Doctor Who Series 11: 10 Huge Questions After Arachnids In The UK

Arachnids in the UK saw Doctor Who back on familiar territory, both for the companions and the viewers. After last week’s brave treatment of the American civil rights movement we were treated to an episode filled with well-trodden tropes – a hotel under siege, larger than life monsters, and a pantomime villain.

The story featured a guest cast that would appeal to both sides of the pond, with Coronation Street favourite Shobna Gulati turning in an understated performance as Yaz’s mother, and Chris Noth, of Sex and the City fame, bigging it up and playing the ruthless wannabe president for laughs. But the real stars of the night were of the eight-legged variety in another triumph for the new visual effects team.

We should, by now, be getting used to the streamlined plots of this series and the focus on character over story, but with its clear inspiration from Doctor Who’s extensive back catalogue it was harder to overlook the limitations of such an approach. We are left not only with some interesting questions about how the characters will continue to develop, but with a number of concerns over the plot itself, particular the story’s resolution.

It’s no secret that Chris Chibnall has a fondness for Doctor Who in the early seventies. With Jon Pertwee’s Doctor exiled to Earth for the majority of his run, our planet was under constant threat from alien invasions. Pertwee’s final story, Planet of the Spiders, was the first time the Doctor had to deal with oversized spiders. But that time they were sentient, talking aliens. Arachnids in the UK is notable for dispensing with any alien threat, with the monsters created unwittingly by careless and unethical humans. We don’t even have an interfering human from the distant future. This is a scenario that we are meant to believe could really happen today.

Pertwee’s era, however, was also replete with stories in which human beings were bringing about their own demise. Sometimes this was told in allegory, with politics of the day being transferred to alien worlds such as Peladon. At other times it was all happening in our backyard. Hidden species such as the Silurians might inadvertently be reawakened, or monsters from the past deliberately brought back to life (Invasion of the Dinosaurs). But humans can also make monsters of their own. On one occasion giant mutated maggots and flies terrorised Wales because of a megalomaniac computer. The Green Death, like Arachnids in the UK, also contained salient messages about the dangers of toxic waste disposal and corporate greed.

Chris Chibnall turns the object of parody away from British politicians and civil servants to American businessmen and presidential candidates. The clumsy Trump references make clear the true object of satire and Chris Noth’s hammy performance serves only to accentuate this send-up.

Mining the series’ back catalogue is nothing new of course, but Arachnids in the UK combines elements from the original series with those of the new, from Aliens in London to The God Complex. The results, whilst entertaining, are not terribly successful.