Doctor Who: Arachnids In The UK

[andraste]

Short version: blah. I liked the character stuff for the main cast a lot but the rest just didn't work for me at all. Oh well, they can't all be winners. I wonder if it would have helped if I found spiders scary. (Maybe they should do some more giant slugs? It's been a while.)

There's nothing wrong with the basic story here - irresponsible business practices + toxic waste + spiders = plot. It worked with maggots back in The Green Death, after all. However, outside of Yasmin's delightful family, the guest cast are redshirts with no characterisation to speak of, walking exposition and a parody character who was all over the place in tone. (If the point was 'Trump seems ridiculous but is actually scary' then, well, yes, I think we all know that by now. He is much scarier than his expy is here, that is for sure.) The CGI is ordinary at best. Worst of all, it just peters out instead of having a proper ending. There's a bunch of spiders locked in a panic room at the hotel, where I guess they will cannibalise each other and then die? As far as we know, Robertson will continue to get along with building hotels on top of waste dumps and running for president. Unless he doesn't because he doesn't manage to cover up what happened successfully. Even an ending where he clearly won would have been more satisfying than not resolving anything on screen at all.

On the bright side, there were some lovely character moments here - Yasmin gets fleshed out a lot by all those little interactions with her family, we get to see Graham's grief manifested in a way that makes it clear why he wants to keep travelling with the Doctor, and Ryan gets a letter from his dad and is clearly aware of who is real family is. Oh, and I liked his solution to the spider problem a lot, too. (Both in the sense that it was clever and in the sense that it was catchy.) Best of all was the last scene where the Doctor attempts to explain the risks of TARDIS travel, which is of course an impossible task.

Comments

[vilakins]

I found it very dissatisfying too. The spiders in the panic room aren't exactly going to die with dignity and there are still huge spiders out there. Plus the American shit didn't get his and I spent a lot of that episode hoping he was spider food. The fact that a shithead wants to replace another shithead is just profoundly depressing.

Plus I like spiders. The truly scary bit was the shit in the suit.

I did like them all choosing to go with the Doctor, and her delight.

[andraste]

The spiders in the panic room aren't exactly going to die with dignity and there are still huge spiders out there.

I think we're meant to think that every giant spider in Sheffield went back to the hotel, but that just doesn't make any sense. At the very least there's still one in Anna's flat.

And yes, the spiders were not the scary part of this episode. They were pretty colours and they don't want to shoot anyone.

[astrogirl]

I wonder if it would have helped if I found spiders scary.

I've been wondering that, too. I liked a lot of the character stuff in the ep, but found the plot seriously disappointing. (Which seems to pretty well sum up my reaction to everything so far this season, to be honest.) And I'm not positive, but I think everyone I've seen saying things like, "yeah, the plot was thin, but it worked for me anyway" has also been talking about how utterly terrifying they found the spiders. Me, I just thought they were pretty!

[andraste]

They were so pretty! And where I live, the bigger they are the less likely it is that they could actually kill a person. (I mean, huntsmen get pretty large but they just live in your house and eat bugs and their venom isn't dangerous to humans.)

[neuralclone]

As I was watching this one tonight (gotta love iview!) I found myself hoping I don't see any huntsmen for the next 24 hours or so. Even though I ordinarily find them pretty cute.

[neuralclone]

Oh, good, so I was not the only person to notice the dangling plot threads! I'm fairly irked about not learning the fate of the spiders, because frankly luring them into the panic room so they can starve and/or cannibalise each other sounds less humane than Robertson's plan to shoot them all.

[andraste]

Yeah, normally I am all over the Doctor's 'shooting is bad' stance, but at least the mother spider died quickly. Unless they're going to humanely poison all the spiders in the panic room, it doesn't seem like that's going to end well for them.