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.
When the fans have to make up explanations for an episode with no textual evidence, that’s good storytelling. I’ve had people tell me that the woman stays at 73 Yards because that’s the range of the TARDIS’ perception filter, but if that has ever been mentioned on the show, I’ve missed that little tidbit. Do people notice the TARDIS at the end of their street, then un-notice it halfway down the road?
It’s Doctor Who mate… even the most mysterious entities have a motive and rules. The Midnight monster is never explained, but we understand how it works, and what it wants. In Listen, it is never confirmed if the creature exists but that is tied into the story of the episode, and we still understand the concept behind the monster. In this episode things happen because they look creepy, and then it ends with what amounts to an “it was all a dream” twist.
Dude...
The show runner literally just said this season was moving away from self continaed episodes...
I don't agree with it, but we know it's happening.
We're not going to end every episode neatly wrapped on and on to the next planet. Before if that happened the episode was always advertised as "part 1". Now it's just going to be a more connected season.
I didn't know why the show runner felt the need to spoil the surprise till this exchange though.
When the episodes stop being self contained, let me know. We are going to get a reveal at the end of the series, no doubt, but at this point the episodes are only connected by vague references or shoehorned in scenes with Ruby making it snow. It’s no more connected than Bad Wolf or Vote Saxon. I do not expect this episode to get an explanation before the end of the season.