Doctor Who Series 11 Review #4 - Arachnids in the UK by Chris Chibnall

Firstly a disclaimer. It has been over a year since this episode came out, and thus before my rewatch of it today my mind has pondered on this and the series as a whole. Thus I have more of an established view than I have done for reviews previously.

Arachnids in the UK by Chris Chibnall

Arachnids in the UK is the third episode and story of the eleventh series of the modern era and the 37th season of the series overall. It is also the third episode and story of the 13th Doctor.

Arachnids in the UK is a classic base-under-siege story, my favourite type of story. The premise behind it - giant spiders - is hardly original but had the recipe to be quite a good story, however the lack of interest in the characters, corny dialogue and the amount of plot holes in this weakens it considerably.

Doctor Rating

13th Doctor - 6/10 - Jodie's performance was far from terrible, but the dialogue she comes up with, albeit not her fault, is sometimes annoying, thus she can't achieve any credible score

Companion Rating

Ryan Sinclair - 6/10 - Ryan felt like a waste of space in this episode frankly. At times he was just making shadow puppets in the background like some prepubescent teen. Once more the story of his dad pops up and interferes with the story.

Yaz Khan - 6/10 - Even in an episode that is built around Yaz's family, Yaz once more feels like she is part of the furniture. This is part of the problem of having a series that has too many characters, you just can not invest in them and this renders the entire episode to being unsatisfactory at best.

Graham O'Brien - 7/10 - Perhaps the only interesting character in this episode. His scenes with Grace were odd but he was able to act the grief well, as you would expect from the brilliant actor Bradley Walsh. As this episode had a large and uninteresting side-cast, Graham was also branded relatively useless.

Enemy Rating

The Spiders - 6/10 - Giant spiders is not anything special but they were effective, however not really enough. They could have been far more used and far more scary. The basis of them being not really an enemy and confused was nice but it was the whole fulfront of the episode as it is every week.

Story rating

Story - 5/10 - The story is, on paper, unimaginative but good. However the plot holes are thick and fast. The spiders were trapped in the convenient panic room, which was only mentioned earlier in the episode in order to fulfill its task at the end. The episode also forgets about the other spiders that were not in the hotel. The episode title also does reflect the limited scale of the giant spiders. Lastly, not wanting to kill the spiders is a good message, but slowly starving them is a rather odd way of going about a merciless death. Shooting them would have been far kinder.

Scariness - 8/10 - The spiders were scary, but they could have been far more. They did kill and they were menacing but the constant message that they are actually the victim, lowers their menacing tone.

Seriousness - 7/10 - There was death, it has to be said but the scale of it felt minimal. Once the side characters had all been killed there was little expectation that anyone else was going to die.

Humour - 3/10 - The attempts at humour were funny for the opposite effect of what they were meant to be. The stormzy ending was atrocious to say the least.

Continuity - 5/10 - the plot holes within the episode as established above renders this to have a score so low.

Rest of cast performance

Robertson- 5/10 - A clear attempt of Trump in Doctor Who, constantly banging on about why the Doctor was there. He was a mere characteur with little to no substance.

Naija Khan - 6/10 - Bland, like everyone seems to be in this episode

Dr Jade McIntrye - 6/10 - ditto

Total: 70/130

Series 11 Rankings:
The Woman who Fell to Earth: 64.29%

The Ghost Monument: 62.14%

Rosa: 73.63%

Arachnids in the UK: 53.85%

Scores out of 10:

The Woman who Fell to Earth: 6/10

The Ghost Monument: 3/10 (-3)

Rosa: 7/10

Arachnids in the UK: 4/10

So far this series has been rather disappointing, which is clear from the overall series impression I gave when it actually came out. The score for Arachnids in the UK is the lowest of the series, despite it not being the worst episode in the series in my opinion. I think the low score does have something to do with the fact that my poor view of the episode and the series as a whole has lingered in my mind for a while, and as you look at the past with a magnifying glass, the bad just gets worse. I hope to do episode 5 as soon as possible.