $12. You’ll also see lower service fees, 5 percent credit back on pickup orders and, apparently, exclusive offers. Unlimited grocery delivery from Whole Foods and Amazon Fresh still costs an additional $10 per month.
The attacks have knocked the site offline a few times.
If you couldn’t access the Internet Archive and its Wayback Machine over the past few days, it’s because the website has been under attack. The nonprofit organization has announced it’s in its “third day of warding off an intermittent DDoS cyber-attack.”
The Internet Archive has yet to identify the source of the attacks, but it did talk about how libraries and similar institutions are being targeted more frequently these days. One institution it mentioned was the British Library, whose online information system was held hostage for ransom by a hacker group last year.
The headset is slated to gain PC support this year.
After teasing PC compatibility earlier this year, Sony has apparently created a PC adapter for the PS VR2, according to a Korean filing unearthed by VR and mixed-reality enthusiast Brad Lynch. There are no details on how the adapter works, what it looks like or how much it will cost, but it lends credence to previous evidence that the headset would have a wired PC connection. The company will be hoping that PC support will drive sales of its headset, which hasn’t exactly set the world alight.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-morning-after-sony-apologizes-for-fabricated-interview-with-head-of-last-of-us-studio-111549910.html?src=rss
Instagram is expanding two of its safety features in an effort to ramp up its bullying protections for teens. The company is changing how limiting and restricting work in its app to give teens ways to deal with potential bullies that it claims are less likely to lead to further retaliation.
With the changes, Instagram users will have the ability to “limit” their post interactions to “close friends” only. That means that users will only see comments, direct messages, tags and mentions from people on their close friends list. Other followers will still be able to interact with their posts, but those comments and messages won’t be visible to others.
The company previously introduced comment limiting as a creator-focused anti-bullying feature in 2021 with the goal of preventing the kind of sudden flood of harassment experienced by several UK football players. The latest changes, according to Instagram, are geared more toward teens who are dealing with bullies, but may be hesitant to use the app’s block feature due to fears of escalating potential conflicts,
For cases when people may be dealing with one particular bully, Instagram is making similar changes to its “restrict” feature. Users will be able to prevent restricted individuals from tagging or mentioning them. Comments from those on the restricted list will also be automatically hidden from others.
The updates comes as Meta is facing scrutiny over its handling of teen safety and other issues. The company was sued by dozens of states last year for allegedly failing to protect its youngest users from harmful aspects of its service.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/instagram-is-expanding-its-anti-bullying-features-for-teens-100037418.html?src=rss
Last week, Sony published a seemingly innocuous bit of fluff, touting its long-term "creative entertainment vision" in broad terms, along with some interviews of key employees. Neil Druckmann, studio head of Sony's Naughty Dog, was one of those — and his interview made waves in the game world. According to the interview, Druckmann said AI could "create nuanced dialogues and characters" and also said that the new game Naughty Dog was developing (but hasn't officially announced) "could redefine mainstream perceptions of gaming." Some mighty strong and potentially controversial statements from the head of a studio beloved for its The Last of Us and Uncharted franchises.
Problem is, Druckmann was wildly misquoted by his own employers. A few days after Sony published its interview, Druckmann took to X and said "this is not quite what I said." He then went full Ellie-in-revenge-mode on Sony, posting a section of the original interview transcript. (He was actually pretty polite if we're being honest — even the powerful can only bite the hand that feeds so hard.) Regardless, things here do not add up.
In editing my rambling answers in my recent interview with SONY, some of my words, context, and intent were unfortunately lost. Well, here's the full long rambling answer for the final question about our future game... pic.twitter.com/tVuxX3LYJF
Gaming reporter Stephen Totilo shared his own comparison of what Druckmann said and what Sony published, bolding the words in Sony's answer that Druckmann never said — and those words were the majority of the quote. Sony basically put words in his mouth and published them, kicking off a classic gamer freakout.
To be fair, if I was Druckmann, I'd be pretty pissed too. Look at this butchery!
If you're curious (about what he said; and how I spend a Friday night when my wife and kids are away), here's a comparison of the original answer and the edited one.
Many changes
No surprise, this was cut: "Not because games need to be movies, or they need to be TV shows" pic.twitter.com/FkxNkqQPY2
Now, five days later, Sony has removed the interview from its site entirely. However, they didn't just delete the page — they left it up with an apology to Neil and the Naughty Dog team "for any negative impact this interview might have caused."
My favorite bit is easily this:
In re-reviewing our recent interview with Naughty Dog's Neil Druckmann, we have found several significant errors and inaccuracies that don't represent his perspective and values (including topics such as animation, writing, technology, AI, and future projects).Sony
So everything he said about animation, writing, technology, AI and future projects had errors. Hey, at least they nailed his name and title.
For the morbidly curious, you can still read the "interview" on archive.org.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/sony-pulls-fabricated-interview-with-naughty-dog-head-neil-druckmann-210340146.html?src=rss
In the last few months, news organizations have leapt into bed with OpenAI, hatching Faustian bargains where the cash-strapped media industry exchanges a monetary pittance for OpenAI's right to scrape and integrate their content into things like ChatGPT. Those that have signed in blood include News Corp (publisher of the Wall Street Journal), the Financial Times, People magazine publisher Dotdash Meredith, the AP, and now, as Axios reports, The Atlantic and Vox Media.
The Atlantic quickly confirmed this new deal in a statement on its site. The publication says that it'll be a "premium news source" in OpenAI and that all its citations will be clearly attributed to The Atlantic with links back to the original content. There are concerns from publishers that users of AI chatbots don't actually need to go to the original sources; perhaps the calculus is that, for an industry in the twilight of its lifespan, some inbound link traffic is better than none. Then again, by agreeing to be scraped at all, perhaps The Atlantic is effectively wading directly into the tarpit of its own extinction (and of media as a whole).
There will also be an experimental "microsite" called Atlantic Labs that'll showcase "new products and features to better serve its journalism and readers." There's no indication yet that that content will involve anything created directly by AI, as sites like CNET and Sports Illustrated have tried with disastrous results.
According to Axios, Vox Media (publisher of its flagship news site Vox, tech site The Verge, the network of sports blogs under the SB Nation banner and many more) will have a similar style of attribution for its content. We've reached out to the company and will update this story if we get any confirmation or details on its deal with Open AI.
Vox Media is also said to be using OpenAI data both internally and in public-facing content. Axios mentions using OpenAI to "match shoppers" with content endorsed by Vox's many commerce channels, like The Strategist section of New York Magazine. Internally, Vox will use OpenAI to as part of its advertising platform to tweak ad creative to make visitors more likely to click; it'll also help them target ads at people likely to buy stuff from them. Details on how both of these programs will work is minimal right now, though.
While a number of publishers have been quick to embrace AI, not everyone is so enthused. The New York Timessued both OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement in December, saying that both companies use its material without permission to train their models. More recently, eight publications owned by the Alden Capital Group, including the Chicago Tribune and New York Daily News,sued both companies with a similar complaint. At this point, it seems like it's either spend time and money in a lawsuit to go after OpenAI's rampant intellectual theft or cut a deal that'll make you some spending cash in a dire media market.
It was only last week The Atlantic published its own screed decrying media organizations which had taken petty cash from AI interlopers in exchange for something of significantly greater value. The odds unfortunately suggest this story (and my moral high ground) will age just as poorly in the near future.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-atlantic-and-vox-media-made-their-own-deal-with-the-ai-devil-161017636.html?src=rss
Google is crossing genres with its latest wearable for kids, combining a gaming system and an activity tracker in the Fitbit Ace LTE. The company is pitching this as a “first-of-its-kind connected smartwatch that transforms exercise into play and safely helps kids lead more active, independent lives.” Basically, think of it as a Nintendo Switch pared down into an activity tracker for children aged 7 and up, with a few safety and connectivity features built in.
The main idea here is to get kids up and moving, in exchange for progress on the Ace LTE’s onboard games. But there are also basic tools that let parents (and trusted contacts) stay in touch with the wearer. Through the new Fitbit Ace app (that adults can install on iOS or Android), guardians can set play time, monitor activity progress and send calls or messages. On the watch itself, kids can also use the onscreen keyboard or microphone to type or dictate texts or choose an emoji.
The Fitbit Ace LTE’s hardware: Basically a Pixel Watch 2
Since the Fitbit Ace LTE uses essentially the same hardware as the Pixel Watch 2, it’s pretty responsive. One major difference, though, is that the kid-friendly tracker uses Gorilla Glass 3 on its cover, in addition to the 5 ATMs of water-resistance that both models share. Google does include a protective case with each Ace LTE, and it doesn’t add much weight.
There are also other obvious differences because the Pixel Watch 2 has a circular face while the Fitbit Ace LTE has a “squircle” (square with rounded corners) with two large buttons on the right side. The latter’s band is also a lot narrower, and it comes “with technology built in,” according to Google’s vice president of product management Anil Sabharwal. That's just a fancy way to say that the Ace LTE recognizes when you swap in a new strap and each accessory comes with unique content.
Cherlynn Low for Engadget
The company is calling these straps “Cartridges” — another reminder of how the Fitbit Ace LTE is a gaming console wannabe. When you snap a new one on, you’ll see an animation of all the bonus material you just got. They include new backgrounds and items for your Tamagotchi-esque pet called “eejie.” Separate bands also add unique cartoony strips, called Noodles, that make their way around the edges of the watch's display every day which chart the wearer’s progress towards daily goals, similar to Apple's activity rings.
I’m dancing around the main part of the Fitbit Ace LTE’s proposition, because I wanted to get the hardware out of the way. The most interesting concept here is the idea of a wearable gaming system. The Ace LTE’s home screen looks fairly typical. It shows you the time and the Noodle activity ring around it, as well as some small font at the very bottom showing the number of points collected.
To the left of this page is what Sabharwal called a “playlist” — a collection of daily quests. Like on other iOS or Android games, this is a bunch of targets to hit within a dictated time frame to ensure you’re engaged, and achieving these goals leads to rewards.
Eejie: Like Tamagotchi but less cute
Most of these rewards are things you can use to jazz up your digital pet’s home over on the right of the home screen. Google calls these things “eejies” — that name doesn’t actually mean anything. Some engineers in a room looked at the letters “I” “J” and “I” and sounded them out and thought sure, why not. (No, those letters don't actually stand for anything, either.)
Cherlynn Low for Engadget
According to Google, “Eejies are customizable creatures that feed off daily activity — the more kids reach their movement goals, the more healthy and happy their eejie gets.” When daily activities are completed and each child earns arcade tickets (or when a new watch strap is attached), they can exchange them for new outfit or furniture items for their eejies.
Even though they’re supposed to be “customizable creatures,” the eejies are anthropomorphic and look like… well, kids. Depending on how you style them, they sort of look like sullen teenagers, even. Don’t expect a cute Pikachu or Digimon to play with, these eejie are two-legged beings with heads, arms and necks. I’d prefer something cuter, but perhaps the target demographic likes feeding and playing with a strange avatar of themselves.
When multiple Ace LTE wearers meet up, their eejie can visit each other and leave emoji messages. Of course, how fun that is depends on how many of your (kid’s) friends have Ace LTEs.
Gaming on the Fitbit Ace LTE
Even without that social component though, the Ace LTE can be quite a lot of fun. It is the home of Fitbit Arcade, a new library of games built specifically for this wearable. So far, I’ve only seen about six games in the collection, including a room escape game, a fishing simulator and a Mario Kart-like racer.
The first game I tried at Google’s briefing was Smoky Lake, the fishing game. After a quick intro, I tapped on a shadow of a fish in the water, and flung my arm out. I waited till the Ace LTE buzzed, then pulled my wrist in. I was told that I had caught a puffer fish, and swiped through to see more information about past catches. I earned five arcade tickets with this catch.
I gleefully tried again and caught what I was told was the “biggest pineapple gillfish” acquired that day. Other hauls the Ace LTE I was wearing had acquired included a “ramen squid” and a “blob fish,” and tapping an icon on the upper left brought up my library of things that had been caught.
Cherlynn Low for Engadget
I then played a round of Pollo 13, a racing game where I played as a chicken in a bathtub competing in an intergalactic space match against my arch nemesis. There, I tilted my wrist in all directions to steer, keeping my vehicle on track or swerving to collect items that sped me up. Just as I expected based on my prior Mario Kart experience (and also my general lack of skill at driving in real life), I sucked at this game and came in last. Sabharwal gently informed me that this was the poorest result they had seen all day.
I didn’t get to check out other titles installed, like Galaxy Rangers, Jelly Jam or Sproutlings but I was most intrigued by a room escape game, which is my favorite genre.
Google doesn’t want to encourage obsession or addiction to the Ace LTE’s games, though. “We don’t want kids to overexercise. We don’t want kids to feel like they have a streak and if they miss a day, ‘Oh my God, the world is over!’” Sabharwal said.
To that end, progress in each game is built around encouraging the wearer to meet movement goals to advance to new stages. Every two to three minutes, you’ll be prompted to get up and move. In Smokey Lake, for instance, you’ll be told that you’ve run out of bait and have to walk a few hundred steps to go to the bait shop. This can be achieved by walking a number of steps or doing any activity that meets similar requirements. Google is calling this “interval-based gaming,” playing on the idea of “interval-based training.” After about five to 10 sessions, the company thinks each wearer will hit the 60 to 90 minutes of daily required activity recommended by the World Health Organization.
Cherlynn Low for Engadget
The idea of activity as currency for games isn’t exactly novel, but Google’s being quite careful in its approach. Not only is it trying to avoid addiction, which for the target age group is a real concern, but the company also says it built the Ace LTE “responsibly from the ground up” by working with “experts in child psychology, public health, privacy and digital wellbeing.” It added that the device was “built with privacy in mind, front and center,” and that only parents will ever be shown a child’s location or activity data in their apps. Location data is deleted after 24 hours, while activity data is deleted after a maximum of 35 days. Google also said “there are no third-party apps or ads on the device.”
While activity is the main goal at launch, there is potential for the Ace LTE to track sleep and other aspects of health to count towards goals. Since the device has all the functionality of a Pixel Watch 2, it can technically track sleep and prompt the wearer to log their moods and feelings. Parts of the Ace LTE interface also appeared similar to other Fitbit trackers, with movement reminders and a Today-esque dashboard. But from my brief hands-on, it was hard to fully explore and compare.
Though I like the idea of the Ace LTE and was definitely entertained by some of the games, I still have some reservations. I was concerned that the device I tried on felt warm, although Sabharwal explained it was likely because the demo units had been charging on and off all day. I also didn’t care for the thick bezels around the screen, though that didn’t really adversely impact my experience. What did seem more of a problem was the occasional lag I encountered waiting for games to load or to go to the home screen. I’m not sure if that was a product of early software or if the final retail units will have similar delays, and will likely need to run a full review to find out.
The Fitbit Ace LTE is available for pre-order today for $230 on the Google Store or Amazon and it arrives on June 5. You’ll need to pay an extra $10 a month for the Ace Pass plan, which includes LTE service (on Google’s Fi) and access to Fitbit Arcade and regular content updates. If you spring for an annual subscription, you’ll get a collectable Ace Band (six are available at launch) and from now till August 31, the yearly fee is discounted at 50 percent off, making it about $5 a month.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/fitbit-ace-lte-hands-on-wearable-gaming-to-make-exercise-fun-but-not-too-fun-140059054.html?src=rss
If you couldn't access the Internet Archive and its Wayback Machine over the past few days, that's because the website has been under attack. In fact, the nonprofit organization has announced that it's currently in its "third day of warding off an intermittent DDoS cyber-attack" in a blog post. Over the Memorial Day weekend, the organization posted on Twitter/X that most of its services aren't available due to bad actors pummeling its website with "tens of thousands of fake information requests per second." On Tuesday morning, it warned that it's "continuing to experience service disruptions" because the attackers haven't stopped targeting it.
The website's data doesn't seem to be affected, though, and you could still look up previous pages' content whenever you could access it. "Thankfully the collections are safe, but we are sorry that the denial-of-service attack has knocked us offline intermittently during these last three days," Brewster Kahle, the founder of the the Internet Archive, said in a statement. "With the support from others and the hard work of staff we are hardening our defenses to provide more reliable access to our library. What is new is this attack has been sustained, impactful, targeted, adaptive, and importantly, mean."
The Internet Archive has yet to identify the source of the attacks, but it did talk about how libraries and similar institutions are being targeted more frequently these days. One of the institutions it mentioned was the British Library whose online information system was held hostage for ransom by a hacker group last year. It also talked about how it's being sued by the US book publishing and US recording industries, which accuse it of copyright infringement.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-internet-archive-has-been-fending-off-ddos-attacks-for-days-035950028.html?src=rss
Square Enix has largely kept its lips sealed about the Dragon Quest 3 HD-2D remake since announcing it three years ago, but the publisher has now revealed which platforms it's coming to. When it eventually arrives, you'll be able to play it on Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC (via Steam).
The new version may not be too far away either. The teaser suggested that the Dragon Quest 3 HD-2D remake "draws near," several months after series creator Yuji Horii said he was playtesting it. With Summer Game Fest and all its associated events just around the corner, we could find out more details about the remake very soon.
Square Enix released the teaser on Dragon Quest Day, which marks the anniversary of the very first game in the series debuting in Japan in 1986. Horii took the opportunity to provide an minor update on the next mainline entry as well. Square Enix announced Dragon Quest XII: The Flames of Fate back in 2021, but there's been no sign of a release date as yet. That said, Horii wants it to live up to the legacies of key Dragon Quest creatives Akira Toriyama and Koichi Sugiyama.
“Thank you so much to everyone for the many [Dragon Quest Day] congratulations!” Horii wrote on X, according to a Gematsu translation. “There has been some worry about Dragon Quest XII, but I was actually in a meeting [about it] until just a bit ago. While I can’t share any details yet, I want it to be something worthy of the posthumous work of the two [Toriyama and Sugiyama] who passed away. I’ll do my best!”
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-dragon-quest-3-hd-2d-remake-is-coming-to-switch-xbox-series-xs-ps5-and-pc-191015449.html?src=rss
Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reports that AI-generated emojis may be one of the new features Apple shows off at WWDC next month. If the current emoji library weren’t overwhelming enough (let alone my increasingly growing sticker collection both on Messages and WhatsApp), Gurman writes that the company “is developing software that can create custom emojis on the fly, based on what users are texting.” Niche food emojis? Yes, please. :tunamayosandwich:
The Clara Colour is a $150 ereader that taps into Kobo’s own book library (and local libraries), but augments the experience with color book covers. Yes, Kobo beat Kindle to the punch in getting a color ereader out the door. While Amazon is busy experimenting with everything else, ereader-wise, it’s safe to assume that a color Kindle will land at some point. For now, though, Kobo’s Clara Colour is the consumer-friendly color ereader to beat.
Of course, I love that Kobo spelled color with a ‘u’, but I’m not sure I can explain why.
Resident Evil 6 has sold surprisingly well on the Nintendo Switch since it was ported to the console in 2019, despite it being almost universally panned by fans. The game was just added to Capcom’s Platinum Titles list, meaning it’s crossed the threshold of one million units sold. Don’t do it to yourself, please. May I suggest the remade RE2 (or 3), or one of the myriad Resident Evil 4 remakes. Or if you feel like having a heart attack, any of the Resident Evil games made for VR.
A Flappy Bird tribute for the Playdate is now available to play, if you’re up for sideloading something onto your cute little crank console. Surprise: using the crank to control the bird makes it even harder.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-morning-after-ai-generated-emoji-could-soon-come-to-the-iphone-111526029.html?src=rss
Over the past few years, I’ve developed a peaceful little routine to make up for time spent cooped up inside working on sunny days: after I’ve closed my laptop for the day, I throw my sneakers on, open Pikmin Bloom on my phone, and go for a long walk to clear my head and plant virtual flowers with the 'min.
Pikmin Bloom was released for Android and iOS in 2021 by Pokémon Go developer Niantic and Nintendo as another “go outside and touch grass” app, and I’ve been playing it pretty regularly since then. Only recently, when the app announced some special events for its 2.5-year anniversary, did it occur to me how long I’ve actually stuck with it. There isn’t all that much to Pikmin Bloom, but that’s part of the charm — it’s more of a walking buddy than a full-on game. You accumulate Pikmin, feed them nectar so they’ll grow flowers from their heads, then pick the petals and use those to “plant flowers” when you go on walks (don’t think too hard about the science of that, it’s Pikmin).
Unlike Pokémon Go, Pikmin Bloom doesn’t require a lot of your attention while you’re walking around, which really appealed to me as someone who likes to stay fully aware of their surroundings while out and about. That, and the promise of being accompanied wherever I go by a horde of quietly singing Pikmin; I just love those weird little guys.
I typically get everything set up before I leave for a walk, making sure I have plenty of petals ready to plant. Then I hit the ‘Start’ button and mostly leave the app alone until I take a break or am done with my walk, checking in only here and there to see if I’ve passed anything of interest. You can send your Pikmin on expeditions to pick up fruit or destroy mushrooms that’ll pop up on your map, but you don’t need to be actively walking to do this, as they’ll be recorded on a list you can revisit later. Once I’m back home, I love seeing how many flowers I planted versus how many steps I took (I still haven’t figured out the ratio), and delegating different missions for my Pikmin to tackle.
There are frequent events that serve as motivation for reaching certain step count goals or planting a particular number of flowers, including some with community involvement. And, there's the prospect of collecting themed Pikmin who wear special decor outfits. Pikmin Bloom is currently teasing some upcoming Cheese Decor Pikmin for next month, and I’m going to work extra hard to try and get them. While the app does have the potential to lure players into in-app purchases, they’re by no means necessary to get the full experience. I’ve managed to make it this far without spending any money at all.
Pikmin Bloom has an AR component similar to Pokémon Go’s, so you can photograph your Pikmin in the real world, but this feature can be pretty glitchy. What’s better than that, in my opinion, are the postcards your Pikmin will sometimes bring back from their travels — they’ve been known to photobomb landmarks in these pictures on occasion. If you have friends in the app, you can send postcards to them too. Pikmin Bloom also has a built-in lifelog, where you can choose a picture from your walk and jot down any notes and feelings from your day. It’s a nice thing to look back on once you’ve racked up a lot of adventures.
I’ve tried out plenty of apps over the years that attempt to gamify physical activity, but I almost always lose interest in them pretty quickly. For all its simplicity, Pikmin Bloom adds just the right amount of reward to a walk without distracting from the actual activity. Plus, there are Pikmin.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/pikmin-bloom-has-been-helping-me-meet-my-outdoor-walking-goals-for-years-000025214.html?src=rss
Russell T. Davies admits his writing eschews narrative formalism in favor of things that just feel right. Two decades ago, his critics pointed to his use of deus ex machina endings as a stick to beat his reputation with. But we’re in a different era now, where vibes matter just as much as logic — both inside the show’s new more fantastic skew, and in the real world. “73 Yards” is the vibiest episode of new Doctor Who so far, but I even found it easy to sit back and enjoy what it was doing.
Doctor Who is a complicated show to make, and some series have started production on Day 1 a week or more behind schedule. To combat this, the show started making “-lite” episodes that didn’t need the leads to be as involved. There are “Doctor-lite” episodes like “Love and Monsters” and “Blink,” and even “companion-lite” episodes like “Midnight.” This production process enables the star, or stars, to be off shooting Episode A while a guest cast takes the spotlight for the bulk of Episode B.
Production of the new series began while star Ncuti Gatwa was still finishing the last of his work on Netflix’s Sex Education. So while he appears in the opening and closing moments of "73 Yards", he’s otherwise absent as the Doctor has been erased from history. It gives us the chance to see what a modern companion would do if left stranded in uncertain territory without her alien ally. The episode takes hard turns from folk and rural horror to kitchen-sink drama before becoming a light homage to Taxi Driver. Suffice to say, this is another episode you wouldn’t watch with small kids.
Bad Wolf / BBC Studios
The TARDIS lands on a cliff edge in Wales, with the Doctor pointing out it’s another liminal space where magic is allowed to creep in. He even mentions the war between the “land and the sea,” name-checking a rumored spin-off fans discovered after scouring production documents. The Doctor talks about how great a country Wales is, except for Roger ap Gwillam, a Welsh politician who, two decades hence, will lead the UK to the brink of nuclear armageddon. He then steps into a fairy ring, disturbing its web, and disappears while Ruby reads the paper notes tied to it. The notes mention a Mad Jack, a scary figure that sounds like a villain from folklore.
Suddenly, Ruby is alone on the cliff but can now see the blurry figure of an old woman waving her arms at her in the distance. Ruby tries to approach her but the figure remains the same distance away (the titular 73 yards) no matter where she goes. Believing the Doctor has ghosted her, she tries to solve the quandary of this figure on her own. Ruby approaches a hiker (Susan Twist) and tries to work out where she’s seen her before (every episode thus far), but can’t quite put her finger on it. She asks the hiker if she’d be willing to speak to the old woman who is following her, but when the hitchhiker gets there, whatever she says is so horrifying that she sprints away from the scene in terror.
Ruby heads to a pub in the nearby town where the locals mock her — mistaking her hesitancy for condescension. She asks one of the patrons to go speak to the woman and, when he does, the same thing happens. Ruby gets home and asks her mum to try, this time holding a phone so Ruby can hear what she’s saying. But the phone call is disrupted and her mum is similarly horrified by what she hears — locking Ruby out of her home soon after. Kate Lethbridge-Stewart and UNIT are next to offer aid, right up until they encounter the woman, when they all abandon her.
Bad Wolf / BBC Studios
All the time, the old woman remains 73 yards away from wherever Ruby is, unnoticed by everyone else unless Ruby directs their attention to her. She can’t photograph the woman's face — it's blurry — and can’t get close enough to hear her ominous warning. In fact, even to the end of the episode, there’s a lot of unknowns that are never resolved.
Ruby’s strangely resilient, and once she’s gotten beyond the abandonment, she looks to build a new life for herself. She treats her stalker as a friend, wishing her well as we cycle through a montage of the next chapter of Ruby’s life. She gets a job, moves into her own flat and goes through a series of breakups as she gently ages past 30, and then 40. Then, on the TV, she sees Roger ap Gwillam on the TV, who even mentions Mad Jack, and remembers both the Doctor’s warning and the messages in the fairy ring. It takes Ruby no time at all to be sure that her purpose in life is to save the world, and to avert Gwillam’s nuclear catastrophe.
She signs up to Gwillam’s fascist political party as a volunteer and eventually reaches a position where she’s close to the top. Gwillam’s rise is quick and it’s not long before he’s promising to secede from NATO and put his itchy trigger finger on the UK’s nuclear arsenal, ready to wage war on the rest of the world. Gwillam’s inauguration will take place at Cardiff City Stadium, while Ruby follows the politician along, lurking in the crowd.
Bad Wolf / BBC Studios
Ruby then starts to approach Gwillam, walking across the off-limits pitch at the stadium, and you expect her to pull out a weapon. But instead, she whips out her phone and starts measuring the distance between her and Roger until she reaches 73 yards. When she does, she gestures to the villain to notice the woman, and when he notices her, he hears the horrifying thing she says. The shock is enough to send Gwillam racing out of the stadium, resigning from the role of Prime Minister and preventing nuclear armageddon.
But while Ruby hoped that would be the end of it, the figure remains with her for the rest of her life. It’s only on her deathbed she realizes she can project herself back in time to act as a warning for the Doctor to not step in the fairy ring. She does so, preventing the accident in the first place and paradoxically nullifying the entire time stream in the process. History carries on its merry way and all is well… for now. But given the risks of paradoxes in Doctor Who, and the general sense that history is unraveling, it might not augur too well for what’s going to happen in the future.
Bad Wolf / BBC Studios
“73 Yards” is an exercise in putting your character in a hostile world and seeing what they’ll do to deal with it. It’s an episode that, when written down, doesn’t feel like a lot happens, because so much of its runtime is an exploration of Ruby as a character. Doctor Who thrives when the companion role is occupied by someone who wants to grab a fistful of narrative for themselves. And Ruby Sunday seems almost too perfect in her ability to draw out the logic from what she’s experienced and work within it.
Much as you can draw narrative and thematic parallels between the new series and Davies’ original tenure, this episode pulls from “Turn Left.” Both tell the story of what happens to a companion when the Doctor is withdrawn from the narrative and what they do to fix that wrong. And it’s no surprise both suggest that the UK, without the intervention of the Doctor, is only a few days away from tipping over into fascism.
Ruby’s humanity shines, even to the point where she’s trying to treat her tormentor with care. She refuses to fly, or travel by boat, lest she endanger the life of the apparition that’s following her, despite how much damage it causes to her life. And when she sees Roger ap Gwillam on the TV, she’s certain that her destiny is to prevent the nuclear armageddon the Doctor warned her about. This is another useful thread — the idea that Ruby has an instinctive grasp of the genre she exists in — much as she did in “Space Babies.”
As for the ending, it’s probably best we talk about those “vibes,” or the sort of slightly skewed associations in the show’s logic. Ruby, at the end of her life, realizes that she’s able to travel, or project herself somehow, through time to avert the Doctor’s fall. There’s nothing in the episode that points to it, no hint that the ghostly figure is Ruby, or if this is tied to the snow or anything else. But perhaps, the trick to an episode like this is simply to let yourself relax and enjoy seeing the character evolve, rather than anything more.
Susan Twist Corner
Obviously, Susan Twist plays the hiker that Ruby first encounters after the Doctor disappears and, for the first time, Ruby notices the familiarity. In the materials that Disney sends along that Susan Twist’s character is named the “mystery woman.”
And on the subject of twists, you’ll recall at the end of “Church on Ruby Road” that, in the post-credits, Mrs Flood (Anita Dobson) breaks the fourth wall. The annoying neighbor character, who lives next to Ruby’s mum’s flat, turns to the camera and asks if we’ve “Never seen a TARDIS before?” (Given her surprise at seeing it earlier in the episode, it’s clear her history may have been changed during the course of the show.) When Ruby heads back to her mum’s house, Anita Dobson’s Mrs Flood is back sitting on her step with her deckchair out. Interestingly, when she notices the ghostly figure — and Ruby and her Mum’s attempts to deal with it, she declares that it’s “nothing to do with me” and goes inside. Which, again, feels like a hint that Mrs Flood and the mystery woman are separate
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/doctor-who-73-yards-review-dont-stand-so-close-to-me-000018703.html?src=rss
