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Still loving this season.
“Arachnids in the UK” doesn’t take itself as seriously as “Rosa” did. I mean yes, there is an obvious political allegory here. But “Arachnids in the UK” is basically what it says on the tin. Kind of like Snakes on a Plane. It is an episode that delivers the simpler pleasures of Doctor Who: Monsters, creepiness, tunnels, running, and most of all ordinary people saving the world by confronting something simultaneously ridiculous and terrifying. It’s basically the Doctor Who version of a team-building exercise. And it works!
All right, so obviously the asshole American hotelier/politician is a thinly veiled version of the 45th president of the United States, who according to Plaidder custom I will refer to henceforward as Buttercup. One of the first thing he does is fire someone for no reason (turn’s out it’s Yaz’s mother). He builds giant golden hotels everywhere. He almost literally throws his people to the wolves (it’s actually worse, I think, when the wolf is a giant spider). He makes people sign nondisclosure agreements. His emergency shelter contains only one book. When you dig below the gilded surface he is basically trash. And so on.
And yet…here is the infuriating thing. This character is not, and actually within the context of this plot could not ever practically be, as bad as the real Buttercup. For one thing he’s too smart. For another he can form complete sentences. For a third, he’s capable of shutting up and doing as he’s told long enough to save his own ass. For a fourth, he is occasionally comfortable with allowing the focus to be drawn away from him for more than about a minute. I mean there are these little inspired touches, like his worrying about his cell phone while Kevin is being dragged off by a giant spider from the bathtub. But as offensive as he is to Nadia, Yaz, and Ryan, he’s nowhere near as offensive as Actual Buttercup would be.
I don’t blame Chibnall for this. If you tried to make that character more convincingly Buttercup he would derail the whole episode. Much the way Actual Buttercup derails every narrative his handlers construct for him and every project into which he inserts himself. Buttercup is so incoherently awful that he is simply incompatible with traditional narrative form. But just so those of you who don’t have the pleasure of being governed by Actual Buttercup know: the reality is worse. Oh my God, it is SO MUCH WORSE.
But anyway, that’s all right, because this episode isn’t really about him. He’s just the source of the problem. The episode is about the people who give a shit about life on earth trying to come up with an effective and humane solution to a serious environmental disaster which also happens to have generated a bunch of ridiculously huge spiders. I was a bit disappointed that this episode didn’t have anything to do with the Raknoss–the giant alien spiders from “Runaway Bride”–but never mind. Giant earth spiders are scary enough, ever since The Hobbit. The weird eyes. The jaws. The webs. The scuttling. I’m sure I need not go on. The SFX team does a good job of rendering the spiders, and the human talent does a great job of being terrified of them. I particularly enjoyed Graham and Ryan trapping the spider in the giant pot, and reporting on the spider in the ballroom (”best Edith Wharton novel ever”). I also love it that the Doctor is obviously experienced at using common household items to deal with major infestations (the vinegar thing reminded me so much of Nine coaching Jackie on how to fight the Sleveen, and the whole essential oils backpack was so Ghostbusters and yet the Ghostbuster uniform and pack was originally based on exterminator uniforms and equipment so it has come full circle and there is too much meta now). Like, what other massive creepycrawlies has she showed people on other planets how to keep out of their crawl spaces and baseboards?
So while all this is going on, Chibnall sneaks in a fair amount of character development for Yaz, Ryan, and Graham. It’s good to meet Yaz’s family, even if they do drive her crazy; I particularly love her dad and his terrible cooking. Also a big fan of Yaz’s mum. I especially love her reaction to being fired on her first day; it’s so understated but so sad. Gradually she comes into her own over the course of the episode, and you root for her all the way. Graham and Ryan get to work together, and Ryan’s reaction to his father’s letter suggests that he’s starting to change his mind about what Graham really means to him. And I also love it that they are finally officially called Team TARDIS, which I’ve been calling them in my head for a while.
I mean I guess none of this sounds that exciting, and I guess superficially it isn’t. It’s a giant spiders episode. But successfully delivering the things that you always want from a Doctor Who episode is a worthy goal and a meaningful accomplishment. It doesn’t tell us anything new about why the world is fucked up or the part Buttercup has played in that; but it shows us people banding together to mitigate the damage instead of just firing bullets and whatever they’re scared by. And through it all, Jodie Whittaker’s Doctor continues to be a delight and a revelation. I loved the little awkward non-goodbye at the beginning. The Doctor’s loneliness was, I’m just gonna say, a little over-emphasized in some of the other seasons. It’s nice that it is now structurally prevented from ripening into man-pain; and Whittaker’s sort of awkward attempts to pretend she’s not consumed by loneliness are just as touching and endearing as all the brooding we used to get from Ten. I also appreciated Thirteen’s attempts at full disclosure before taking them back aboard–and their responses.
When I think about what made this show matter to me when I started watching Nine’s season, I often go back to a scene from one of the later episodes where Nine is still out fighting the evil whatever and Rose is back home with her family. She knows there are larger forces at work and she’s unbelievably frustrated at being stuck in her regular life. She goes on a rant about how life has got to be more than just getting up, working, and eating chips, and I was just like that’s it, that’s what we all want, for life to be more than this. And that’s what brings all three of them back to the TARDIS in the end. As Yaz says, “I want more.” So when the Doctor warns them that they will be profoundly changed by traveling with her, and Graham says he thinks that’s a good thing–that is big, to me. It’s the exact opposite of everything that both the real and the fake Buttercup have been putting into the world, which can all more or less be boiled down to the fear of change. The TARDIS is not for people who are afraid of difference, or danger, or the unknown. The TARDIS doesn’t care about borders and the TARDIS isn’t going to coddle your fears. Up and out and away from what’s normal. That’s where Team TARDIS goes. And I am psyched to be back on it.