The Doctor Who Review | S11 E4 | Arachnids in the UK

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WARNING! SPOILER ALERT! Welcome back to the Doctor Who Review, where I recap the week’s episode and give some thoughts and opinions on it. Please do not read if you have not seen this week’s episode. There are major spoilers ahead. You have been warned. Check out the rest of the Doctor Who Reviews here.

Title: Arachnids in the UK

Written by: Chris Chibnall

The opening scenes of this week’s episode, Arachnids in the UK, is in a huge hotel which is being refurbished. The owner, an loud-mouthed American with way too much power and control, is yelling at his assistant to ‘sort it out and clear up the mess’, then promptly fires a woman who has just arrived to check out the hotel so she knows what she’s working with when she comes in to work upon hotel completion. Turns out that woman is Yas’ mum.

The Sheffield team are finally home at last, as the Doctor gets them back to their home planet. It’s been a mere half hour since they left back in Episode 1, and life continues as per usual around them. Ryan and the Doc head to Yas’ for a cup of tea, while Graham heads home to have a moment post-Grace passing. When Thirteen offers to go next door to pick up a package that has mistaking been sent there instead of to Yas’ place, they discover the neighbour wrapped up tight in spider web in her bedroom. Enter: large spider, way bigger than it should be.

Meanwhile, Yas is off to collect her mum, where they discover a hotel room full of spiderwebs. When the team eventually join back together again, they discover that there’s a nest of large spiders all over the hotel, some way larger than the one they found at the neighbours place.

What follows is Team TARDIS (plus hotel owner, Robertson – played by Chris North – Yas’ mum Najia, and spider scientist Dr. Jade McIntyre) running through the hotel trying to figure out why the spiders are taking people and storing them away, why they’re hanging out in the hotel, and why on earth they’re getting so large. Eventually they discover that under the hotel is piles and piles of toxic waste. The ‘dead’ spiders from Dr. Jade McIntyre’s lab which they’re studying have been tossed away by a waste disposable company, who is filling up old mines with the rubbish. Robertson is the building his multi-million dollar hotels on top, and it’s all very ridiculous. Because the ‘dead’ spiders being tossed away aren’t actually dead, the toxic pool of swirling chemicals has changed their state of being, allowing them grow ginormous. Of course.

The team lure the ‘little’ spiders into a contained part of the hotel, while the try and figure out how to deal with the absolutely colossal mother spider in the ballroom (only on Doctor Who). The mother spider has gotten so big that breathing for her is hard, and while she was dying anyway, in comes gun-swinging Robertson and shoots her.

The end of the episode has our three companions deciding they’d quite like to just leave their lives behind for a little while and head off on another adventure with the Doctor. Thirteen warns them it’ll be dangerous, and she can’t promise their safety … and off they go.

My thoughts on Arachnids in the UK

Spiders are not my jam; I’m not afraid of them, but that doesn’t mean I like them. The episode reminded me of poor Ron Weasley‘s affliction with these 8-legged creatures, and I could only imagine what he would have been like in that situation (running away – there’d be no way he was sticking around for that.) While spiders are scary for many people, the real villain was Robertson in Arachnids in the UK, his Trump-esque-ness coming through in nearly every single line he spews. It was super disturbing and yet the whole time I was watching all I could think was they’re definitely making jabs at the current US president, and his “just shoot ’em up” attitude.

It was nice to see some of Yas’ background and her family in this episode. We’ve heard a little about them, but it’s mainly been the Ryan-Graham show in terms of backstory so far. While her mum is right there in the action for the episode, Yas’ dad and sister are at home waiting for everyone to come back for dinner, and don’t really play a part much at all.

Once again I’m struck by the slightly annoying “let’s just recap for the audience about this point” that happens at times. We know that X just happened, we were there, we literally saw it. You don’t need to have a character spell it out for us, nor do they need to spell it out for each other because *gasp* they were there too! That’s one of my current gripes about the writing, but other than that I am enjoying less of “we have to save the entire universe” every single episode and more one-off story lines that may come up again in the future, but they’d be quite welcome to stay put.

What I want to know is what they did with all the spider bodies in the hotel. Because they’re not alien, they’re actual spiders that are just gigantic, they’re literally just going to rot away, they won’t be beamed up by their alien buddies to their spaceship. I would not want to be the cleaner, I can you that.

Overall

I still think Rosa is still my favourite episode so far this season, but we’re only four episodes in. Next week’s episode, The Tsuranga Conundrum, we’re headed back to space it seems, with the IMDB min description reading: “Injured and stranded in the wilds of a far-flung galaxy, The Doctor, Yaz, Graham, and Ryan must band together with a group of strangers to survive against one of the universe’s most deadly – and unusual – creatures” (IMDB). I’m up for that.

What did you think of this week’s episode?