Lucky Day is an all-around mess. It is not wholly without merit, but it is also impossible to review in detail without spoilers. This is due to a fractured storyline that tries to do too much and does perhaps half of it well. Even that is entirely due to the acting and one good speech.

That’s all I can say without spoilers. Read no further if you haven’t seen the episode yet.

Lucky Day takes us back to Earth and Series 1 companion Ruby Sunday (Millie Gibson). We’re told that Ruby is going through PTSD after her experiences with The Doctor. Despite this, she seems to be doing well, thanks to her mother, her grandmother, her newly discovered biological mother, and her work mom Kate Lethbridge-Stewart (Jemma Redgrave). Actually, it’s unclear if Ruby actually is officially working for UNIT, but she is apparently calling Mel Bush at work on a regular basis.

In any case, Ruby responds to a social media post by a podcaster who took her photo one year earlier, as she was stepping into the TARDIS. Enter Conrad Clark (Jonah Hauer-King), who claims to have had his own encounter with The Doctor as a boy, before stumbling across him and Ruby as they were hunting an interdimensional predator called a Shreek. He asks Ruby out and, five dates later, they are officially in a relationship. Unfortunately, Conrad has also been marked as the Shreek’s next victim. This sets up what seems to be a classic siege story, with Ruby trying to save her new love from an alien monster as UNIT races to the rescue.

However, it is at this point that Lucky Day takes a hard right turn and spins out of control. Conrad is revealed to be an alien-truther, who only dated Ruby as part of an organized effort to expose UNIT as a waste of taxpayer dollars. This lead to Ruby becoming the target of a multimedia smear campaign and UNIT employees being doxxed.

The idea of people not believing in an obvious truth in the setting of Doctor Who is not a bad one (Look at how many idiots are rejecting the science of vaccines even as their children die.) And misinformation media is definitely a topical evil that modern science fiction should address. Unfortunately, the script by Pete McTighe continually tells the audience things rather than showing them. Moreover, what it tells us is unbelievable.

The largest problem is that Conrad’s character is inconsistent, with continually changing motivations. Is he a grifter seeking fame and fortune by playing on other people’s paranoia? Is he a vindictive fanboy who turned on UNIT because they wouldn’t give him a job? Is he a cold-blooded sociopath who cannot stand being wrong and is still railing against the mother who called him a liar?

Any of these would be a fine motivation. However, because Conrad is meant to be symbolic of the whole misinformation industry, the script makes him into all these things depending on the scene. And because it isn’t obvious enough that Conrad is a bad guy after he gaslights Ruby, he also has to make an ablest attack on wheelchair-using UNIT agent Shirley Anne Bingham. Doctor Who has never been famed for subtlety, but this seems a bit much.

As for the plot, I’m willing to believe that the UK government would go into panic mode over bad publicity and threaten to cut UNIT’s funding based on a viral video movement. However, I am not ready to believe the following.

• I do not believe that Conrad, if he truly believes that UNIT and The Doctor are fake, would quietly hide from the Shreek and only take pictures of Ruby getting in the TARDIS given his confrontational behavior everywhere else.
• I do not believe, if Ruby is as paranoid as we are repeatedly told she is, that she would answer some random social media post with her picture asking HAVE YOU SEEN THIS WOMAN? unless it was part of a UNIT mission.
• I do not believe that Ruby, who looks Conrad up on Instagram before her first date, would not also have UNIT look into this guy as well.
• I do not believe Ruby would agree to speak about her time with The Doctor on a podcast, even if she weren’t supposed to be traumatized by her experiences.
• I do not believe anyone, even in the UK tabloid market, would finance Conrad posing as an alien-loving podcast host, with his own studio and advertising, as part of a long con.
• I do not believe that Conrad could cook up costumes convincing enough to fool UNIT into believing they are facing a second Shreek invasion based on the half-glimpses he gets.
• I do not believe that Conrad could be independently wealthy enough to house his mother in the South of France on even a successful podcaster’s salary.
• I do not believe that UNIT wouldn’t vet their employees to the point that they doesn’t discover that he listens to a lot of conspiracy theory podcasts until after said agent has already let Conrad Clark into UNIT HQ.

With all that being said, Millie Gibson does a fantastic job selling every speech Ruby has about being in shock over everything that has happened to her. And this does finally offer an explanation for why she suddenly left the TARDIS after the end of Series 1. Even though most of the speeches don’t make sense given her actions throughout the episode. (#HotTaserLady for the win.)

Also, while this is a Doctor-lite episode, Ncuti Gatwa gets one great speech at the end, where The Doctor confronts Conrad on just how small, petty and stupid he is. (I suspect Russell T. Davies added this one in as script editor. Partly for how it ties into the larger story of Series 2. Partly because of how damn good it is relative to the rest of the writing.)

Lucky Day is not a bad Doctor Who episode. But it leans closer to Love and Monsters than 73 Yards; both of which it evokes to some degree. I hope this isn’t the last we see of Ruby Sunday, as this would be a terrible end to her story. I also hope that if we ever get that long-awaited UNIT spin-off that it is much better than this.