Arachnids In The UK: Rank - 302

                                         Arachnids In The UK

(Season 11, Dr 13 Graham Ryan and Yaz, 28/10/2018, producer/showrunner: Chris Chibnall, writer: Chris Chibnall, director: Fiona McAllister)

Rank: 302

In an emoji: 🕷

'Incy wincey spider climbed up the nuclear waste, Incy wincey spider will eat you while you’re sleeping and then sit on your face, out came the spiders running round the council estate, until being shot by a man you love to hate’ 

There’s a moment, at the start of this episode, when if it feels as if the Chris Chibnall-Jodie Whittaker era is finally coming together. After two episodes of delaying, of doing what Dr Who always did just in Sheffield and playing intergalactic Top Gear we got the social conscience of ‘Rosa’. Clearly they couldn’t go and do that sort of a story every week though, so instead it’s back to Chibnall’s to see what he’s learnt from those first three stories and where he wants this series to go (after all, in a series this elastic, it’s not as if there aren’t enough different directions to choose from). We return to Sheffield for a ‘domestic’ story of the sort Russell T Davies used to do, get to see the Tardis crew’s families, make polite conversation and get to know these characters better than just have them running for their lives. Graham gets to confront the grief he’s been hiding from since the first episode, Ryan hears from his estranged biological dad but has a whole new perspective on life with his step-dad Graham while Yaz gets to spend time with her family, safe in the knowledge that she isn’t the problem child they think she is but a sort-of intergalactic time-travelling hero. They land back only half an hour later when they took off, but so much has changed for all of them. That’s great drama: at long last they feel like real people that we know rather than strangers. By contrast the Doctor has reverted from being the no-nonsense authority figure into something closer to her former self, a combination of curious toddler and truculent teenager curious to this particular regeneration who has no idea how this world works, torn between wanting to be normal and delighting in being gloriously weird. Chibnall was good friends with Russell T(who brought him into the show in the first place) and had clearly studied his predecessor’s work for nuts and bolts and tips, even if he doesn’t quite understand how to replicate the same feel for his characters (none of these ‘home’ scenes with their extended family dramas feels quite ‘right’ in the way that we all know a Rose and Jackie Tyler or a Donna and Sylvia Noble but we’re getting there). And then this story ends up being a runaround with giant mutated spiders. And this isn’t a metaphor, this isn’t a story about something else and its most definitely not a repeat of the last time we had giant spiders in this show (1974’s ‘Planet Of’, where they were karma’s revenge on the 3rd Doctor). They really are just spiders. This is something the local council pest control should be sorting out, not The Doctor. Suddenly all that reality, all that emotion, all that pathos, just falls away as we go from ‘Charlotte’s Web’ to ‘Incy Wincey Spider’ in a few short scenes. Sadly its this contrast that sums up the Chibnall era better than anything else: it’s not as if they can’t do it at all no matter how they try, like in seasons 23 and 24, it’s that they work out how to do it and then, just as we’re relaxing like a fly in a spider’s web, they stop and do something that blatantly doesn’t work. 

 The plot, such as it is, is garbage. No that’s not the review that’s the plot: Yaz’s dad is shocked by…well what exactly? He never gets to say because that would give the plot away a bit too quickly, but he thinks it’s a ‘conspiracy’ and has multiple bin bags piled up in his kitchen to prove it. The cause of this ‘it’ turns out to be a new hotel and spa that’s just opened up and has a bit of a problem with the local pest control, turning out to have been built on a piece of reconstituted wasteground. It really is the most amazing coincidence that not only is this happening in Sheffield, where the Tardis crash-landed by chance in ‘The Woman Who Fell To Earth’, it happens to be taking place on the exact same day. And that out of all the people in Sheffield and surrounding districts one of the people working at this new hotel complex is Yaz’s mum. At least when that unlikely scenario happened to Donna it was worked into the script and series arc. If ever there was an argument that the Tardis goes where it’s supposed to go, following some grand ancient plan rather than being as truly random as the Doctor thinks, this is it (see ‘The Space Museum’ and a handful of other reviews for more on fate and pre-destiny), even though this plot is such small fry you do half wonder why The Tardis bothered. But even if that were true and this was all fate, nobody seems to find it odd. Graham Ryan and Yaz have lived in this city all their lives yet don’t seem surprised at all to find a near-neighbour covered in cobwebs with giant spiders running around. Their response isn’t to flee and get their families out to safety but to stand and nod while the Doctor pontificates at length and talk, in voices as calm as if they’re reading their phone bill, how they don’t actually like little spiders that much. The Doctor doesn’t once go ‘blimey, what a surprise, guess this means I’m staying then guys’, she just randomly starts taking interest in a parcel that’s not been delivered next door and ends up involved from there, like the beginner’s children’s book of storywriting (trust me, if I got worried about my neighbours I’d be on to pest control most days the amount of parcels I take in for people who aren’t in down our street). It all ruins the opening ten minutes’ actually rather good attempts to build up these characters and make them seem real and the effect is jarring, like a film noir that suddenly turns into a technicolour cartoon midway through. 

Things aren’t helped by Jack Roberston, the multi-million Hotel chain manager desperate to get into The White House, which is so on-the-nose for 2018 it’s like, well, having The Beatles in a 1965 episode of Dr Who or a reference to JK Rowling in 2008 or something. However satire is only funny if you’re brave enough to run with it: Trump, that shameless shaved orang-u-tang, is famously litigious over parodies and so not only do they hire actor Chris Noth to play ‘him’ (someone who looks as un-like Trump as its possible to get, complete with ‘normal’ hair) they also make reference in the script to the fact they’re ‘rivals’, just in case we got the ‘wrong’ idea. Which all seems a bit cowardly compared to what this series had done with other right-wing tyrants in the past: I mean, ‘The Happiness Patrol’ had an apology over the likenesses to the Bertie Bassett All-sorts character, not Margaret Thatcher. However an even bigger problem with doing satire about real people in the 21st century in a series that’s trying to have at least one toe in realism is that they all feel like cartoon characters already. Trying to exaggerate characters like this for comic effect is just asking for trouble because fiction can’t possibly compete with reality. I can see what they were trying to do in this story and they didn’t actually need Trump to do it, to point out the dangers of egotistical millionaires who think that because they inherited money they’re actually business geniuses, when they actually don’t have the first clue about people or how the world (especially the natural world) works. Robertson is presented to us as The Doctor’s nemesis far more than T-zim Sha ever was even though there are many parallels: he’s every bit as clueless about how the real world works and offends everyone without trying, but unlike the Doctor he doesn’t know it and he doesn’t want to learn. He has no interest in people only money, and its this greed which has led him to build his business empire by taking shortcuts, out for short-term gain regardless of the people it hurts in the long-term, the opposite of the Doctor’s modus operandi. He’s everything Dr Who should be speaking out about, someone whose out to hurt other people to get what they want and somebody who damages people is the very opposite of The Doctor in all ways. Only how do you top Trump? (not the game, which has not one but two Dr Who editions, but the president). How do you make a character as ruthless, selfish, stupid and brazen as that real? The answer is you don’t. 

The only thing they could have done with him in this story – and the presence of spiders is a clue here given that Chibnall is enough of a fan to have ‘Planet Of the Spiders’ memorised the way most of us do – is to make it about karma. Have the spiders, have the Earth he so blatantly disregards, get its own back. Give us all the cathartic release of a painful gruesome death so that even if we can’t be short of him in real life at least let the Donald Trump in the Dr Whoniverse pay for his crimes. But no: before you can say ‘Jack Robertson’ he’s killed the spider and gets to walk away smugly, intact, ready to murder people another day having learnt nothing from his brush with death. He doesn’t even run away screaming like the coward he is. Worse yet he lectures the Doctor about the importance of guns – in a Dr Who story of all things – and even though you’re obviously meant to side with the Doctor (because its her show) rather than be contradicted, the plot seems to show him out to be correct: he does kill the baddy with a weapon and he does, sort of, save the day. The Doctor is ‘wrong’ not to carry one in this instance (much as we know she’d have figured out an alternative eventually). Even worse than that Robertson lives to be back for yet another story ‘Revolution Of The Daleks’, where he’s even more of a caricature and ten times as smug. The only ‘good’ part is his huffing and puffing when The Doctor says she doesn’t know who he is, wondering if he’s Ed Sheeran (the only other person who looks less like Trump than Roth does). In other words the script needs more anarchy on the UK and less arachnids: it just protects the status quo and Dr Who has never been about that (‘The Dominators’ and forthcoming ‘Kerblam!’ aside). The goodwill built up in the first few minutes suddenly seems a long way away. 

This could have been a fine chance to talk about what mankind’s doing to the environment, but instead that message gets a bit lost. Rather than an in-depth discussions about the dangers of keeping nuclear waste in tunnels and trying to pretend that land we’ve damaged is all fine and dandy, this story comes on with all the authority of a weary parent telling a child to clean up after itself properly. There’s no sense of moral outrage, no burning insistence that things should be different, no passionate speech from the Doctor about the harm we cause ourselves by taking the easy route of greed, no urgency that we should go out and change the world ourselves, just the feeling of ‘I told you five more minutes ten minutes ago – I’m not saying it again!’ I mean, just having the guy responsible for it all dying would be one thing. But this plot, like so many 13th Dr stories, can’t quite put its money where its mouth is. This story respects the big business Trumps of this world too much to condemn them outright. Taken hand in hand with ‘Kerblam’ (which takes the side of a cod-futuristic Amazon over its staff) it feels icky: this story still thinks of Trump as a successful businessman and a star to aspire to rather than portraying him as a chancer who knows nothing and got lucky. Maybe the production team got a bit worried about a right-wing backlash, but if you’re too scared to follow through on your position why make a story with political leanings at all? Why not just make this an adventure tale and cut the politics? This story is like Yaz’s dad: annoyed at the local council and collecting notes, but unwilling to actually do anything about it all, sniping at the powers that be that promise to do something and never will but not finding an alternative. Had this story ended properly, with Trump Two dead and by a quirk of fate Yaz’s mum inheriting the hotel business (as the last standing employee?) and vowing to rebuild it with greener credentials, this story could have been genuinely uplifting (and no more unlikely in what’s a very cartoony story anyway). Instead it’s just a big mess. No wonder there are so many spiders running around the place. 

 If that seems to fly in the face of everything Dr Who usually stands for, well the rest of this story doesn’t seem very Dr Who-like either. There’s an even worse semi-ending, as Ryan correctly guesses that the spiders won’t like soundwaves. Not exactly unusual for Dr Who monsters – it’s at one with Victoria’s screams hurting the sentient seaweed of ‘Fury From The Deep’. However, what’s very un-Dr Who are the scenes of Ryan uploading his rap albums and playing them loudly while sort-of twerking. Quite aside from me having a far greater allergy to rap than I do spiders, it’s all very out of character and, given that we’re in an era that’s more overly sensitive to stereotypes than most, a bit suspect. Ryan’s not a natural rap fan. Sure he’s black and lives on a council estate, but not all black teenagers are rap fans – that’s a myth assumed by middle aged white men who don’t actually know any. Ryan’s the most laidback companion we’ve ever had in Dr Who. He makes Romana look like a worrywart, Ben seem fussy and Liz Shaw appear on the edge of a nervous breakdown. His entire character is the way he just reacts blandly to stuff going on around him that would make other people scream or run away. As a general rule rap music is either for people who are passionate about life, angry at the way people are treated and desperate for social change – either that or they’re the cool kids at school following it because it’s fashionable and they like the jackets the rappers wear and haven’t really paid attention to the words. You can tell when people are listening to rap on their i-pods or phones: they walk quicker, hey sway more, they’re up on the ends of their toes, senses poised, ready to react (just as you can tell psychedelia listeners from their glassy-eyed stares or blues lovers from their sad eyes). Ryan is neither. He’s the social outcast whose too blasé to worry about fitting in too much and we’ve never seen him be more than mildly sad on someone’s behalf. He’s the last person who would be listening to rap. If Ryan got out a collection of Mantovani records I’d be less surprised. Watching Ryan suddenly turn into a beat-box-booming teen with an attitude while singing along and watching giant spiders recoil is one of the single stupidest scenes in Dr Who. And this not half an hour after Ryan was finally clicking into shape and feeling like a character at last. If anything Graham’s the natural rap fan: he at least thinks he’s cool even if nobody else does and likes life best when it’s big and scary and full of excitement and we know he’s a hater of injustice – that would have been funnier and more unexpected and more, well, Dr Whoey than suddenly getting down wid da kids (and thirty off years late at that). 

 So much for the ending. The start, meanwhile, is like a soap opera in a way the Dr Who stories of old never were, even the Russell T ones. The opening few minutes of ‘Rose’ aside, the character arc was about how much travelling in the Tardis changed Billie Piper’s character - we saw the drudgery of everyday life through her changed eyes, laughing at her mum for still caring about such mundane things as gossipy neighbours and the latest fashions when we’ve travelled the universe and seen the stars. Other eras, notably the Hartnell years, have home as the perfect utopia you long for when you’re far from home. This year it’s more like the feel of the 1970s when Sarah Jane could hop on board the Tardis for an adventure and still pick up her job again when she came home. Chibnall uses reality as something the Doctor can’t have, but wants (whereas all the other Doctors have been ready to run away at a moment’s notice). You’d never get another Doctor looking longingly at her companions and waiting for an invitation home the way the 13th Doctor does – which is an interesting take on a new theme had they really run with it, made this Doctor a homebody who wants roots (especially with the Timeless Child’ arc to come). But why would someone who can travel across all space and time want to end up in 21st century Sheffield of all places? The companions don’t like it much there and starting with this story the Doctor is always lecturing us about how badly we’re treating our planet in this era and how awful everything really is. 

 The plot arrives slowly, after we’ve seen the three companions in their regular habitat and while it helps explain why they’re so ready to run away in the Tardis again at story’s end, it also means we get ten minutes of bickering and bitching, family dynamic that isn’t running parallel to the main plot but for quite a long time is the only plot. Even after the plot’s arrived we then get more domesticness as Ryan gets a message from home. And then we stay closer to home than we usually are in as the story turns into ‘Doomwatch’, a series by Cybermen creators Gerry Davis and Kit Pedler that was much more rooted in everyday life than Dr Who ever was (even in the era when ‘Doomwatch’ was its biggest rival and it was Earthbound itself in the 1970s). It becomes a show not about time or space travel but how science can go out of whack, that governments know all about these things but are turning a blind eye until they get completely out of control. It’s a surprise, actually, that the spiders turn out to be the side effect of big business rather than an inside government plot (the clue here is the way the Doctor reacts with the line ‘a conspiracy? I love a good conspiracy!’ even though no previous regeneration have ever said anything close to this – the only story that even vaguely comes from the same universe is ‘The Deadly Assassin’ and as he’s being framed by The Master at the time it’s safe to say that he doesn’t agree). This is a rare Dr Who story that ends up having no aliens (Doctor aside) and no futuristic technology bar The Tardis; the enemy is all humanity’s doings, a side effect if nuclear radiation dumped down tunnels (Eldrad would have loved this timezone). As a one-off that’s fine, but after three stories that haven’t quite worked out what this is series is yet ad which have barely explored anywhere yet it’s a shame to get another equally confused. It’s not until ‘The Tsuranga Conundrum’ next week that we get a Chibnall story that feels like Dr Who – and sadly its one inspired by its worst trappings. 

 If this script had been by anyone else I’d have assumed that Chris Chibnall had come back and asked for ‘more spiders and less emotion’ or possibly vice versa, but no – this is his script through and through. It’s oddly unlike any of his others, including the ones he wrote for the 10th and 11th Drs (‘The Power Of Three’ shows how strong and indeed funny a domesticated Dr Who story arc under his watch might have been). Honestly, it’s a big mistake making these characters seem real and complex and grounded in reality and then throw them into a plot about giant spiders - there aren’t many Dr Who stories that insult your intelligence, but this is one of them. It says a lot for season 11 that said spiders end up being the most believable monsters this series, but we still never find out how they mutate or grow from the nuclear waste (I mean, this isn’t ‘Spiderman’, there hs to be some reason or the spiders who grow up near Sellafield would be chasing every visitor to the lake District down the motorway by now) or why they end up attacking humans when little ones don’t (they have far more reason to be scared of us than we do of them) – and a line about how they’re ‘confused’ from ‘all the growing’ is a nonsense – that’s not how spiders ‘work’. Had they made the spiders try Human flesh because of being half-starved with the lack of giant flies around I’d have believed in this story a lot more. 

 One other reason this doesn’t quite feel like normal Dr Who is that otherwise the ‘monsters’ in it are actually more realistic than the humans. Spiders feel ‘right’ for a half-horror series like Dr Who – something everyday that feels and indeed looks incredibly alien when you come to think about it, with a life so unlike a human’s or most animals or even other insects as to feel like they’ve beamed in from a different world (from Mars, perhaps?) So much so that Colin Baker had it written into his contract that he wouldn’t have to act against them because he had such a phobia and they seemed like an inevitability in the series again at some point. The effects team, who haven’t really got too many things right in the rest of the season, aren’t working from imagination for these monsters and have clearly been paying close attention: these spiders are really scarily lifelike. It’s not like me to chastise a Dr Who special effect for being ‘too’ real but, well, it’s borderline. I never thought I had a phobia of spiders (like the Doctor, my phobias are caused by humans, not nature) but if ever a story was going to make me sympathise with people who do its seeing one in this episode scuttle around a cobwebbed filled hall coming up to people’s knees. In a story that’s otherwise so silly and cartoonlike it’s weirdly real, down to the last hairs on each spidery leg. It makes you wonder how good ‘Planet Of The Spiders’ might have been had Barry Letts not given the orders to make the spiders ‘less realistic’ in fear that it might be too horrible for children; oddly, given the amount of last minute rethinks in other stories in this era (which, unlike Ryan. Really do seem to care what people think of it, more than normal), nobody seems to have even considered this a problem. I’m surprised there weren’t complaints. 

 One thing this story does get right is the way Chibnall subtly re-writes his characters now he knows them better. Future stories will overstate the 13th Doctor’s quirkiness and ‘social anxiety’ to the point where she’s just rude plain, but here she’s hilarious. Her eager embrace of Yaz’s everyday life is very out of character of the Doctor in general but suits this particular regeneration: she’s given up trying to keep secrets after all those moody years following the time war so chatters at speed, not caring whether anyone can follow her or whether she accidentally reveals that she’s an alien time traveller or not. Jodie Whittaker is never better than in the scene where she’s rabbitting on about having a normal life and getting a flat and a purple sofa (to hide behind?), even though she seems to have forgotten the time she spent as a lodger with James Corden, yaz having to tell her quietly to reign it in. She’s happily oblivious to everyone’s emotions, accidentally insulting Yaz’s dad’s cooking and ruffling Yaz’s sister’s feathers within seconds of meeting them. While Yaz’s bitching with her sister feels forced and all too obviously an attempt to replicate the slightly toxic feel of Martha’s and Donna’s less than perfect families (really, while sibling feuds often continue long into childhood, they don’t resemble the childish way here very often – and though we don’t know Yaz’s sis very well we do know that Yaz is too much of a grown-upnto stoop to this level so easily) her playful relationship with her dad (both proud and disdainful all at once) feels very real. We don’t get to see her mum much, even though she gets by far the most time, but she at least feels like a ‘real’ person too. Meanwhile the grumbling, reluctant relationship between Graham and Ryan, punctuated by nervy banter that goes too far, has quietened down into something gentler: the Ryan ten minutes before ‘The Woman Who Fell To Earth’ would have walked out on Graham like a shot if he thought he could go to his dad’s, but now he’s grown fond enough of Graham and cares enough about him post-Grace to stick around, even though he won’t quite admit that out loud. In time Ryan’s relationship with the dad he worships but who doesn’t care about him in return will become one of the most irritating things about this era, but for now it helps root this character. You can see his love of Yaz’s big messy family too as he sits in the corner smiling, the nuclear family when they’re not going nuclear, and quietly missing it now his own roots are gone, before rebuffing Yaz’s sister’s advances in an offhand blunt way only Ryan can. None of these four will ever be as well written again as they are inside this story’s opening ten minutes and its all the sadder when they revert back to type midway through this story.

 Is a story that starts off aiming for the stars worse when it sinks into quicksand lower than usual worse one that’s flat and disappointing the whole way through? Well, for me it is. ‘Arachnids’ is a story that has a lot of merit and bags of potential, but the way its squandered for no good reason makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up far more than any spider does and it sets an unfortunate precedent for all the stories that follow: because we have so much back story here Chibnall thinks we don’t ever need to see as much of it ever again and we do. We should have more of this most weeks. In fact most of these family characters aren’t seen on screen again or even mentioned, which just seems weird in retrospect 9we see more of Dan’s ex after he’s split up with her and he’s in way less stories than any of these three companions). The Russell T Davies era ‘worked’ because you were always being reminded of the ordinary world running in parallel to the extraordinary one, but Sheffield is 2018 is just another place the Tardis stops off at, another source of an unlikely adventure. The very ordinariness of what this story becomes would be irritating at any other time, but the fact that it interrupts our chance to get to know these characters better and how rare that actually is becomes so frustrating. Sadly this story sets a precedent for all the worst excesses of this era too: environmental preaching which, even when you agree with the message, is so horribly overdone it makes you want to rebel and cruise around in a petrol-guzzler or something (Whovians as a rule hate being told what to do by anyone – if the Doctor’s taught us anything its not to listen to anyone in authority so when she tries to become that authority its so out of character and against the series), mute monsters who are working off animal instincts and so don’t have a moral compass to question or debate, plots that are full of holes and coincidences, way too much standing around not doing anything and risible endings that come out of nowhere and tidy everything away into nice neat piles (fitting here though, I guess, for a story that’s basically one big tidy up).

 ‘When I pull that lever I don’t know what’s going to happen’ says the Doctor to warn her companions at story’s end, but that’s the trouble: we do. From ten minutes in its back to business as usual, only not quite as good as anything the first three stories of season 11 have done. This is a stupidly simple story that’s actually made all the worse for the fact that these normally stupidly simple people have suddenly become three-dimensional for a few precious minutes. Seeing them reduced to running around madly behind the Doctor talking at speed, like nothing happened, is one of the biggest let-downs of the Chibnall era for me. For as moment there this episode looked as if it was going to be different. For a moment there it felt as if this really was going to be a great era of Who after all. But that complexity we saw in the first few minutes? It was built on recycled ground every bit as toxic and dangerous as the Robertson hotel chain and isn’t what this series is ‘about ‘ anymore and will in time prove to be every bit as deadly. 

 POSITIVES: The scene where Graham returns home and hallucinates seeing his dead wife Grace, still looking after him from beyond the grave, might just be the Chibnall era's most moving scene, with a quietness and subtlety that seems out of place in a story about hiding from 4-foot spiders. For a moment we think this is going to be a story that uses her ghost as a pot point (like ‘It Takes You Away’ will) but no: it’s ‘just’ a bit of character colour, Graham imagining what his wife would be saying to him if she could see him returning to an empty house, sniffing her shirts and trying to remember. People often say that the past is a foreign land but there’s no world that seems as alien and strange as a place you once knew well with someone before they left your life. Grace was the sharpest, best written character in ‘The Woman That Fell To Earth’ by far and her voice is strong enough to carry even this short scene: chastising Graham gently as a cover-up for obvious love. So far its seemed unlikely indeed that the Tardis team can just react to all the life-changing things they’ve seen in the first three series and not be affected by them, but it makes sense when this scene reveals how much Graham has been distracting himself, dealing with real monsters and all the noise in the universe because even the biggest monsters in the world are easier to face than coming home to an empty house. The tragedy is that they just revert to making Graham a wisecracking comedy relief character after this when this one scene alone point to such depths we never get to see again. Odd and awkward as he still is in many scenes (he can’t even look into the distance in the final scene convincingly), Bradley Walsh nails this one which is easily his best work. They should have given him more to do like this in season twelve after seeing just how good he is here. 

 NEGATIVES: The story ends with Graham, Ryan and Yaz all deciding for different reasons to stay with the Doctor rather than go home (in fact the only person who seems to want to stay is the Doctor, weirdly enough). What should be a heartwarming moment just falls flat, with some truly awful lines about how being round the Doctor has made them realise how special life is, words that the cast struggle to deliver with a straight face and which sound like the ‘companion auditions’ from ‘Totally Doctor Who’. Only for a much younger age group. No it doesn’t seem special: the ‘special’ parts were the ordinary life before the spiders arrives. 

BEST QUOTE: Robertson: ‘Why don’t you do what other people do? Get a gun and shoot things like a normal person!’