Arachnids In The UK (2018) Review

I don't know who he's gonna put out of his misery,
but whoever it is is a lucky bastard.

Arachnids In The UK is proof that subtlety is just utterly alien to Chris Chibnall. What a ghastly missed oppurtunity for a good horror story.

WRITTEN BY

Chris Chibnall. Again. Dude's making up for lost time, I guess.

PLOT

The TARDIS crew return to Sheffield to discover that corner-cutting on the part of a disposal company has led to an invasion of giant mutant spiders in the city. Tracking down the source to a hotel, they team up with the amoral owner(and CEO) Jack Robertson to resolve the infestation peacefully.

ANALYSIS

I did not expect to get this angry, but this episode was a giant tease. It started out incredibly well! I love giant spiders, and the hotel setting gave me serious Shining vibes. There was a nice slow build-up to their appereance as well, with us seeing the smaller(though still way too big) spiders first in the flat next to Yaz's, and then switching locations to the hotel where the real horror awaited.

The character of Robertson, as presented initially, seemed to be set up as a cold and brusque villain the likes of which we haven't had in Doctor Who for what feels like ages. Not an alien soldier or a unit like the Daleks or Cybermen, just one evil pseudo-mafia boss. I'm all in for this.

But it's all brought down by one man: Chris Chibnall. Now, the resolution to the story itself doesn't bother me, although it is rushed and just sort of fizzles out at the end. No, it's the dialogue. Everyone in this story sounds cliched, but they also know they're cliched and so act as over-the-top as possible just so the audience would know that they know and they're dead inside. From Robertson's random rants about how he has no responsibility for what happened(nudge nudge wink wink don't be like that kids), to the forced jokes about Yaz and Ryan's relationship, to everyone shouting the Doctor's in charge, to the Doctor's frownyface(God I hate the frownyface) when she hears Robertson wants to shoot the overgrown spiders.
And I know I said the plot wasn't a problem, but what is this cheesy 70s PSA story doing in 2018? At least change things up a bit - maybe have the toxic trash be in the ocean or have it give all humans superpowers causing world chaos - but no, they go for the evil mutant insects.

The only positive I can really think of in the end is that I discovered a fondness for grime music with this story. Every Doctor Who story should end with a catchy beat!

CHARACTERS

I don't even want to talk about the leads. They all come across as patronising stereotypes. The Doctor's a moral crusader, so let's have her diss guns again and snark back at Robertson for every dumb comment he makes. Ryan and Yaz are the youngsters who get mistaken for a couple lolz. Graham misses his wife so let's have him talk to her because that's normal(it was weird when Bill did it last season, it's not any less weirder now).
And all three of them are totally onboard for some fun adventures in the TARDIS, whoopee.

Chris Noth seems like a good actor and manages to actually make Robertson intimidating before succumbing to the combination of poor comedy writing and attempts to turn him into a cartoon villain("don't go in there! Err, nothing in there worth seeing!" Jesus H Christ...). Oh well.

Actually, the rest of the cast aren't too bad. I quite liked Yaz's softspoken, but still dominant mum and the cranky, but lovable dad. I wouldn't mind seeing them back in another episode down the line.

NOTES

*Whatever happened to K-9 being in Series 11? He would've fitted in perfectly. Or maybe they were afraid of turning the show into sci-fi Scooby-Doo.

*I think I'll mention this once in every Thirteenth Doctor review, but it needs to be repeated: the new title sequence is glorious and it is by far my favourite in the show's history. It's an excellent update on the old whirlwind title sequences.

*I like that Jodie checks the result on the sonic crystal after using her screwdriver, kind of like Matt Smith(although he looked at it vertically instead of horizontally). Tennant also did this in his own way, by listening to the sounds his screwdriver was making. Eccleston and Capaldi never checked their sonics from what I remember.

*The CGI on the spiders was fabulous. Someone should go back and add them into a Planet Of The Spiders special edition.

*The title for this story is really silly. Apparently it's a reference to some song or something, but it sounds silly.

*I understand the Doctor's reservations towards harming innocent lifeforms, but I don't remember the Eleventh Doctor spazzing out when Amy swatted that fly in the TARDIS(from one of the billion minisodes). So why does she have such a big problem with just killing the spiders? I mean, literally nothing has changed except they're bigger. And, as it turns out, in agony already from the increased size since they were never meant to grow this big.

*So, let me see if I got this: Robertson is the owner of a bunch of hotels(presumably around the world), a corner-cutting waste disposal company and he has some kind of rivalry with Donald Trump? What a convenient set of character traits to turn him into Satan for this story. But then again, this is that kind of story. It's not like The Green Death from 1973 had a morally ambiguous villain who found his redemption or anything- OH WAIT. Heck, even Lupton from Planet Of The Spiders had a character-based motivation. In that he got fired from his job. We can all relate to that.

*And yes, there is zilch original material in this story. Even The Shining references have been done before in 2011's The God Complex(which wasn't great either, but vastly superior to this).

*I will say, I like the on-location shooting in Sheffield(or whereever it is they filmed it). Looks great.

*"I eat danger for breakfast. I don't, I eat cereal. Or croissants."

CONCLUSION

It's strange to get so pissed off at such a meaningless episode. With Moffat's stories, I was always really angry at the continuity-heavy ones, because they mucked with what didn't need to be mucked with.

But this is just dumbed down writing of the worst, most patronising kind and a waste of what could have been something special.