The episode starts with the Doctor stepping into a fairy circle, causing him to vanish and locking the Tardis. I’m not a huge fan of this season’s “magic is real” vibe, but so far it tracks.
A woman appears and follows Ruby around. She ends up in a pub where she asks about the fairy circle. After a long build up explaining just how serious the fairy circle is, it turns out no that’s just racist. Pretty funny, and it works with the magic theme. So how does the fairy circle actually work then? No fucking clue, they never explain it. As far as I can tell it just exists for this bit.
So this woman makes everyone near her hate Ruby. Everyone. Why? Who fucking knows. They never explain why. It just does. It leads up to a politician getting scared and ruining his career. Again pretty clever. But again no explanation is ever given as to how or why this happens.
Then Ruby dies. And when she dies she becomes the scary woman. Then she goes back in time. How? Why? No idea. It just happens and you gotta deal with it.
So apparently the Doctor stepping on a fairy circle that doesn’t do anything makes him vanish for no reason, creates an old copy of Ruby that follows her around for no reason, who scares everyone for no reason, then when Ruby dies undoes everything for no reason.
This. Makes. No. Sense.
Let me add the “teleporting” stuff during the train ride. Also, what determines in which direction the blurry woman appears? And why didn’t Ruby - in all those years - not try to throw a stone or a bottle after her - just to see what happens? And if that scary lady really was “old Ruby”, how did she endure days/weeks/years outside in the rain?
Thinking about this, when Ruby was pacing around inside the pub while the other guy went outside… that blurry lady must’ve floated around - always keeping exactly 73 yards distance from Ruby, right?
And how did the “scary” stuff even work with the trained UNIT elite professionals that were explicitly briefed to “not make eye contact, don’t listen to anything”, etc.? And it even worked via radio with Kate, the snipers, etc… And suddenly, Kate wasn’t even interested in the location of the TARDIS anymore? Nor did this head(!) of UNIT say anything at all about WHY she was abandoning Ruby.
Oh, and why did the PM abandon all his plans for buying WMDs and stuff when all other people that had contact with the blurry lady just abandoned Ruby? Where’s the connection here? It clearly wasn’t the reason for the blurry lady as she was still there afterwards.
Also what is it with The Doctor stepping on things? Didn’t the fucking landmine teach him to watch his steps?
This episode was a mess IMHO. Like a fever dream - just that it was never suggested it was one.