#super interesting premise very unexpected direction & i love things that are scary on first watch but then turn sad

[the--highlanders]

i think the thing about 73 yards for me is it just. feels like it should have been a two-parter. lie of the land does the same thing to me. the episode spends all this time setting up /how/ we get to the point of ruby figuring out what she has to do, getting herself into the albion party - and then we don't actually see much of her thought process after that!

the reveal of roger ap gwilliam as mad jack would have made such a good cliffhanger. then give me an episode based around ruby knowing she has to save the world but figuring out how. nearly cracking under the stress after so long. working out whether roger /wants/ anything, or whether he's just out for power and destruction. working out how he was bound in the first place, and how to replicate it. researching folklore as well as the more 'scientific' investigations she's done on the woman. trying to hide herself from roger as she does so. giving us the space to believe and breathe in this alternate timeline and new world. and /then/ give her the achievement of figuring it out and saving the world - but the woman is still there.