Doctor Who episode 860: Arachnids in the U.K. (28/10/2018)
‘I don’t need your approval Doctor. This is what the world needs right now.’ About halfway through this it occurred to me that Chibnall is essentially pitching for The Sarah Jane Adventures. There’s a determined but socially awkward female lead, her friend Ryan with his waste-of-space dad, Yaz with her investigative spirit, and an older man off a quiz show (OK, it falls down a bit). But you can easily imagine Sarah Jane, Clyde, Rani and Rani’s mum (there to deliver flowers) running around a hotel somewhere outside Cardiff battling giant spiders while a mean politician is cartoonishly corrupt.
And, like The Sarah Jane Adventures, this is rooted in Barry Letts-era Doctor Who, with a plot that mixes the environmental themes of The Green Death (toxic waste pumped into old mines, making a very light point about the de-industrialisation of Sheffield or something) with the spiders from, well, Planet of the Spiders (complete with some dead-person-coat-sniffing action when Graham inhales Grace’s old clothes). I don’t think this is a bad thing. The Sarah Jane Adventures were great; reviving them with more money and slightly more horror is as good an accessible, family-friendly version of the show as any.
It’s the first 13th Doctor episode that gives an indication of what Chibnall business-as-usual could look like. Yaz and Najia get a B-plot as they confront The Good Wife’s Chris Noth at his hotel; Graham gets some space to grieve Grace and his relationship with Ryan begins to thaw as they process the letter from Ryan’s dad. The Doctor flits through it all like she’s trying hard to fit into the domestics (more like the 11th Doctor in The Lodger than any of the other modern takes), while giving the impression she’s slightly recoiling from any genuine connection. Perhaps this is set-up for the final scene, when the fam converge on the TARDIS and demand more adventures: until this point, the Doctor’s assumed their journey is ending soon so hasn’t wanted to get attached. All the usual caveats apply – some of the dialogue sounds like it came from office posters (‘You’re not going to come back as the same people that left here’) – but I think this basically works.
Next Time: The Tsuranga Conundrum
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In retrospect, the earliest signs of the wheels coming off this version of Doctor Who. The disposal of the giant spiders (lock them in a room and let them starve to death) was shockingly callous, and on a character level, completely forgetting the character you’d created is a cop (even if she’s a rookie) felt very careless. A reason for Yaz not being able to deal with a guy brandishing a weapon would’ve at least been interesting.